Books published by Leafwood Publishers & Acu Press

Thin Places not only reveals the deeply scriptural, sacramental faith of the Celts, but also provides ways for us to learn from this ancient faith expression, applying fresh and lively spiritual disciplines to our lives today.

This in-depth study offers all serious Bible students a detailed and readable consideration of the book of Hebrews. Intended for preachers, university and seminary students, and adult Bible class teachers, Hebrews: Ancient Encouragement for Believers Today is a bridge commentarydelivering the best insights of contemporary scholarship in understandable, non-technical language. The author of Hebrews used four Psalms as a framework to re-tell the story of Jesus to a disheartened audience that was tempted to walk away. The same structure and intense focus on Jesus permeates and empowers this narrative commentary, bringing fresh encouragement to believers today. An international spectrum of Bible scholars and church leaders commend the meticulous scholarship and sound exposition in this book and note its tremendous clarity and simplicity, its wise application and elegant prose. Reviewers call it brilliant and a momentous accomplishment.

Throughout the New Testament, Jesus undoes barriers of impotent religion (or religion that can't produce life in us), so that he can have a more intimate relationship with his people. Some of those barriers are still in existence today and they are keeping people away from God instead of drawing them closer to him. If Jesus were to actually walk into your church, your home, or your life, are there things he would undo? Sooner or later that's the question we all must wrestle with. If Jesus is undoing something in our life, we can be sure that it's for our good and for God's glory. Let the undoing begin.

Why do some people overreact emotionally to normal life stresses? Have you ever felt as if your emotions are suddenly raging out of control and you seem powerless to do anything about it? Many people live with debilitating emotional upheaval and it hurts their health, their relationships and even their walk with God. They are looking feverishly for freedom and relief, yet often experience frustration and misunderstanding in the attempt. Strong Winds and Crashing Waves helps people understand the lingering effects of past traumatic wounding and provides the wounded with a pathway to freedom through the healing touch of Jesus Christ. Sharing from his own experience with post traumatic stress disorder,Terry Wardle writes candidly about the nature of deep emotionalstruggle and helps readers encounter the transforming Christ in the memories of past traumatic events.

Many writers have considered the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" Pemberton, however, sets this philosophical issue aside to consider the practical. How do believers live out faith in prolonged seasons of pain and loss? How can we live with God when it hurts and continues to hurt? Drawing from his own daily struggle with chronic pain and years of reading and teaching the Psalms, Pemberton leads readers on a quest to recover a lost ancient resource for people of faith the language of lament. The book of Psalms brings out the reality and presence of lament in ancient days, indeed laments make up a third of the Psalter. Through the exploration and study of imagery and language, Pemberton revitalizes this forgotten tool to rejuvenate those who seek to connect with God in times of struggle.

Life is tense and offers no easy answers or quick fixes. The good news is that in a world of unrest and stress readers can find the peace for which they hunger. Tracie Miles, in this breakthrough book, helps women unload the pressure cooker of life and learn to rely on the peace that Christ promises all those who come to Him. Tracie maintains that the direction many women receive today is attached to temporary helps like meditation, relaxation strategies, breathing exercises, and support groups. "STRESSED-LESS LIVING" unpacks the truth found in Scripture about how to overcome fear, anxiety, and uncertainty, and shows the stressed-out woman how she can not only survive stress, but thrive in spite of it through faith in the promises of God.

While relating his own personal journey in understanding the nature of hell, Fudge leads the reader through the whole Bible to see what we have missed, then through church history to understand the origin of the other two views. Here are the basics: Life is short. Death is sure. Judgment is certain. Hell is real. And when John 3:16 says the options are eternal life or perish, we can take that at face value. At the end of the world, the good and bad alike are raised to face judgment. The righteous enjoy eternal life with God; the lost are sentenced to hell. But the God who gave his Son to die for sinners does not keep them alive forever to torment them without end. Instead, those in hell suffer such precise pains as divine justice may require, in a process that ends in extinction. This is the second death, the wages of sin. Eternal punishment is eternal destruction.

"Mom, you're so mean!" Do you struggle to instill loving boundaries and become discouraged when your child doesn't like you for them? Let "The Mean Mom's Guide" inspire you to dig in and stand your ground when parenting gets tough because a mean mom isn't always the mean you think it means.

The Early Church and Today is a collection of scholarly articles by an acclaimed specialist in early Christianity written for a broad audience. The topics taken from the New Testament and other early Christian literature are relevant for the church today. The articles are grouped in the following categories: Volume 1, church and ministry; Volume 2, Christian living, biblical interpretation, the restoration motif, religious liberty, and the book of Acts of the Apostles. Sections include: - "Ministry of the Word in the First Two Centuries"- "The Authority and Tenure of Elders"- "Women in the Post-Apostolic Church"- "Baptismal Motifs in the Ancient Church"- "Baptism in the Patristic Period"- "When You Come Together: Epi to auto in Early Christian Literature"- "Congregational Singing in the Early Church"- "Jewish Religious Music in the First Century - Temple, Synagogue, House, and Sect"- "Christian Living in a Pagan Society"- "The Meaning and Significance of the Restitution Motif"

The Early Church and Today is a collection of scholarly articles by an acclaimed specialist in early Christianity written for a broad audience. The topics taken from the New Testament and other early Christian literature are relevant for the church today. The articles are grouped in the following categories: Volume 1, church and ministry; Volume 2, Christian living, biblical interpretation, the restoration motif, religious liberty, and the book of Acts of the Apostles. Sections include: - "Ministry of the Word in the First Two Centuries"- "The Authority and Tenure of Elders"- "Women in the Post-Apostolic Church"- "Baptismal Motifs in the Ancient Church"- "Baptism in the Patristic Period"- "When You Come Together: Epi to auto in Early Christian Literature"- "Congregational Singing in the Early Church"- "Jewish Religious Music in the First Century - Temple, Synagogue, House, and Sect"- "Christian Living in a Pagan Society"- "The Meaning and Significance of the Restitution Motif"

In this final installment from the long-running and celebrated Conference on Preaching book series, an energetic group of scholars join together across ethnic and theological divides to consider one lasting question: "What is a life well-lived in the world that Wisdom fashions?" For over a decade, the Conference on Preaching has generated conversation among evangelicals, postliberals, and mainline Protestants by bringing together well-known biblical scholars and homileticians across the theological spectrum. In Preaching Character, editors Dave Bland and David Fleer turn to the papers from the October 2009 conference on preaching and wisdom. Wisdom is fundamentally about the formation and transformation of character, they write. When God created the world, God breathed wisdom into its essence; the world operates by wisdom. Thus wisdom is essential to living responsibly in this world. It is by wisdom that God empowers humans to negotiate the complexities of life. And it is by wisdom that we deepen our relationship with God and with others. Believing that the task of preaching biblical wisdom is about shaping the character of the faith community and its individual members, the contributors to this book seek to echo wisdom's call to embark on a fascinating and often unpredictable adventure. Intrigue, disappointment, joy, suffering, conflict, dialogue, and satisfaction fill the journey. Wisdom offers no guarantees along the way regarding rewards or financial security or physical well-being. But the journey with wisdom does guarantee the kind of character that enables individuals to live responsibly in community, reflecting the very nature of the God they serve. With Preaching Character, Dave Bland and David Fleer complete a collection of books exploring different focuses in preaching.

Exploring Worldviews in Literature is a collection of essays demonstrating the practice of literary criticism from a Christian perspective. In each essay, author Laura Barge compares and contrasts the philosophical assumptions of various literary works with those of a Christian worldview. This critical strategy, Barge believes, has an important place in both faith-based and secular schools. She embraces Jaroslav Pelikan's claim that the university remains the "custodian" of the "common memory" of any culture and thus cannot escape the obligation to preserve the moral and spiritual history of that culture. She thus presumes that the basic contours of a Christian worldview are an indispensable component of the Western cultural heritage. The literature analyzed here comes from a wide spectrum of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and American literature, with one chapter devoted to Russian literature of the same era. Throughout the volume, Barge explores numinous spaces, scapegoats, disclosures of the sacred in nature, and the mythos of an absent God, all in an effort to enlighten by unfolding worldviews. "Because the study of literature is [so] closely connected with the experiences of life itself," Barge writes, "it is also [particularly] in need of the enlightenment of Christian truth." In each of these essays, Barge draws on her years of study and her honest convictions to offer readers models of how to better understand the relationship between texts and Christian life.

A history of the churches of Christ in America with emphasis on who they are and why. Fourteen chapters with pictures of Restoration leaders from both the 19th and 20th centuries.