Books published by Resource Publications (CA)

Lutheran DNA takes the Reformation's Augsburg Confession of 1530 and asks whether parish issues today continue to find expression through the lens of this historic writing. The Augsburg Confession is named in Lutheran churches as a clear expression of Christian belief and practice. How is it so today? Stories, illustrations, and reflections flow out of this parish pastor's experiences as he reflects on meanings from Augsburg to Baltimore.

The Glory Walk is a brief work explaining to Christians what living for God's glory is all about. It is a summons to believers to live in the bigger picture of God's kingdom with God's purposes in view. We must face the reality that western culture is man-centered, that one's natural tendencies are toward self-glory, and that the grace of God is what is deeply needed to fulfill our purposes in God's created order. Christians need to be God-centered, oriented by the truth of God's Word, focused on the gospel, and completely dependent on God. We must see clearly that our God is infinitely glorious. Thus, He is worthy to receive our worship and praise. The believer's duty is to live intentionally for God's glory alone. However, duty must not carry with it the idea of drudgery. Instead, by God's grace, we delight in him and desire his glory to be known. The teachings in The Glory Walk call believers to the joyful life of exalting Christ!

Gold has always symbolized material riches. It is a simple element that somehow exceeds its intrinsic value. Its pursuit has become, for many, the primary goal of life. What is it that attracts us so about money and the material things it can buy? Is our fear assuaged by the perceived safety from a rainy day or do we believe that enough things will somehow fill the emptiness inside? I would hazard to guess that no amount of money has ever made anyone happy, ever. True happiness comes from finding our center, that place deep within each of us that cries out to be filled, a place that has been empty and found wanting since the beginning of time. No? Then ask yourself why a world founded on materiality is so screwed up and why the coveting of wealth so often lays waste to lives, compassion, and families in the pursuit of such things? The happiest people I know are those who treasure love, peace, and freedom over the chains imposed by the ownership of material things. These truly fortunate few are filled and made happy by the knowledge of a divine presence within, a presence that offers riches that satisfy the soul. They know that everything here is nothing in eternity. They, my friends, are the truly happy ones.So let us abandon our search for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the quest for the fountain of youth, or enlightenment in a capsule. Let us put aside these shallow offerings and pursue instead the divine life: the life that makes pale and lifeless the pursuit of simple gold. Join me here as we un-wrap celestial gifts, not of gold coins, but of joy and freedom.

When young Russell Pinske feels life is passing him by, he hits the road to shake things up. He catches a ride as far as his hometown in Indiana to visit friends and find a way to the West Coast. While there he stumbles through the summer on his wayward journey of self-discovery, bouncing from one impetuous impulse to another, becoming involved in the misbegotten capers of a gang of petty crooks and falling into a romance with an older woman. His motivation for his trip begins to wane as he gets mired in small-town life and wrapped up in the problems and preoccupations of the people around him. So when an old friend cruises into town under mysterious circumstances and offers a ride to California, Russell sees a chance to get back on the road and back on track, if he can extricate himself from his entanglements.

These psalms grow out of a decades-long fascination with the biblical psalms, particularly the Davidic psalms, which portray the tempestuous, sometimes awful intimacy of the Divine-human relationship. In the lightning-shot Psalm-space where Divine meets human, time shatters, splits, leaps like a river, and so does the soul of the speaker, now hunting God, now hunted, now languishing in despair, now reclining in quiet triumph against the pillars of Heavens. These contemporary psalms attempt to create a corollary to that biblical psalm space, a space narrowed to a single room in which God and the speaker have no choice but to face and struggle toward one another through the whirlwind of pain and love.

Rendezvous In Paris is a series of practical devotionals and personal meditations written by a Maine pastor as he traveled to the Charles De Gaulle Aero port to meet his daughter who was returning home sick from a summer missionary trip to Togo, West Africa. As he traveled on buses and planes through forty hours of wondering why, this pastor was inspired by everything from a fly on the flight to the plight the world was in during the thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The book includes the opinions and observations of a tourist in France and the spiritual insights he drew from the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, and the Parc Du Champ De Mars. Traveling just weeks before 9-11, there are also some considerations on just what happened and how it happened that terrorists were able to get through national security and attack the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The book also includes the miraculous events required to take this trip, the ultimate purpose of God when He calls us suddenly out of our "comfort zone," and the blessings and pleasures that come by "letting go and letting God." On a personal note, this group of short stories reveals the deep emotion and loving connection between a father and his daughter and the extraordinary adventure they shared together in a day in Paris!

1521 has arrived. A new year in a new world with new nations, new continents, new knowledge, and new rulers. Never before had so much power been gathered in such young hands. The tenth Sultan, the twenty-six-year-old Suleiman, ascends to his father's throne in one of the world's most powerful empires. The rest of the world hopes that the eastern threat has faded. Rhodes is Christendom's closest and most defiant outpost against the East. There the Knights of St. John's Grand Master has died. Strife and treachery await his successor. Some hundred knights have the task to defend the outpost. Their Grand Master's motto is "Victory or Death."

Where does one find hope in the midst of profound suffering? Tony Backman aches to know. A blues-harmonica-playing child psychologist at a residential treatment center in Santa Rosa, California, Tony specializes in narrative therapy. His story-based technique empowers abused teenagers to reimagine their lives through myths and folktales and so restore their vitality. Such vitality, however, eludes Tony in his own life. Mired in depression, he longs for his fractured family and fends off childhood flashbacks too painful to face. Tony's mentor recommends classical underworld myths as a roadmap for the spiritual journey toward healing and hope, but Tony is too drained for the undertaking. Until Carey Foster enters his life. Carey is a golden-voiced eleven-year-old choral soloist at a local Catholic boys' home. Brought to Tony's treatment center with his wrists sliced, Carey cowers mutely with his secrets in the center's locked ward, a flicking middle finger his only beacon. Carey's healing depends on Tony's ability to navigate the labyrinth of deception and cryptic self-disclosure that conceals the soul's darkest secrets. It also depends upon Tony's willingness to navigate the labyrinth of love and disappointment lodged in his own soul. At once a psychological study of how trauma is healed; a hero's journey through the underworld of abuse, betrayal, and shattered faith; and a theological thriller in search of a credible and sustaining Sacred in the midst of unspeakable suffering, The God of Shattered Glass reveals that stories do indeed heal, and that the way to God is not up, but down.

If you would like to read many reasons for admiring and loving Jesus, then this is the book for you! If you admire and love Jesus but have difficulty identifying yourself as a Christian or have difficulty joining a church because of problems with this or that aspect of Christianity, then this is a book for you, too! Among other things, Love of Jesus points out that Jesus accepted and even encouraged doubters. Important as scholarship is, Love of Jesus is not a scholarly book. Rather, it reaches out to lay people, believers, and non-believers. It takes at face value a wide range of New Testament stories about Jesus and asks of them why we should admire and love the man who inspired them. Then, hoping it has inspired the reader to admire and love Jesus-or to admire and love him even more-Love of Jesus offers answers to the questions, "How should we follow him?" and "How should we relate to one another as Christians when we have different understandings of Christianity?"

This book on church administration is a tool for all pastors and leaders in all churches. It provides ideas, methods, guidelines, and styles of administering and supervising modern day congregations and religious organizations in an easy to follow language. It can be used for any clergy or lay training, retreat, spiritual formation workshops, and seminars. Theological or Bible institutions or universities which offer courses in church administration will find this book most helpful. Individuals can use it for their personal spiritual development. It also carries a devotional and motivational aspect which every spiritual leader cannot afford to miss.

The popular Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins has sold more than 62 million copies since the first volume appeared in 1995. Jerry Falwell pronounced it the most important series of books in the history of modern Christianity. Many readers have assumed it gives the true facts about the way the world will end and what will happen to all the people in it. But according to real biblical scholarship, this series is seriously flawed. Based on a misreading of many scriptures, including Daniel and the Book of Revelation, it has fed a kind of hysteria in the Christian populace that has led many people to reorder their existence in expectation of an impending doom and the sudden, unexpected return of Jesus. In this book, William Powell Tuck carefully and authoritatively refutes the premises and faulty theology of the Left Behind books, critiquing them in the light of genuine biblical scholarship and common sense.

Mystic Twine is a voyage into the numinous realm of the mind and spirit, told in the ancient style of the storyteller. Contained within are weird and wonderful tales, mind and spiritual explorations, prayers and callings, and occasionally a glimpse into the author's view of the absurdities of life in the material world. These are very personal poems, told in quiet confidence to those who keep their ear to the spiritual sound and their eyes on the divine landscape. They reflect a journey that we will all take at some point in our lives. Their source is un-nameable, but they come clothed in a confidence born of the certainty of truth; the kind of truth known upon impact, the kind of truth that requires no validation other than the knowing that fills our mind and soul when we encounter it. I invite you to accompany me on this journey, a voyage that refreshes us all simultaneously. The nature of these ageless odes, in large part, remains a mystery even to me, and I welcome the occasion to explore them with you, my brothers and sisters. I do not write them to sell nor to glorify myself, but rather I pass them on as a sort of divine pact that I have made with their Source. I ask simply that you turn the page and see if they call out to you.

Did Jesus really restore sight to blind people? How are we to understand the stories of demon possession? What are we to make of the virgin birth? What was Paul's thorn in the flesh? These and many similar questions often arise in people's minds as they read the New Testament, and there are few places for the general reader to look to find the answers; even ministers and students find it difficult to access useful and up-to-date information. Commentaries on the New Testament rarely pay much attention to the diagnosis of the illnesses mentioned in the Gospels and elsewhere, and the technical discussions that occasionally appear in medical and other journals are not easy to access. Medicine, Miracle, and Myth in the New Testament is an attempt to bridge these gaps for the general reader as well as for students, ministers, and preachers, and even doctors, in order to provide a coherent interpretation of the New Testament data that meets the criteria of modern medical science. Most attention is paid to the narratives of healing in the Gospels and Acts, as it is important to be able to provide, as far as possible, a reasonable diagnosis of the conditions which Jesus met in his day to day ministry. The application of modern insights into these stories would suggest that Jesus acted as a prophetic folk healer in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets such as Elijah and Elisha, and this provides one important facet of his ministry. Other subjects on which medical science has an important bearing, such as the problems associated with the stories of the virginal conception of Jesus, the possible cause of his death on the cross, and the nature of Paul's thorn in the flesh, for example, are also discussed, thus providing a comprehensive and intelligible outline of medical matters in the New Testament.

In this witty and ironic novel, Melissa and Dave claim to love each other, but clash as to how the relationship should proceed. Their predicament is complicated by Beth, who brazenly asserts her own amorous intentions. Add a provocative element of mystery, and the result is a subtly subversive comedy about contemporary romance.

As the church continues to advance through the generations, The Great Commission is falling into great disarray. Discipleship has almost become obsolete. Leadership is dwindling, and most churches are trying to repair this lack of leadership in the wrong way. This book is a call for us to return to the basics of what Jesus was commanding His disciples to do through The Great Commission. It does not just explain the importance of the commission, it maps out a detailed strategy for how to make this call work in the local church. It is important to realize that few churches are doing anything to train up their leaders. This book offers an attempt to be faithful to Jesus's Great Commission. What is most important about this three-year program is that it will develop the men of the church; this will provide a large group of men from which to draw your leadership. Christ Will Build His Church gets back to the basics, takes the principles clearly outlined in Scripture, and argues that they are still valid today. The church is in great need. This book has the potential to draw us back to historic Christianity and to a discipleship that really works.

Christian faith is continually challenged by the tension between certainty and mystery. A historic faith can seem threatened by the uncomfortable x that God continues to work in a rapidly changing culture. The Bartender is a fable about the messiness and unpredictability of lives being opened up to God through relationships characterized by deep listening and looking for the ongoing work of God in the world. The parallel and sometimes intersecting paths of two men on different spiritual journeys reveal how God seems to be present in the most scandalous of human dramas. When both men take risks that threaten their own religious sensibilities, they find new ways of living out the implications of their faith.

Too often, individuals who have been called to practice their gifts and talents in the field of business and professional life sense that to serve God they ought to be doing something more directly involved with the church. Many successful business leaders, upon coming to faith in Christ or upon renewing their interest in God's Word, struggle with whether or not they should enter vocational ministry. Certainly, God calls some from among the professions into such vocations, but many simply haven't realized the full potential of where God has placed them. God's people who are assigned to duties in corporate boardrooms or offices, on sales forces, in entrepreneurial ventures, and as members of research and development teams are among his most effective servants. Believers who are active in the marketplace are surely among God's most treasured ministers and have the potential to have a wider impact and larger influence than most who serve in full-time vocational ministries. Likewise, these professionals have a capacity for great harm to the church and the cause of Christ if while they make claims of Christian belief, their actions prove inconsistent with what God's Word teaches--if their walk doesn't match their talk. Be encouraged! God wants to use you where you are. He wants to sanctify all of what you have learned and experienced. You have great potential in the kingdom!

Though None Go With Me is a series of observations and challenges as seen through the eyes of a Maine pastor on his first trip to India. Barry Blackstone taught for forty days at a Bible college in Kerala State in India. Here he shares his insights on the cross-cultural adventure that has forever changed the way he sees missions and the support of native works in other lands. This book includes flashbacks to youthful days. (Rural India takes the pastor back to his own boyhood in northern Maine.) In India Blackstone faced challenges with language and food, and even a broken tooth. Here each story Blackstone offers is a devotional that brings to light deeper spiritual meaning and insights--more than the actual experience itself. This book also tells of the impact the pastor's trip on people of his own church in Ellsworth, Maine, and of what they did to forge a link between a small church on the coast of Maine and a small church in the hills of southern India!

Description:""The Common Market is going to be the kingdom of the Antichrist!""""Jesus will return within 40 years of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948!""""The Battle of Armageddon will come when the Soviet Union invades Israel over oil!""Those newspaper mileposts passed and the Soviet Union fell. The faithful Christian has his faith shaken every time prophetic teaching based on the New York Times fails. Critics have a field day with each wrong interpretation. Then a new theory that fits the daily news better than the last one pops up. Each time, the sensational new speculation fails. Could it be that prophecy writers are listening to CNN more than to God? When a careful Christian reads a scholarly work, it can be about as interesting as reading the telephone book. Scholars do great research, but their books generally are written to other scholars, not to the rest of us. Isn't there a better choice? You're holding it. A Primer on the Book of Daniel is designed for you. It's written in your language, not the almost-foreign jargon of the scholar. At the same time, it's drawn from the work of scholars who have studied the Bible carefully for years. Their work has been assembled and translated so you can understand what the Bible says when it's allowed to interpret itself. Using plain language, Daniel gets to explain himself. About the Contributor(s):Ted Noel is director of adult Bible studies at Sabbath Grace Fellowship in Apopka, Florida. He is the author of I Want to Be Left Behind (2002).

Long before Moses wrote Genesis, the world's first astronomers invented star signs to illustrate a prophecy: a God-man would come to repair the breach between us and the Creator. Those starry figures were pirated, however, and used to advance a false religion which spread all over the world. Faithful men from Noah to the magi of the Christ child stood against that error, yet the true star signs all but vanished for millennia.Adam's Astronomy lays out the original signs, introduces the linguist who recovered them, and explains how she did it. The last chapter describes many deep sky objects whose traits--revealed by modern telescopes--illustrate the ancient message of the constellations in which they are found.

Essence of the Psalms preserves the spirit of the biblical text while recasting it in a modern idiom. The poetic styles in this work are based on those found in the sacred text. Retained are the messages of petition, praise, thanksgiving, musings, anxiety, awe, confrontation and remorse, smoldering embers of anguish, and, especially, blessings. They are filtered, moreover, through a lens ground with both the bleakness and brightness of human history. The messages point to faith in and hope for a better world by taking the Virtuous Path of God, a Path Ringed with Garlands of Goodness. There is much mystery in the biblical text. Because the rules and rhythms of the human condition are ever changing, each time one revisits the text some mystery is unraveled, new meanings are unlocked, and enlightenment unfolds. A better understanding of the storms and calms of life springs forth. Extracting the marrow of the sacred text, Essence of the Psalms is a living testimony of its vitality and relevance.

The sacred Scriptures, stylized in poetryAfter thorough readings through the Bible and study of biblical languages, The Haiku Bible started as an effort to make better sense of the complex and nuanced anthology. While rich in content and layered with meaning, the overarching themes of Scripture can be easily lost in the chasm of time and context that separate us from the original authors.Reflecting the styles and genres of the different books, The Haiku Bible weaves fresh insight into the ancient writings, while finding the threads that tie together the tapestry of Scripture.

This book argues that a primary purpose of theological discourses is to construct piety or spirituality. If this is the case, theologians need to constantly inquire into the kind of piety or spirituality which their work may construct. Drawing from some important moments in the development of Christian theology, such as the development of the Christian doctrine of God in the early church, the role of material things in the Christianity of medieval Europe, some elements of contemporary postliberal theology, and the theology of inculturation in Africa, the book argues that theological discourses that appear to be orthodox and innocuous may actually construct forms of piety that may diminish human flourishing. The book therefore calls for an ethics of theology intended to ensure that the theologies we construct help in developing a piety that is conducive to human flourishing in the modern world, especially for Africans, who have suffered and continue to suffer unspeakable dehumanization. The book proposes that a theology that may contribute to the flourishing of Africans in the modern world is one that constructs an interdisciplinary spirituality that takes both the spiritual and the scientific seriously.

This book contains two stories, but the first one is nested in the second one. The first part is Bruno Corduan's short autobiography, which begins with him as a boy in a family of rather limited means growing up in Germany during the Nazi era. Having come to trust Christ at an early age and carrying no illusions about the Nazis or their opposition to biblical Christianity and those who practiced it, one might wonder with what anxieties and uncertainties this boy must be struggling, particularly as he gets old enough to be compelled into military service. The surprising answer is ""none"" because he knows himself to be guided by God, who will protect him physically as well as spiritually. This unreserved trust becomes palpable in a number of instances that are worthy of being deemed miracles. As Bruno continues his life into adulthood in the new Germany, he never ceases to experience the guidance of God. Having grown up in poverty, we find him decades later as a diplomat for the German government and for NATO, negotiating multimillion dollar contracts, having achieved greater success than anyone could have predicted. Still Bruno never lost sight of who really was in charge of his life. Thus, simultaneous with his official duties, we always find him actively engaged in promoting the work of the Lord. He poured his life into this calling as much as into his professional vocation, serving as pastor, teacher, leader, and even church founder.And thus, we come to the second story. This one is much larger, cosmic in size, and Bruno sees his life as just one small instance thereof. In fact, when he finally consented to write out the story of his life at age eighty-two, he would only do so if he could also include this much larger story, namely the history of how God reached down to earth to establish a relationship with human beings through the life and death of his Son. What is it that makes it possible for someone to lead a life such as Bruno's? It is not human energy. What he insists on throughout his exposition is that neither is it piety or religiosity. It is the work of God who will awaken all people who believe in him from spiritual death and give them a life in which he will demonstrate that he is, indeed, the gracious and sovereign Lord of the universe. In short, the first part of this book is Bruno Corduan's autobiography. The second part is his exposition of the gospel and of Christianity, in which he is always reminding us that our salvation and walk with God are the consequences of God's gracious work, and not of our own religious efforts.

How do we live distinctively in communities embedded in the world around us? The Not-Very-Persecuted Church provides church leaders, pastors, and Christians interested in community development with principles for evaluating culture in light of mission. Since we are called to live in community, the processes that build group identity can help us understand how to live together well. Paul addressed some of the problems that can occur in not-very-persecuted groups in the first four chapters of 1 Corinthians, and he shows us the way suffering forms identity in that context. With discussion questions and stories from personal interviews, this book offers both fascinating glimpses into the world of the first century and practical applications for Christians today.

Having grown up in the shadow of the Bomb and having provided supportive care to post-Cold War generations of children and their parents (both in crisis), I have seen a lot of distrust and instability in people--individually and in communities. I have seen how the shadow of impending doom can rewrite a way that people live. This distrust and instability is not a personal issue. It is a sign and symptom of having lived in a time when the imagination can harbor not simply notions of tribal decay and destruction, but the decay and destruction of all tribes, in all places, and throughout all future time. We can wipe out everything that exists within the realm of our planet--in an instant. This changes who people are. This changes how people grow and develop. The current earth crisis is large. It looms overhead and in our homes. It is more visible and prevalent than the crisis of the Bomb. Everything we pick up and discard is a reminder that we have a problem. In many ways this crisis is more severe than the Bomb. In this crisis everyone has a button they can push to bring destruction. We have more madmen to worry about. Everyone. Everyone has an impact on global ecologic and climate issues.Here are poets' songs on the beauty of the earth, lest we forget.

God is already at work in your life--whether or not you recognize it. Most people are too busy to see or hear God and most Christians lack the intentional practice of listening to the stories of outsiders. In Echoing the Story, Brady Bryce provides a simple way for people to come together and tell the scattered stories of their lives in order to imagine them as part of a bigger story. His innovative, narrative approach invites curious skeptics, casual followers of God, and committed disciples of Jesus into community through listening to shared stories.If you are interested in exploring the entire story of the Bible, if you wonder how its stories fit together, or if you simply want to experience God in the ordinariness of your life, then this reliable guide can lead you in listening to the echoes of God. Part spiritual formation, part discipleship, part journey through the Bible--this guidebook is an experience in hearing the word of God in life. You can learn the skill of echoing the story through listening in this informative, experiential, and missional process. As participants in the story we can begin to imagine our everyday lives as stories oriented toward God.

'In the beginning God created The Country Church' has been written during the busy days of active growth of The Country Church in Marion, Texas. Several well known leaders in church growth requested that the history and events of The Country Church be recorded.Pastor Butch Ikels has attempted to carry this out with a three fold purpose. First and foremost, to exalt The Lovely Lord Jesus who made it all possible. Second, to inspire church planters in rural areas to trust the Lord and dare to minister outside the box. Thirdly, to encourage and edify those who serve in remote or ill-defined areas. Prayerfully, that through the pages of this book, they might see the miracle of I Corinthians 1:18-31 lived out in a congregation.