Sixty-two percent of food pantries and meal programs in the United States are faith-based. Most of these ministries are transactional; people needing food interact with church volunteers to earn access to direct service. Elizabeth Magill advocates relational ministry as a better model for food ministry. People donating food or money eat with the people who need food and get to know them as they serve alongside them. Those needing food share all aspects of the ministry, including planning, setting up, leading, serving, and cleaning. As volunteers become better acquainted with those they serve, they can form deep, meaningful relationships, creating a new way to be the church. Five Loaves, Two Fish, Twelve Volunteers tells the stories of eight churches that share food ministry with people who need their services. Full of practical advice, this book emphasizes that building relationships and offering radical welcome is more important work for churches than efficiency or order. It helps congregations evaluate their outreach and advises them on how to do it differently.

The NIV is the world's best-selling modern translation, with over 150 million copies in print since its first full publication in 1978. This highly accurate and smooth-reading version of the Bible in modern English has the largest library of printed and electronic support material of any modern translation.

Maybe you've been wrestling with feelings of inadequacy over what you have to offer God. Eleanor Powell is credited with saying, "What we are is God's gift to us. What we become is our gift to God." But for many of us, our gift to God doesn't feel like much. That's why I love the story of Jesus miraculously feeding five thousand men, plus whatever family members were with them, with five loaves and two fish.If we think this story is just about food we are missing something really essential to how God longs to relate with us, His children.I seriously doubt the little boy in this story set out to be part of a miracle that day. We can bet that he didn't wake up that morning expecting Jesus to be able to take his small lunch and feed an entire city. If the boy had held back his lunch because he thought it wouldn't be sufficient enough to make a difference, it would've remained little. But that boy became part of an epic story on a day when Jesus took his small lunch and used it to show forth God's limitless Kingdom and infinite supply. Jesus uses inadequate people with limited resources to show forth His power, His provision, and His adequacy.This story found in all four gospels boldly underscores that great things can happen when our inadequacy meets Christ's sufficiency. I believe the Lord performed the miracle in this way to teach the disciples that His method for meeting the needs of a lost world is through people-utterly, seemingly insignificant, small people, I might add. That's what this short book is all about.Are you feeling a little inadequate today? Remember, God can perform miracles in ways that are infinitely beyond our capacity for understanding, yet the God of this universe wants us to know that our little means so much to him. Whatever your seemingly insignificant five loaves and two fish may be, in the hands of God, they are a miracle waiting to happen. Your little can never remain little in the hands of a big God.

In 1975, Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan was arrested by the Communist government of Vietnam and imprisoned for thirteen years, nine of them in solitary confinement, and then finally exiled from Vietnam in 1991. Always reticent about speaking of himself, Cardinal Nguyen slowly began to realise that his prison experience of suffering and hope could help others in their journey of faith. The reflections he prepared for the 1997 World Youth Day in Paris became the framework for Five Loaves and Two Fish; the content is his personal Magnificat for the wonders God had worked in and through the small offering of his life - like the fish and loaves in the Gospel, which fed thousands.

A retelling of the Bible story in which Jesus fed five thousand with five loaves of bread and two fish.

Teach Little Ones a Big Lesson About Trusting God The boy with the loaves and fishes is a popular Sunday School story, teaching kids about generosity. But the lesson shouldn't end there. In this colorful picture book, bestselling author Anthony DeStefano and award-winning illustrator Richard Cowdrey bring this miraculous tale to life and share a larger message with children of all ages. When kids, or their parents or grandparents, trust God with all they have, He can turn those seemingly small contributions into huge accomplishments to the glory of His kingdom. In the retelling of this boy's life-changing encounter with Jesus, kids will learn they can achieve amazing things when they believe in God. In addition, they will discover when they feel worried or anxious about doing difficult tasks, the Lord is there to help them when they ask. God loves all His children, young and old, and still works miracles every day!

Clergy are trained to preach, teach, and lead a congregation in spiritual matters. However, there is very little training for clergy when it comes to the “business” matters of the church-finances, debt reduction, fundraising, and building maintenance. The added and sometimes unexpected load for clergy can become cumbersome and extremely stressful. In addition, the decline of the church and the passing of key funders of churches leave many pastors with dying churches and few resources to do anything about it. Author Rosario Picardo has been in this very position. As a pastor, Picardo launched a church in a movie theater with no people and very little financial support. He also revitalized a dying congregation in a deteriorating physical structure. Through trials and failures, innovation and entrepreneurial thinking, God provided, and Picardo learned new ways for reaching the least and lost, and for growing disciples. In Funding Ministry with Five Loaves and Two Fish, Picardo shares the lessons he’s learned with confidence that other leaders can do the same. He demonstrates how, step by faithful step.

In this groundbreaking book, Dennis R. MacDonald offers an entirely new view of the New Testament gospel of Mark. The author of the earliest gospel was not writing history, nor was he merely recording tradition, MacDonald argues. Close reading and careful analysis show that Mark borrowed extensively from the Odyssey and the Iliad and that he wanted his readers to recognise the Homeric antecedents in Mark's story of Jesus. Mark was composing a prose anti-epic, MacDonald says, presenting Jesus as a suffering hero modeled after but far superior to traditional Greek heroes. Much like Odysseus, Mark's Jesus sails the seas with uncomprehending companions, encounters preternatural opponents, and suffers many things before confronting rivals who have made his house a den of thieves. In his death and burial, Jesus emulates Hector, although unlike Hector Jesus leaves his tomb empty. Mark's minor characters, too, recall Homeric predecessors: Bartimaeus emulates Tiresias; Joseph of Arimathea, Priam; and the women at the tomb, Helen, Hecuba, and Andromache. And, entire episodes in Mark mirror Homeric episodes, including stilling the sea, walking on water, feeding the multitudes, the Triumphal E

Jesus: His Story in Stone is a reflection on still-existing stone objects that Jesus would have known, seen, or even touched. Each of the seventy short chapters is accompanied by a photograph taken on location in Israel. Arranged chronologically, the one-page meditations compose a portrait of Christ as seen through the significant stones in His life, from the cave where He was born to the rock of Calvary. While packed with historical and archaeological detail, the book’s main thrust is devotional, leading the reader both spiritually and physically closer to Jesus.