The Experience the Life Bible study series helps you let your life reflect Jesus' perfect love.

Many teens are active in church youth programs, yet drop out of church later in life and never return. Other young adults rest on the merits of their parents' faith without ever experiencing their own relationship with Jesus Christ. In this book, the authors seek to help teenagers who have grown up in Christian homes by reminding them of the blessings of growing up in a Christian home, warning them of some of the dangers they face, providing practical suggestions for avoiding these dangers, and urging them to think and live in a way that pleases God.

Illustrates the hidden challenges embedded within the evangelical adoption movement. For over a decade, prominent leaders and organizations among American Evangelicals have spent a substantial amount of time and money in an effort to address what they believe to be the “Orphan Crisis” of the United States. Yet, despite an expansive commitment of resources, there is no reliable evidence that these efforts have been successful. Adoptions are declining across the board, and both foster parenting and foster-adoptions remain steady. Why have evangelical mobilization efforts been so ineffective? To answer this question, Samuel L. Perry draws on interviews with over 220 movement leaders and grassroots families, as well as national data on adoption and fostering, to show that the problem goes beyond orphan care. Perry argues that evangelical social engagement is fundamentally self-limiting and difficult to sustain because their subcultural commitments lock them into an approach that does not work on a practical level. Growing God’s Family ultimately reveals this peculiar irony within American evangelicalism by exposing how certain aspects of the evangelical subculture may stimulate activism to address social problems, even while these same subcultural characteristics undermine their own strategic effectiveness. It provides the most recent analysis of dominant elements within the evangelical subculture and how that subculture shapes the engagement strategies of evangelicals as a group.

Sheela's father Bhau Kalchuri joined Meher Baba as one of the mandali in 1953. Four years later, Baba called Sheela and her family to live in his near proximity. The Kalchuris had many opportunities to be in the Beloved's presence, and Sheela's first-person account paints a vivid, intimate portrait of life near Meher Baba, from the perspective of a child and teenager.

David Newman reflects on what it means for Christians to grow to be mature members of the body of Christ, with faith in a God who acts and themselves actively engaged in the church and the world.

The Christian life can be about thriving, not merely surviving. Discover what Christian growth actually is, and how to enjoy it. God does not want us simply to survive in our faith. He wants us to thrive, to enjoy growing as part of his family. Many of us want to grow, but don't know how to. Many of us feel stuck in a rut in our faith, or are following routines that don't seem to work. John shows us what growth actually is... why growth is hugely exciting... and how to grow into the people we long to be. You can really grow, and this book shows you how.

The process of taking care of a physical baby in the world today is by far a sacrificial, tedious, yet gratifying endeavor for any parent. To hear the first words of a baby and to watch them take their first steps is nothing short of pure ecstasy for any parent! The role we play as parents is important to help our children grow and mature into successful adults, by providing them with physical, emotional, and spiritual nourishment. Just as the physical baby needs nourishment, so does the Christian. Rev. Winston Jones explores and dissects many of the ways in which a natural baby would live, function, and survive in the world today and provides some powerful parallels for the new Christian in Christ. This book is a simplistic approach to explain the walk of the new Christian from birth to adolescence. His book is a welcome into the church and Christianity today and is inviting to all who wish to be born again through Christ.

[Wuthnow] provides a unique window into the religious psyche of ordinary Americans. --Zachary Karabell, Los Angeles Times Memories of religious experiences remain in our minds like few others. In Growing Up Religious, Robert Wuthnow-"the most informed and insightful commentator on American religion today" (Harvey Cox)-follows the lives of ordinary people to see how their childhood experiences inform both their adult sense of spirituality and their relation to issues of faith and tradition.

This book analyzes the memoirs of 42 ‘missionary kids’ – the children of North American Protestant missionaries in countries all over the world during the 20th century. Using a postcolonial lens the book explores ways in which the missionary enterprise was part of, or intersected with, the Western colonial enterprise, and ways in which a colonial mindset is unconsciously manifested in these memoirs. The book explores how the memoirists’ sites and experiences are exoticized; the missionary kids’ likelihood of learning – or not learning – local languages; the missionary families’ treatment of servants and other local people; and gender, race and social class aspects of the missionary kids’ experiences. Like other Third Culture Kids, the memoirists are migrants, travelers, border-crossers and border-dwellers who alternate between insider and outsider statuses, and their words shed light on the effects of movement and travel on children’s lives and development.