"The local church is to minister to persons in the community where the church is located, to provide appropriate training and nurture to all, to cooperate in ministry with other local churches, to defend God's creation and live as an ecologically responsible community, and to participate in the worldwide mission of the church." — Book of Discipline 2012 ¶202 The twenty-six Guidelines for Leading Your Congregation 2017-2020, one for each ministry area, cover church leadership areas, as well as areas focused on nurture, outreach, and witness. The booklets are tools that get new lay leaders off to a good start and as a reference resource for all lay leaders. Each booklet includes the basic "job description" for the leader as well as practical "how-to" information important to implementing ministry effectively. Brief and to the point making it a perfect resource for the busy, but spirit-led leader. eBook Edition allows you download a digital file of all 26 Guidelines to your eReader for personal use. Include Guidelines included in Sets and sold separately are: Adult Ministries Advocates for Inclusiveness Children's Ministries Christian Education Church Council Church Historian Church & Society Communications Evangelism Family Ministries Finance Higher Education & Campus Ministry Lay Leader/Lay Member Men's Ministries Ministries With Young People Mission Nominations & Leadership Development Pastor Pastor-Parish Relations Scouting & Civil Youth-Serving Ministry Small Group Ministries Small Membership Church Stewardship Trustees Women's Ministries Worship

In this book, Marva Dawn insists that churches need to engage in a serious process of community discernment concerning worship in order to employ the best tools and forms, and she offers reflections to further the discussion. Each part of A Royal "Waste" of Time begins with a sample Scripture-based sermon since Dawn emphasizes that the church's worship must follow biblical guidelines and form a biblical people.--From publisher's description.

The new version of Job Descriptions differs from previous editions, including format and design changes. Each job description includes this information: Result Expected Spiritual Gifts and Qualifications Helpful for This Position Responsibilities Support to Expect from the Congregation Getting Started People and Agencies That Can Help Resources for Help In addition to individual positions within congregational life, the book explores biblical roots and dimensions of leader development. It includes new thinking based on field research and training leaders in a variety of settings. Purchasers receive permission to reproduce individual job description pages for use in church workshops

In 1925, earthquakes and a rising sea level left Lower Manhattan submerged under more than thirty feet of water, so that its residents began to call it the Drowning City. Those unwilling to abandon their homes created a new life on streets turned to canals and in buildings whose first three stories were underwater. Fifty years have passed since then, and the Drowning City is full of scavengers and water rats, poor people trying to eke out an existence, and those too proud or stubborn to be defeated by circumstance. Among them are fourteen-year-old Molly McHugh and her friend and employer, Felix Orlov. Once upon a time Orlov the Conjuror was a celebrated stage magician, but now he is an old man, a psychic medium, contacting the spirits of the departed for the grieving loved ones left behind. When a seance goes horribly wrong, Felix Orlov is abducted by strange men wearing gas masks and rubber suits, and Molly soon finds herself on the run. Her flight will lead her into the company of a mysterious man, and his stalwart sidekick, Joe Golem, whose own past is a mystery to him, but who walks his own dreams as a man of stone and clay, brought to life for the sole purpose of hunting witches.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE The “devastatingly moving” (People) first novel from the author of Tenth of December: a moving and original father-son story featuring none other than Abraham Lincoln, as well as an unforgettable cast of supporting characters, living and dead, historical and invented One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years • One of Paste’s Best Novels of the Decade Named One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, USA Today, and Maureen Corrigan, NPR • One of Time’s Ten Best Novels of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book • One of O: The Oprah Magazine’s Best Books of the Year February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy’s body. From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul. Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction’s ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end? “A luminous feat of generosity and humanism.”—Colson Whitehead, The New York Times Book Review “A masterpiece.”—Zadie Smith

"Funeral service is facing many challenges and discovering that it must change or become obsolete. Let Doug discuss each of the challenges of your profession and offer solutions that can transform your firm."--Back cover.

In this witty novel of ideas, an intellectual and sensual adventure of the rarest kind unfolds amid a picturesque Mediterranean island. Generations of readers have delighted in the tale of an English clergyman's visit to a "rambling and craggy sort of place," where whitewashed houses perch on sheer rock cliffs above a gleaming sea. But underneath its tranquil surface, the island seethes with volcanic activity. And behind the aristocratic discourse on life and love lies a tangle of nefarious activities, from art forgery to murder. A memorable cast of characters includes the genteel visiting bishop as well as an elderly diplomat, a devilish magistrate, a malevolent barkeeper, and a host of other expatriates, freethinkers, eccentrics, zealots, and ne'er-do-wells. Their interactions generate a volatile mixture of notions that prove as unsettling as the sirocco, the hot, damp wind from the south. Combining elegant prose with glittering epigrams, mordant satire, and memorable characterization, this story offers thought-provoking entertainment.

Welcome to the stunning conclusion of the award-winning and best-selling MARCH trilogy. Congressman John Lewis, an American icon and one of the key figures of the civil rights movement, joins co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell to bring the lessons of history to vivid life for a new generation, urgently relevant for today's world. By the fall of 1963, the Civil Rights Movement has penetrated deep into the American consciousness, and as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, John Lewis is guiding the tip of the spear. Through relentless direct action, SNCC continues to force the nation to confront its own blatant injustice, but for every step forward, the danger grows more intense: Jim Crow strikes back through legal tricks, intimidation, violence, and death. The only hope for lasting change is to give voice to the millions of Americans silenced by voter suppression: "One Man, One Vote." To carry out their nonviolent revolution, Lewis and an army of young activists launch a series of innovative campaigns, including the Freedom Vote, Mississippi Freedom Summer, and an all-out battle for the soul of the Democratic Party waged live on national television. With these new struggles come new allies, new opponents, and an unpredictable new president who might be both at once. But fractures within the movement are deepening ... even as 25-year-old John Lewis prepares to risk everything in a historic showdown high above the Alabama river, in a town called Selma. Winner of the 2016 National Book Award for Young People's Literature #1 New York Times Bestseller 2017 Coretta Scott King Author Award Winner 2017 Michael L. Printz Award Winner 2017 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal Winner 2017 YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction - Winner 2017 Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children's Literature - Winner 2017 Flora Stieglitz Straus Award Winner 2017 LA Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature - Finalist