"Why should I invest myself in something that I'm not sure does any good?" This is a question many people today are asking about the church. Data shows young people are leaving the church, especially in urban contexts. Yet as Jon Tyson will show you in this Barna Frame, the church has much to offer cities—and individuals—in the 21st century. Whether you come with an open-mind, skeptical, or already committed to your local church, join Jon Tyson, lead pastor of Trinity Grace Church in New York City, as he makes the case for why church matters.

Caring for orphans makes grace touchable. When Christians choose to adopt, foster, mentor or support care for orphans around the world, it reveals God's true character to the world like nothing else we can do. This softcover book unpacks specific steps that you can take to care for orphans in distress. Some of these steps are “big” choices like fostering or adopting; some are smaller choices like supporting work abroad or mentoring a foster youth. But all have the impact of revealing God’s love to someone who wants to be home for good. Join Jedd Medefind, president of the Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO), as he reveals the profound sense that deep, sustaining love for orphans springs not from duty, guilt or even idealism, but foremost as a response to the way we've first been loved by God.

There is a new reality for mothers in the 21st century-it's a different world with different goals than it was even a generation ago. As little girls, today's moms didn't grow up with ONLY dolls and toy kitchens and princesses and visions of idyllic domesticity and motherhood behind a white picket fence: they were given these but also a little plastic doctor's bag and a coloring book full of potential careers to choose from. "You can be anything you want, child." It's a message of empowerment and it's beautiful. But, as many of those young girls grew up, a message that was once meant to convey opportunity has begun to feel like a pressure cooker. What once was "You can have it all" has now become "You need to have it all." You need to have the perfect job, the perfect husband, the perfect house, the perfect kids, the perfect play dates and craft nights and date nights and DIY Pinterest projects and #nofilter Instagrams. What does it mean to be a mom in a world like that? Where does vocation fit into all this? What does a holistic idea of self fit in? Many women struggle with the decision to work inside the home or outside the home. How can you maintain a sense of self and motherhood in both decisions? The reality is we can't really have it all - sometimes we will have to make choices. This Barna Frame explores the value and beauty in those constraints. Join Kate Harris, wife, mother, and the executive director of The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation, and Culture, as she unpacks the identity questions, the economic realities, and the role of the church in your life as you feel compelled to be wonder woman.

Twentysomethings today are redefining what this decade means and what making a positive contribution to society looks like. One reality is today's economy - you may find yourself a recent college graduate with no job prospects. As such, many twentysomethings are shifting away from career, to calling, looking for ways to impact the world. Or maybe for you, a career or job is what you do in order to support the more meaningful work you love, like photography, music, brewing, or traveling. Likely you have found a tribe of like-minded people who are taking the journey with you, asking yourselves big questions like what to do with life, what does it mean, why should I settle down with a spouse and house so soon? These questions have huge ramifications for all aspects of society. Twentysomethings need new ways of thinking about institutions and finding rootedness in a transient culture, while at the same time institutions need new ways of thinking about and incorporating twentysomethings. Join David H. Kim, the executive director of the Center for Faith and Work at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, as he walks through the uniqueness of this transformative decade.

Job changes. Restructures. A waning passion. Retirement. A new 'norm' for length at any job. All of these, and more, lead us to wonder about the legacy we are leaving this world. Are we leaving it better than we found it? Are we able to separate our identity from our career? Maybe you know the deep passion you recently discovered (or re-discovered), that lay dormant for 30 years. Or perhaps you don't know yet what that calling is, but you know there is more than what you are doing now. Join Bob Goff, founder of Restore International, in this Barna Frame as you explore a biblical perspective on the legacy you are leaving, even as you face a career transition.

This book examines the role music has played in the formation of the political and national identity of the Bahamas. Timothy Rommen analyzes Bahamian musical life as it has been influenced and shaped by the islands’ location between the United States and the rest of the Caribbean; tourism; and Bahamian colonial and postcolonial history. Focusing on popular music in the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, in particular rake-n-scrape and Junkanoo, Rommen finds a Bahamian music that has remained culturally rooted in the local even as it has undergone major transformations. Highlighting the ways entertainers have represented themselves to Bahamians and to tourists, Funky Nassau illustrates the shifting terrain that musicians navigated during the rapid growth of tourism and in the aftermath of independence.

Remember when all you needed was a cool business card for cocktail parties? Now social status is determined in a hundred ways that all come with their own pressures-how many Twitter followers do you have? How many facebook page likes? How much traffic does your site get? Are you speaking? Traveling? How full is your inbox? While pressure has always been there, in many ways that pressure is more public than ever. The world is both bigger and smaller today. With access to so much media and so quickly, we know everything that's going on in the world. We are bombarded with possibilities and opportunities. It seems like we have limitless choices. It's easy to feel like your life is small, that you aren't doing enough, that other lives, careers, and even cities are more exciting than yours. The challenge today is, with limitless public pressure on how your life measures up against everyone else's, how do you find contentment in this context? Join Claire Diaz-Ortiz, an author, speaker, and Twitter employee, in this Barna Frame as she explores this timely issue.

There are lots of questions we must ask ourselves when we talk about violence, and our role in perpetuating it or in creating peace. Why are we, as Christians, more comfortable with violence in our movies than sex? What does it mean that Jesus called us to love our enemies? How can we, in our churches, cultivate a peace that might reshape society? Do we create it by constantly protesting violence? By preaching? By rethinking our foreign policy? By somehow making peace cool? Join Tyler Wigg-Stevenson and Carol Howard Merritt as they tackle these tough questions and others in this Barna Frame. Violence is a tough, timely topic, and one that we, as the Church, have the chance to transform.

An invaluable compendium for anyone interested in cinema

The frames of classical art are often seen as marginal to the images that they surround. Traditional art history has tended to view framing devices as supplementary 'ornaments'. Likewise, classical archaeologists have often treated them as tools for taxonomic analysis. This book not only argues for the integral role of framing within Graeco-Roman art, but also explores the relationship between the frames of classical antiquity and those of more modern art and aesthetics. Contributors combine close formal analysis with more theoretical approaches: chapters examine framing devices across multiple media (including vase and fresco painting, relief and free-standing sculpture, mosaics, manuscripts and inscriptions), structuring analysis around the themes of 'framing pictorial space', 'framing bodies', 'framing the sacred' and 'framing texts'. The result is a new cultural history of framing - one that probes the sophisticated and playful ways in which frames could support, delimit, shape and even interrogate the images contained within.