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Neil Foster is 33-year-old minor league baseball umpire who is comparing what he was taught as a child in the Lutheran Church with what he has learned as an adult, such as how to rationalize dating 18-year-old Sara Miles, who is still in high school, because they both appear to be, more or less, in their mid-20's.Jesus Christ reprises the role made popular in the New Testament and visits, with the two discussing a variety of aspects of the human experience with particular emphasis on Neil's interpretations of the Sixth Commandment's dictates on sexual purity.Satan also appears, as both a golfer and an attorney, as does Neil's old friend Brad Wyler, now one of the planet's biggest rock stars, and Major Howard K. Opdahl, like Neil a former Marine, who was blinded during his service and has his own insights into the goddamned human experience.Taking place everywhere from small town USA to gracious suites and dive diners in Las Vegas on New Year's Eve to Dodger Stadium, Swords In The Narthex is a funny, thoughtful look at the human experience.
Sermons use words. And though it may seem obvious that preachers should be careful and exacting in word choice, preachers often set aside this aspect of preaching in favor of exegesis, form, and sermonic focus, and make such language work a secondary task. In Finding Language and Imagery, Jennifer L. Lord asserts that, because language shapes faith, preachers must be disciplined to find fresh words for sermons and to make good choices about both their own words and those borrowed from others. By presenting key tools and terms, along with writing, exercises, Lord helps users develop both their understanding of language and their skills to capture the religious imagination of their listeners. Book jacket.
Apocalyptic texts are often seen as either frightening or irrelevant, a tool for fearmongering and manipulation or for the lucrative doomsday industry. But Apocalypse When?: Interpreting and Preaching Apocalyptic Texts equips readers to understand these texts as sources of encouragement and strength for the church. As the world faces threats of war, poverty, climate and environmental crises, and political upheaval, churches can draw on the wisdom and courage of our biblical ancestors who faced their own calamities and persecutions. Their struggles against powerful economic, militaristic, cultural, and social forces drew them closer to God. We have much to learn from their faith, ethical integrity, and dedication to the promises of God that engender hope in the midst of turmoil and terror. With solid historical exegesis, thought-provoking ideas for preaching, and examples of sermons that creatively and compellingly proclaim God’s word, this book provides much-needed guidance for the church in tumultuous times.
The New Interpreter’s Handbook of Preaching is a major reference tool for preaching, with articles on every facet of Christian sermon preparation and delivery. This resource is both scholarly and practical. It focuses on the most distinctive feature and greatest strength of homiletics as a discipline: It is rooted in interdisciplinary scholarship and it develops theory geared to practice. Its theory arises out of the study of both excellent preaching past and present and actual sermon preparation and composition. When theory and practice critique each other, it is possible to produce guidelines that assist greater excellence and economy in preaching the gospel. Excellence in standards is a...
The second edition of Deciding Children’s Futures addresses the thorny task of assessing parents and children who belong to struggling families where there are issues of neglect or significant harm, and when separating parents are contesting arrangements for the care of their children in the family court. This practitioner’s guide discusses how to create relationships and pose questions that breach natural parental defences to understand their histories, anxieties, and needs. Drawing on practice knowledge, theory, and research findings, it integrates the accounts of parents and children with safeguarding imperatives and government guidance, to enable informed decisions that positively im...
Hired to prosecute a routine wrongful termination lawsuit against the University of Michigan, Jake McCarthy uncovers a plot to rig the National Championship football game to be played at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. An internet gambling syndicate based in Costa Rica uses the promise of millions of dollars and the threat of physical destruction to force the all-star quarterback of the number-one ranked Michigan Wolverines to skim points and assure a favorable point spread. With the help of a seventeen-year-old Costa Rican student, a middle-aged chemistry professor and a former FBI agent, McCarthy and his co-ed client are able to preserve the honesty of the National Championship and Michigan's all-star quarterback.
In Life Online, Annette Markham adopts an ethnographic approach to understanding Internet users by immersing herself in online reality. She finds that to understand how people experience the Internet, she must learn how to be embodied there.
Population Biology of Vector-Borne Diseases is the first comprehensive survey of this rapidly developing field. The chapter topics provide an up-to-date presentation of classical concepts, reviews of emerging trends, synthesis of existing knowledge, and a prospective agenda for future research. The contributions offer authoritative and international perspectives from leading thinkers in the field. The dynamics of vector-borne diseases are far more intrinsically ecological compared with their directly transmitted equivalents. The environmental dependence of ectotherm vectors means that vector-borne pathogens are acutely sensitive to changing environmental conditions. Although perennially impo...
"Due to considerations of space and time, I can only include here a few (59) of the pioneer families of Richland County, and con- fess that many of the families chosen were either relatives or neighbors, but I have tried to give a representation of some [of] the major ethnic groups, and both large and small families"--Page 2