"Provides a vision for a broader, more hospitable Christianity."–Publishers Weekly. The co-host of the popular podcast, Drunk Ex-Pastors, offers an earnest and irreverent look at what it means to be a Christian in an upside down world. “Perhaps failing at faith is an ironic success, since disaster is where grace happens.” – Jason Stellman Jason Stellman has always felt like a misfit. A Protestant pastor with a sharp wit, a restlessly inquisitive mind, and a love of pop culture and rock and roll, he has long sensed that something was missing when it came to his relationship with God. In time, he felt drawn to the Catholic Church, so he stepped down from his ministry and embraced Catholicism, only to still feel misplaced and homeless. His feelings, thoughts, and troubles echo the disillusionment and confusion of many people who struggle relating to ancient faiths in a postmodern world. In a book that mixes memoir with theological insights and taut storytelling, Stellman gives an edgy, honest, heart-on-his-sleeve account of what it means to be a mixed-up Christian outsider in the twenty-first century (and why this is a can be good thing). Misfit Faith is an invitation to all the religious vagabonds and exiles with nowhere to really call home, those wanderers who increasingly feel like mere fans of spirituality rather than committed members of the team. If you’ve ever questioned your faith, felt like a spiritual malcontent, or sought solace for your existential angst at the bottom of a bottle of bourbon, then Stellman just may be the best drinking buddy you’ve never met.

In this compelling book, G. Lee Ramsey Jr.mines the riches of southern fiction and discovers a colorful assortment of ministers who arise out of the religious South. At once mystical and mischievous, these ministers haunt the margins of southern life while preaching a gospel that startles and compels. But their oddness is also their appeal--and part of their gift. For through these colorful portraits of Christian ministry, today's readers are challenged to think about what matters in ministry and to re-imagine ministry in ways that bring new life to the church and community. Throughout, Ramsey shows how ministers such as Roger Hagan in Will Campbell's The Conventionand Hazel Motes in Flannery O'Connor's Wise Bloodcan help show us the stumbling blocks to faithful ministry and steer clergy and congregations forward in today's world.

I decided to admit once and for all that I didn’t know what I was doing, what I thought, what I believed, even sometimes if I truly believed. I would tell the truth: I wasn’t like them; I didn’t fit in. I wasn’t a proper Christian. I didn’t have it all together like they did. Why not, I figured? What in the world did I have to lose? _____ After twenty years of unbelief, estranged from her childhood faith and ultimately from God, Michelle DeRusha unexpectedly found herself wrestling hard with questions of spirituality— and deeply frustrated by the lack of clear answers. Until she realized that the questions themselves paved a way for faith. “Declaring my unbelief,” writes DeRusha, “was the first step; declaring my unbelief allowed me to begin to seek authentically.” Spiritual Misfit chronicles one woman’s journey toward an understanding that belief and doubt can coexist. This poignant and startlingly candid memoir reveals how being honest about our questions, our fears, and our discomfort with black-and-white definitions of faith can move us toward an authentic and a deepening relationship with God.

In one of his best-known songs, Bruce Cockburn sings about “lovers in a dangerous time.” Well, there’s no doubt that our world is under siege and that we are living in a dangerous time. With massive crises threatening life all over our planet – economic crises, social crises, ecological crises, the list goes on and on – our faith can’t afford to ignore the reality of our diverse and fragile world. Our faith needs to move or inspire us to get our hands not just dirty, but downright bruised and bloody as we work against the tremendous forces of hatred, death, and suffering in our world. That’s what this third volume in the “Faith Forward” series is about. It’s about forming Christian “lovers” in the dangerous time in which we live. It’s about dousing the flames of hatred and suffering in our world by pouring out unconditional, sacrificial love. It’s about having rich and meaningful and difficult conversations about how we can do ministry with children, youth, and families in ways that have the power to heal the world. How can we empower children and youth to disrupt the world with God’s love? How can we empower them to overturn the tables and shatter the walls, and to pour out compassion, and justice, and love in the world? This kind of ministry isn’t easy or popular work. And it isn’t going to pack kids into our church. But it’s truly life-and-death work, and we need to do it as embodiments of God’s hope and healing. Like the other books in this series, Faith Forward Volume 3 collects the wisdom of some the leading “thinkers” and “shakers” and “movers” in the arena of ministry with children and youth, including Alaa Basatneh, Brian D. McLaren, Soong-Chan Rah, Waltrina N. Middleton, Daniel White Hodge, Lisa and Mark Scandrette, Marcia J. Bunge, Leslie Neugent, Ivy Beckwith, Eboo Patel, Almeda M. Wright, and Amy K. Butler.

This book throws new light on the issue of the dramatist's religious orientation by dismissing sectarian and one-sided theories, tackling the problem from the angle of the variegated Elizabethan context recently uncovered by modern historians and theatre scholars. It is argued that faith was a quest rather than a quiet certainty for the playwright.

'Each section of this book takes a major religious thinker and asks how he or she points us in the direction of Christian faith. My hope is to capture their vision in today's language and in a non-academic way. In most chapters I create an imaginary monologue: what would this "giant" say to us today? Here I try to speak to many honest friends who tell me that God is not so much incredible as unreal-simply off their map.' In Faith Maps an imaginative theologian, with a feeling for today's spiritual sensibility, 'translates' the voices of leading thinkers into a series of reflections on faith in contemporary culture. The result is an introduction to theology for students and general readers, as well as an attactive set of variations on themes familiar to specialists. Book jacket.

An examination of how the films we see and the books we read affect our faith and our view of the world. With the Apostles' Creed as his foundation, author May interprets popular works such as The Grapes of Wrath, Cool Hand Luke, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Saving Private Ryan through the lens of religious faith.

Virtues are in, but the work of Bill Bennett and others says little about specifically Christian virtues. Jonathan Wilson now recounts the recent rise of virtue ethics and provides a compelling Christian account and justification of them. Wilson engages such key figures as Alasdair MacIntyre and Stanley Hauerwas. Focusing especially on the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, he not only sets forth a closely reasoned intellectual argument but suggests how an embrace of virtue ethics might change the nitty-gritty practice of the church's education, worship, and hospitality. Accessible, informed, and faithful, 'Gospel Virtues' is important reading for all who care about issues of character and community.

From a world-renowned painter, an exploration of creativity’s quintessential—and often overlooked—role in the spiritual life “Makoto Fujimura’s art and writings have been a true inspiration to me. In this luminous book, he addresses the question of art and faith and their reconciliation with a quiet and moving eloquence.”—Martin Scorsese “[An] elegant treatise . . . Fujimura’s sensitive, evocative theology will appeal to believers interested in the role religion can play in the creation of art.”—Publishers Weekly Conceived over thirty years of painting and creating in his studio, this book is Makoto Fujimura’s broad and deep exploration of creativity and the spiritual aspects of “making.” What he does in the studio is theological work as much as it is aesthetic work. In between pouring precious, pulverized minerals onto handmade paper to create the prismatic, refractive surfaces of his art, he comes into the quiet space in the studio, in a discipline of awareness, waiting, prayer, and praise. Ranging from the Bible to T. S. Eliot, and from Mark Rothko to Japanese Kintsugi technique, he shows how unless we are making something, we cannot know the depth of God’s being and God’s grace permeating our lives. This poignant and beautiful book offers the perspective of, in Christian Wiman’s words, “an accidental theologian,” one who comes to spiritual questions always through the prism of art.

In this book Ralph Wood calls for churches to offer a sustained an unapologetically Christian witness to a postmodern world. Wood carefully chronicles how the church is watching the complete destruction of post-Christian institutions and practices that once shaped human character toward fulfillment in goods larger than humanity's own self-interest - the chief of these being the worship and service of God. Wood contends that Christian existence can never be taken for granted, and so the church itself must seek to create a Christian culture that offers the world a drastic alternative to its own cultureless existence.