When the screams of innocents dying engulf you, how do you hear God's voice? Will God and God's people call you to life when your breath is being strangled out of you? For people of color living each day surrounded by violence, for whom survival is not a given, vocational discernment is more than "finding your purpose" - it's a matter of life and death. Patrick Reyes shares his story of how the community around him - his grandmother, robed clergy, educators, friends, and neighbors - saved him from gang life, abuse, and the economic and racial oppression that threatened to kill him before he ever reached adulthood. A story balancing the tension between pain and healing, Nobody Cries When We Die takes you to the places that make American society flinch, redefines what you are called to do with your life, and gives you strength to save lives and lead in your own community. Part of the FTE (Forum for Theological Exploration) Series

Practical theology emerged as a discipline steeped in white supremacy, traces of which can be found in some of its most central practices and habits of mind. Identifying the remnants of this legacy allows practical theologians to begin to imagine how to proceed without reinscribing narratives of white saviors, unlimited progress, dominating control of bodies, and individual heroic leadership. You are invited to question this worldview while learning from scholars imagining a decolonized future.

What does it mean to pursue a calling? According to Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, it may mean ambiguity, uncertainty, and even suffering--but that's what makes it worthwhile. Drawing on over thirty years of research and concrete examples from history, fiction, and her own experience, she delves into the inherent complexities around the pursuit of a calling and the lie that meaning in life is as simple as following your bliss. Instead, the path to meaning is rocky and uncertain--and that is exactly what makes it worth following.

Another Way describes a new way of leadership for the 21st Century, one that inspires people to delve deeply into their own selves and that creates a mysterious relatedness among strangers. When this leadership happens, we remember people are created to experience community, to find joy in one another, and to create a better world out of a deep reservoir where the soul resides. Written by the leaders of the Forum for Theological Exploration, the internationally recognized leadership incubator for emerging Christian leaders, Another Way will shape the way you look at yourself, your leadership, and the communities that hold you accountable to making the world a better place.

When the screams of innocents dying engulf you, how do you hear God's voice? Will God and God's people call you to life when your breath is being strangled out of you? For people of color living each day surrounded by violence, for whom survival is not a given, vocational discernment is more than "finding your purpose" - it's a matter of life and death. Patrick Reyes shares his story of how the community around him - his grandmother, robed clergy, educators, friends, and neighbors - saved him from gang life, abuse, and the economic and racial oppression that threatened to kill him before he ever reached adulthood. A story balancing the tension between pain and healing, Nobody Cries When We Die takes you to the places that make American society flinch, redefines what you are called to do with your life, and gives you strength to save lives and lead in your own community. Part of the FTE (Forum for Theological Exploration) Series

Curtis Mozie, known on the streets as C-Webb is without a doubt a leader in Washington DC. He spends every waking moment trying to prevent gangs and gun violence on the streets of DC. With the creation of Tale of the Tape Foundation, Curtis produces films that document the lives and death of 65 of his friends murdered by gun violence. He has been a catalyst for positive change for over twenty years, earning the trust of both police officers and gang members having been a police officer himself, its incredible that gangs have allowed him to intimately explore their violent and brutal world. His video camera captures their day-to-day lives playing basketball and also their candidness in interviews at his apartment, which is known as the Safe House, a place where at risk youth come to be mentored on life skills, and to have someone hear their problems and concerns. When one of them gets killed or injured in gang violence, Curtis is there to mourn the lost with family members. He then creates a montage of their lives and deaths in a video tribute-lessons learned. Curtis without a doubt is a unique individual a community hero for DC Mothers, and Fathers. Hes appeared on numerous news media outlets across the world. His message is an unfaltering dedication and commitment to making the streets of DC safer for everyone. He now works at the Kennedy Recreation Center for the Department of Parks & Recreation working with youth and serving the community.

Theological education is for whole communities, not just individuals. Urban ministry reaches across the city’s socioeconomic, ethnic, generational, and faith boundaries. All should be able to gather at the table and find God’s peace. How can theological education in the city further this goal? Maria Liu Wong addresses this question through the lens of her experience as a British-Chinese immigrant to Long Island, a missionary kid, a wife and mother, and the provost of City Seminary of New York. Using autoethnographic methodology, Liu Wong presents anecdotes and images from her life, with which she thinks broadly about how theological education functions in the city, both formally and informally. What she finds is that theological education is less about individuals accruing knowledge and more about communities growing in wisdom together—as a family, as friends, as colleagues, as coleaders. In these pages, seminary and university professors will find ways to learn with and from not just individual students, but the communities they comprise. Pastors and ministry leaders will find inspiration and encouragement in the ways our lives form our faith and future in the city.

Ask the gangsta rap devotee. Ask the grizzled blues fanatic and the bearded folk fan. Ask the goth and the indie kid. Ask and they will all tell you the same thing: death and popular music have forever danced hand-in-hand in funereal waltz time. The pop charts and the majority of radio stations' playlists may conspire to convince anyone listening that the world spins on its axis to the tune of "I love you, you love me" and traditional matters of the heart. The rest of us know that we live in a world where red roses will one day become lilies and that death is the motor that drives the greatest and most exhilarating music of all. "Death music" is not merely a byword for bookish solemnity, or the glorification of murder, drugs and guns. Over the course of the last hundred years it has also been about teenage girls weeping over their high school boyfriend's fatal car wreck; natural disasters sweeping whole communities away; the ever-evolving threat of disease; changing attitudes to old age; exhortations to suicide; the perfect playlist for a funeral; and the thorny question of what happens after the fat lady ceases to sing. Which means that for every "Black Angel's Death Song" there is a "Candle in the Wind," and for every "Cop Killer" there is "The Living Years." Death, like music, is a unifying force. There is something for every taste and inclination, from murderous vengeance to camp sentimentality and everything in between. Drawing upon original and unique interviews with artists such as Mick Jagger, Richard Thompson, Ice-T, Will Oldham and Neil Finn among many others, I Shot a Man In Reno explores how popular music deals with death, and how it documents the changing reality of what death means as one grows older. It's as transfixing as a train wreck, and you won't be able to put it down. as an epilogue, I Shot A Man In Reno presents the reader with the 40 greatest death songs of all time, complete with a brief rationale for each, acting as a primer for the morbidly curious listener.

Is the concept of calling universal? God calls all people, yes—but calling is not a monolithic concept. This path-breaking book helps Christians in the United States see how social location shapes assumptions and experiences with vocation, critically examining the cultural priorities of vocation that emphasize certainty, career paths, and personal achievement.