Is your prayer life as exciting as a funeral service? If given the choice between praying and a root canal, would you choose the latter? If asked what part of prayer you enjoy the most, would you reply, "When it's finished?" Seeing God in Strange Places offers a mixture of humorous and sobering stories that help lead the reader toward intimacy with the Creator. The book answers the age-old question, how does one become conscious of God's presence in the daily grind of life? A stagnant prayer life can evolve into a stirring and enriching experience, where the awareness of God's presence brings about hope to whatever you face. Max W. Jackson attended Ohio State University, and completed the course of study at Garret Theological Seminary in Chicago. His ministry began in 1984 as a part-time local pastor before he was ordained as Deacon in the United Methodist church. He presently is serving three churches in Ohio. The Jacksons have two children, a son and daughter, and four grandchildren.

Don't betray! Cover someone today! "The Leader Who Covers" is another spiritually-riveting and incisive book in which Apostle Winston Baker explains how God wants his leaders to operate. From a biblical perspective, Apostle Baker compares persons who covered the anointing with those who did not and underscores the blessings that comes with honouring the anointing - the way God intends it. Spiritually-Riveting, Inspiring, Motivating, Evocative, Powerful, Engaging, Captivating, Addictive Read, Enthralling, Insightful.

I am passionate about "marketplace ministry." I abandoned legalism and the laziness, comfort and apathy associated with being a Christian. For many years I "sat" on the gifts and talents afforded me by the grace of God. I was frustrated and irritated. I was bored with the regiment of Sunday mornings. I was invisible. I wanted more. I needed more. I asked God to set me free and He did it! I was given the gift of Mandate Ministries in 2008 and it is obvious to me that God spoke the same breath of life into other men who was tiring of "church" and longing for the Kingdom but didn't exactly know how to get there! We weren't invisible to man, we were invisible to God!

The metaphor of performance has been applied fruitfully by anthropologists and other social theorists to different aspects of human social existence, and furnishes a potentially helpful model in terms of which to think theologically about Christian life. After an introductory editorial chapter reflecting on the nature of artistic performance and its relationship to the notions of tradition and identity, Part One of this book attends specifically to the phenomenon of dramatic performance and possible theological applications of it. Part Two considers various aspects of the performance of Christian identity, looking at worship, the interpretation of the Bible, Christian response to elements in the contemporary media, the shape of Christian moral life, and ending with a theological reflection on the shape of personal identity, correlating it with the theatrical metaphors of 'character' and 'performing a part' in a scripted drama. Part Three demonstrates how art forms (including some technically non-performative ones - literature, poetry, painting) may constitute faithful Christian practices in which the tradition is authentically 'performed', producing works which break open its meaning in profound new ways for a constantly shifting context.

"Selected essays by Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, on themes of women in the church, spirituality, and the Benedictine vision"--

Transfiguration explores the work of John Ruskin, Robert Browning, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Walter Pater, treating in particular the ways in which they engaged with the Christian content of their subject, and, in Pater's case, how the art of Christianity was contrasted with classical sculpture. Stephen Cheeke examines two related phenomena: idolatry (a false substitution, a sexual betrayal), and the poetics of transfiguration (to elevate or glorify subject matter not thought of as conventionally poetic, to praise). Central to the book is the question of the "translation" of religion into art and aesthetics, a process which supposedly undergirds the advent of the museum age and makes possible the idea of a 'religion of art' as a phenomenon of late century Aestheticism. Such a phenomenon is prepared for, however, through the engagement with Christian painting and classical sculpture in the work of these four writers. All four thought carefully about the ways in which a particular mimetic impulse of 'making-live' in artworks could be connected to religious experience. This meant exploring the nature of the link between seeing and believing--visualising in order to conceive, to verify, but also in the sense of being acted upon by the visible. All four wrote about the great power of artworks to transfigure the objects of their attention. In each case, there emerges the possibility of a secret sexual knowledge hiding within, or lying on the other side of the sensuous knowledge of aesthesis. All four wondered whether this was inherently hostile to Christianity, or whether it may, finally, be an accommodation within it.

Using the Collects (opening prayers) for each Sunday and major feast day of the church year (including Christmas, Epiphany, and the days of Holy Week and Easter Week), the author offers a brief (one-page), anecdotal meditation on the relationship of the prayer's and season's theme to the realities of life. Beginning with the First Sunday of Advent, Richard Schmidt takes the reader on a journey through the church year as he reflects on the mystery and challenge of our human pilgrimage.