The Fabric Of Faithfulness

How do parents, professors, campus ministers, youth pastors and others help students learn to connect what they believe about the world with how they live in it? Steven Garber answers this question in this revised edition which includes a new chapter on life formation.

For countless generations, patchwork quilts have been a visible act of love. In the Prayers and Squares Ministry, though, the quilt has become a visible act of prayer. Begun in California in 1992, Prayers and Squares now has some 200 chapters throughout the world.

Vocation is more than a job. It is our relationships and responsibilities woven into the work of God. In following our calling to seek the welfare of our world, we find that it flourishes and so do we. Garber offers here a book for parents, artists, students, public servants and businesspeople—for all who want to discover the virtue of vocation.

This is an historical, philosophical, theological--and practical--exploration of work from an evangelical perspective, highlighting the Christian concept of vocation as articulated by Luther and Calvin, and making relevant applications for today.

What if we began to see all we are and all we do—our work, play, relationships, worship, and loves—as significant to God? In these essays Steven Garber helps us discover the seamless life where there is no chasm between heaven and earth and we understand the coherence of our lives and God's work in the world.

Janette Oke has dreamed for years of retelling a story in a biblical time frame from a female protagonist's perspective, and Davis Bunn is elated to be working with her again on this sweeping saga of the dramatic events surrounding the birth of Christianity...and the very personal story of Leah, a young Jewess of mixed heritage trapped in a vortex of competing political agendas and private trauma. Caught up in the maelstrom following the death of an obscure rabbi in the Roman backwater of first-century Palestine, Leah finds herself also engulfed in her own turmoil--facing the prospect of an arranged marriage to a Roman soldier, Alban, who seems to care for nothing but his own ambitions. Head of the garrison near Galilee, he has been assigned by Palestine's governor to ferret out the truth behind rumors of a political execution gone awry. Leah's mistress, the governor's wife, secretly commissions Leah also to discover what really has become of this man whose death--and missing body--is causing such furor. This epic drama is threaded with the tale of an unlikely romance and framed with dangers and betrayals from unexpected sources. At its core, The Centurion's Wife unfolds the testing of loyalties--between two young people whose inner searchings they cannot express, between their irreconcilable heritages, and ultimately between their humanity and the Divine they yearn to encounter.

Help for parents and teachers How does a worldview become a way of life? This question is at the heart of scholar Steven Garber's book Fabric of Faithfulness, and it shaped the recent Lives of Commitment grant that Whitworth University received from the Murdock Charitable Trust. Garber found that people who were identified by others as living with integrity between their beliefs and actions often had had a number of similar life experiences: - They developed a worldview that was sufficient for the questions or crises of the next 20 years. - They had parents or other mentors who helped them practice behaviors that matched their worldview. - They had first-hand knowledge of the struggles of those with less in our society because they engaged in service of some sort. - They found friends who shared their worldview and the practices that went with it. With Garber's permission, Gloria Goris Stronks, former Calvin College education professor, and Julia Stronks, Whitworth political science professor built on the theme of his book. They surveyed hundreds of people to determine how they had worked to shape their families, living and raising their children along the lines of their Christian worldview. Christian parenting helps children learn to connect knowing with doing and belief with behavior. The trouble is that the values of the world around us influence all of us. At times our own behavior demonstrates a disconnect between what we say we believe and how we live. This book examines the way that different Christians try to parent and raise families in keeping with their beliefs. The people who shared their ideas and concerns did so with an honesty that was beautiful and also sometimes painful. Most of us believe that if we have children, raising those children is among the most important things we will ever do. But most of us also recognize that we have made so many mistakes along the way. This book captures moments in time as we live in a world that has been redeemed but not yet fully reconciled to God. It captures our hopes, our beliefs, our struggles. And, it lets us learn not only from scholars but also from each other.

Conversations with some of today's most intriguing artists--Sandra Bowden, Dan Callis, Mary McCleary, John Silvis, Edward Knippers, Erica Downer, Albert Pedulla, Tim Rollins and K.O.S., Joel Sheesley and Makoto Fujimura--focuses on the intersection of Christianity and creativity.

Based on the National Study of Youth and Religion--the same invaluable data as its predecessor, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers--Kenda Creasy Dean's compelling new book, Almost Christian, investigates why American teenagers are at once so positive about Christianity and at the same time so apathetic about genuine religious practice. In Soul Searching, Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton found that American teenagers have embraced a "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism"--a hodgepodge of banal, self-serving, feel-good beliefs that bears little resemblance to traditional Christianity. But far from faulting teens, Dean places the blame for this theological watering down squarely on the churches themselves. Instead of proclaiming a God who calls believers to lives of love, service and sacrifice, churches offer instead a bargain religion, easy to use, easy to forget, offering little and demanding less. But what is to be done? In order to produce ardent young Christians, Dean argues, churches must rediscover their sense of mission and model an understanding of being Christian as not something you do for yourself, but something that calls you to share God's love, in word and deed, with others. Dean found that the most committed young Christians shared four important traits: they could tell a personal and powerful story about God; they belonged to a significant faith community; they exhibited a sense of vocation; and they possessed a profound sense of hope. Based on these findings, Dean proposes an approach to Christian education that places the idea of mission at its core and offers a wealth of concrete suggestions for inspiring teens to live more authentically engaged Christian lives. Persuasively and accessibly written, Almost Christian is a wake up call no one concerned about the future of Christianity in America can afford to ignore.