Welcoming Strangers

World Relief staffers Matthew Soerens and Jenny Yang move beyond the rhetoric to offer a Christian response to immigration. With careful historical understanding and thoughtful policy analysis, they debunk myths about immigration, show the limits of the current immigration system, and offer concrete ways for you to welcome and minister to your immigrant neighbors.

Jane Hall Fitz-Gibbon and Andrew Fitz-Gibbon have cared for more than 100 children in a foster care career spanning more than three decades. They developed a method, "loving nonviolent re-parenting," to best care for foster children. "Re-parenting" represents the complex task of caring for children who have been parented already, often inadequately, and mostly involving physical, emotional, and/or systemic violence. Welcoming Strangers analyses the violence foster children suffer and raises ethical questions—why violence is morally problematic, what philosophers have said about human nature and violence, and what moral good should be pursued in childcare. Drawing on an ancient form of ethics, sometimes known as "virtue ethics," this book focuses on the traits required to become a loving, nonviolent re-parent. The Fitz-Gibbons tell of their journey in the foster care system with candour, humour, and grace. Covering subjects as diverse as teens, sex, discipline, and the carer's own well-being, they describe the difficulties of foster care and the sometimes impossible task of restoring dignity and joy to young lives deeply damaged by violence. This book will be of immense help to foster carers, adopters, caseworkers, case managers, policymakers, and any parent who wants to integrate nonviolent practices into the way they care for children.

Successful leaders today don't dictate; they invite. They don't dismiss; they welcome. They don't neglect; they care. Now more than ever we must pay attention to the soft side of leadership if we want hard results. As leaders--from parents to CEOs--we must learn gracious leadership to truly, positively, change our spheres of influence. In this passionate, powerful book, pastor and leadership mentor Terry Smith fleshes out five vital principles you need to become a hospitable leader. He shows that this type of leadership is not superficial niceness or allowing people to do whatever they want. Hospitable leadership is result-oriented because it's motivated by genuine love. It's how you create environments where people and dreams can thrive, where vision turns to action, and where great things happen regularly. Here is everything you need to become the type of leader people want to follow.

Nurturing Strangers focuses on loving nonviolent re-parenting of children in foster care. This book is a jargon-free mix of narrative and real-life case studies, together with the theory and practice of nonviolence. Nurturing Strangers and the authors’ previous book, Welcoming Strangers, are the first books to apply philosophies of nonviolence directly to the care of children in the foster care system. One of their strengths is that the books are not merely theoretical, but rooted in the practice of nonviolence with children for over thirty years. Nurturing Strangers is for foster carers, caseworkers, case managers, social work students, and parents, as well as the general reader interested in children who have been victims of violence in and out of the foster care system.

Designed for both ordained and lay ministers at the diocesan and parish levels, this document challenges us to prepare to receive newcomers with a genuine spirit of welcome.

A “meticulously researched and buoyantly written” (Esquire) look at what happens when we talk to strangers, and why it affects everything from our own health and well-being to the rise and fall of nations in the tradition of Susan Cain’s Quiet and Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens “This lively, searching work makes the case that welcoming ‘others’ isn’t just the bedrock of civilization, it’s the surest path to the best of what life has to offer.”—Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Homeland Elegies In our cities, we stand in silence at the pharmacy and in check-out lines at the grocery store, distracted by our phones, barely acknowledging one another, even as rates of loneliness skyrocket. Online, we retreat into ideological silos reinforced by algorithms designed to serve us only familiar ideas and like-minded users. In our politics, we are increasingly consumed by a fear of people we’ve never met. But what if strangers—so often blamed for our most pressing political, social, and personal problems—are actually the solution? In The Power of Strangers, Joe Keohane sets out on a journey to discover what happens when we bridge the distance between us and people we don’t know. He learns that while we’re wired to sometimes fear, distrust, and even hate strangers, people and societies that have learned to connect with strangers benefit immensely. Digging into a growing body of cutting-edge research on the surprising social and psychological benefits that come from talking to strangers, Keohane finds that even passing interactions can enhance empathy, happiness, and cognitive development, ease loneliness and isolation, and root us in the world, deepening our sense of belonging. And all the while, Keohane gathers practical tips from experts on how to talk to strangers, and tries them out himself in the wild, to awkward, entertaining, and frequently poignant effect. Warm, witty, erudite, and profound, equal parts sweeping history and self-help journey, this deeply researched book will inspire readers to see everything—from major geopolitical shifts to trips to the corner store—in an entirely new light, showing them that talking to strangers isn’t just a way to live; it’s a way to survive.

A pioneering look at the implications of Christian faith for foreign language education. It has become clear in recent years that reflection on foreign language education involves more than questioning which methods work best. This new volume carries current discussions of the value-laden nature of foreign language teaching into new territory by exploring its spiritual and moral dimensions. David Smith and Barbara Carvill show how the Christian faith sheds light on the history, aims, content, and methods of foreign language education. They also propose a new approach to the field based on the Christian understanding of hospitality.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

For more than two millennia, Homer's poetry has stirred the imagination of its readers. Originally recited by traveling bards, these poems are exceptionally rich in conventional elements that helped the poets remember works thousands of lines long. As dynamic ingredients of oral poetry, these elements have accrued deep meaning, and for a well-informed audience they call significant associations to mind. In The Stranger's Welcome, Steve Reece treats eighteen "hospitality" scenes in the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Homeric Hymns and reveals key aspects and standard elements of such scenes. Further, he demonstrates how Homeric listeners might comprehend the new and innovative by relying on their knowledge of the conventional and familiar. This tension between conventional and innovative, between the traditional background and the individual performance, distinguishes the aesthetics of Homeric poetry. Of interest to students and scholars of oral poetry, folklore, Homeric literature, and Greek literature in general, The Stranger's Welcome offers a practical approach whereby a reading audience may understand a hearing one.

A young, Cuban-American woman is accepted into an elite college right as her home life unravels.