Children and teens face a tremendous amount of pressure from their peers and culture to find their identity in their activities, feelings, or performance. This modern way of looking at identity can be challenging to navigate for parents who grew up with a traditional view of identity rooted in predetermined roles. What if they could help their children and teenagers find their identity in something that never went away and never changed based on their ability or performance—an identity gro...

The local church is meant to function as a healing and helping community that cares for God's people. But what if, instead of grace and care, someone experienced harm and hurt? When the church becomes a place of abuse and silence, the pain leaves people spiritually disoriented and alone. These individuals may wonder if they will ever feel safe around God's people again. Instead of running to God and his people, they run as far away as possible.St. John defines church hurt as any un...

Australia's public broadcaster, 'Aunty', is about to turn 90, yet your ABC has seldom been in this much trouble: budget cuts, ferocious political pressure, sagging staff morale, leadership chaos and hostile commercial rivals.Meanwhile audiences are deserting broadcast TV and radio. What is the ABC's place in this era of media disruption? Can it reach a younger audience on new platforms while still satisfying its loyal fans?

Friendship. It’s one of the simplest of human relationships in comparison to marriage or family relationships, and yet it’s also one of the least understood and practiced. For all of our progress in making connections through Facebook, Twitter, and other social-media tools, people are consistently experiencing loneliness and growing disenchanted with the whole notion of friendship.Could it be our understanding of friendship has been more informed by pop culture and social media, an...

Friendship. It’s one of the simplest of human relationships in comparison to marriage or family relationships, and yet it’s also one of the least understood and practiced. For all of our progress in making connections through Facebook, Twitter, and other social-media tools, people are consistently experiencing loneliness and growing disenchanted with the whole notion of friendship.Could it be our understanding of friendship has been more informed by pop culture and social media, an...

Merely Players? marks a groundbreaking departure in Shakespeare studies by giving direct voice to the Shakespearean performer. It draws on three centuries worth of actors' written reflections on playing Shakespeare and brings together the dual worlds of performance and academia, providing a unique resource for the student and theatre-lover alike.

Ostracod crustaceans, common microfossils in marine and freshwater sedimentary records, supply evidence of past climatic conditions via indicator species, transfer function and mutual climatic range approaches as well as the trace element and stable isotope geochemistry of their shells. As methods of using ostracods as Quaternary palaeoclimate proxies have developed, so too has a critical awareness of their complexities, potential and limitations. This book combines up-to-date reviews (cov...

In THE CHURCH AWAKENING, Charles Swindoll discusses the challenges, struggles, and priorities of the church in the twenty-first century. He reveals the problems inherent in the entertainment-based postmodern church and shows how a return to biblical teaching will restore its strength and impact. Now being replaced by a feel-good message instead of what Christians need to know to stand strong in a world that's lost its way--Swindoll exposes the problems of--and solutions for--the postmodern...

To consider comedy in its many incarnations is to raise diverse but related questions: what, for instance, is humour, and how may it be used (or abused)? When do we laugh, and why? What is it that writers and speakers enjoy - and risk - when they tell a joke, indulge in bathos, talk nonsense, or encourage irony? This Very Short Introduction explores comedy both as a literary genre, and as a range of non-literary phenomena, experiences and events. Matthew Bevis studies the classics of comic...

Best-selling author and ministry leader Thom S. Rainer drew an exceptional response when he posted a 500-word declaration about church membership to his daily blog. "I Am a Church Member" started a conversation about the attitudes and responsibilities of church members -- rather than the functional and theological issues -- that previous new member primers all but ignored.Thoughtfully expanded to book form, I Am a Church Member begins to remedy the outbreak of inactive or ...

Over 250,000 Copies Sold!Train Your Soul to Know the God Jesus Knows"God wants me to try harder.""God blesses me when I'm good and punishes me when I'm bad.""God is angry with me."We all have ideas that we tell ourselves about God and how he works in our lives. Some are true—but many are false. James Bryan Smith believes those thoughts determine not only who we are, but how we live. In fact, Smith declares, the most im...

Written by a team of leading international scholars, this Companion is designed to illuminate Shakespeare's works through discussion of the key topics of Shakespeare studies. Twenty-one essays provide lively and authoritative approaches to recent scholarship and criticism for readers keen to expand their knowledge and appreciation of Shakespeare. The book contains stimulating chapters on traditional topics such as Shakespeare's biography and the transmission of his texts. Individual readin...