Grab your Bible, a cup of something warm, and settle in with this diverse collection of classic and contemporary poetry, meant to stir your imagination and deepen your experience of scripture in the season ahead.Corresponding with the Revised Common Lectionary Year A (November 2025-May 2026), this volume includes 4 classic and 4 contemporary poems for every week of the church year, from Advent through Pentecost Sunday.Poets include Paul Laurence Dunbar, Emily Dickinson, Mar...

Readers' Choice Award WinnerBest Books About the Church from Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds BookstoreFast food. Fast cars. Fast and furious. Fast forward. Fast . . . church?The church is oftenidealized (or demonized) as the last bastion of a bygone era, dragging our feet as we're pulled into new moralities and new spiritualities. We guard our doctrine and our piety with great vigilance. But we often fail to notice how quickly we're ...

Slow Church

A moving account of how one church learned to center their life together around the practice of conversation and became a beacon of hope along the way.Englewood Christian Church was once a thriving megachurch, but as its surrounding urban neighborhood declined, so did the church.Today, both the church and neighborhood are thriving, and ECC's impact far outweighs the size of its congregation. The ECC story upends the common wisdom ab...

High-speed internet. Rapid rewards. Quick thinking. Fast food. Fast . . . church? Slow Church by Chris Smith and John Pattison has been eagerly received by a people who are ready to be invited out of franchise faith and back into the kingdom of God. This eleven-session study guide provides an opportunity to reflect on the message of this groundbreaking book both individually and in community. Each session featuresA guide to lectio divinaSuggested v...

Many young idealists, after a few failures, burn out and return to status quo lives. Not so with the seven radicals in this book, who met in an interracial house church and intentional community on Chicago's West Side during the civil rights era. Here you will make the acquaintance of a Church of the Brethren pastoral couple who tried to bring communal life to the black ghetto; a fashionable socialite who trashed her curlers and joined the simple life; an elite Stanford graduate who cast h...

In today's highly charged social and political environment, we often don't know how to talk well with others--especially with people whose backgrounds differ from our own. C. Christopher Smith, coauthor of the critically acclaimed and influential Slow Church, addresses why conversation has become such a challenge in the 21st century and argues that it is perhaps the most-needed spiritual practice of our individualistic age. Smith likens practicing conversation to the working of the human b...

2014 Readers' Choice Award Winner 2014 Best Books About the Church from Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds Bookstore Fast food. Fast cars. Fast and furious. Fast forward. Fast . . . church? The church is often idealized (or demonized) as the last bastion of a bygone era, dragging our feet as we're pulled into new moralities and new spiritualities. We guard our doctrine and our piety with great vigilance. But we often fail to notice how quickly we're capitulating, in the structures and practice...

Activists Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove show how prayer and action must go together. Their exposition of key Bible passages provides concrete examples of how a life of prayer fuels social engagement and the work of justice. Phrases like "give us this day our daily bread" and "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" take on new meaning when applied to feeding the hungry or advocating for international debt relief. If you hope to see God change society, you must be an...

In Simply Jesus, bestselling author and leading Bible scholar N.T. Wright summarizes 200 years of modern Biblical scholarship and models how Christians can best retell the story of Jesus today. In a style similar to C.S. Lewis’s popular works, Wright breaks down the barriers that prevent Christians from fully engaging with the story of Jesus. For believers confronting the challenge of connecting with their faith today, and for readers of Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God

From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees, a magnificent novel about two unforgettable American womenWriting at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world—and it is now the newest Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection.Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyo...

Winner of the Audie Award for Fiction*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti*Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in oc...