Sparkhouse

Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the US

Lenny Duncan is an unlikely pastor. Formerly incarcerated, he is now a black preacher in the whitest denomination in the United States: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Shifting demographics and shrinking congregations make the headlines, but Duncan connects the church's lack of diversity to its lack of vitality. Part manifesto, part confession, and all love letter, Dear Church offers a bold new vision for the future of the church.

9781506452562

Confident Humility: Becoming Your Full Self without Becoming Full of Yourself

Self-help books emerge from one of two flawed views of the self--that people are fundamentally bad or fundamentally good--and these mutually exclusive ditches are destructive. Dan Kent presents a third view. He shows how the humility Jesus revealed offers the most accurate, freeing view of the self. Whereas the ditches both lead to powerlessness and passivity, humility as Jesus teaches it is empowering, fosters proactivity, and serves as a scaffold for true confidence.

9781506451923

Living In Sin: Making Marriage Work Between I Do and Death

Pastor Jason Micheli had performed dozens of weddings when he was diagnosed with incurable cancer. Suddenly, his own marriage came into sharp relief.

Micheli chronicles his love for his wife, Ali, in Living in Sin. Their marriage is pushed to the brink, but Micheli's illness shows what really matters in marriage: forgiveness, laughter, and more forgiveness. Living in Sin will be an inspiration and challenge to any married couple.

9781506425528

Sacred in the City: Seeing the Spiritual in the Everyday

The sacred is all around us, all the time. It is the reality in which we live and move and have our being. But it...

9781506458274

Praying through Grief: Poems and Meditations for Healing

"They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies." William Penn With classic texts from the Bible...

9781506458311

Chosen: A Journey of Faith

Michele Guinness was brought up to love and live out her family's Jewish heritage. However, in her teens, she felt something lacking. Searching for answers...

9781506458144

The Heavenly Party: Recover the Fun, Life-Changing Celebrations for Home and Community

The Heavenly Party is the ideal resource for Christians looking to reintroduce fun, joy, and playfulness into their spiritual lives. Drawing upon her rich Jewish...

9781506458151

One Coin Found: How God's Love Stretches to the Margins

Emmy Kegler has a complicated relationship with the Bible. As a queer woman who grew up in the church, she knows too well how Scripture...

9781506448213

Holy Grounds: The Surprising Connection between Coffee and Faith—From Dancing Goats to Satan’s Drink

From the coffee bean's discovery by ninth-century Ethiopian Muslims to being condemned as "Satan's drink" by medieval Christians, to becoming an integral part of Passover...

9781506448237

Sexuality and Holy Longing, 2nd Edition: Embracing Intimacy in a Beautiful, Broken World

In this newly revised edition of Sexuality and Holy Longing, author Lisa Graham McMinn beautifully describes how people are created by God for relationship, and our sexuality guarantees that we will long for and be drawn toward others. McMinn provides a blueprint for understanding sexuality--and our longing to be loved--at all stages of life (childhood, teen years, early adulthood, midlife, and old age).

9781506454818

The Last Word and the Word After That: A Tale of Faith, Doubt, and a New Kind of Christianity

Book Three in The New Kind of Christian Trilogy In the final installment of The New Kind of Christian Trilogy, Pastor Dan Poole and his...

9781506454634

The Story We Find Ourselves In: Further Adventures of a New Kind of Christian

Book Two in The New Kind of Christian Trilogy The Story We Find Ourselves In is the sequel to Brian McLaren?s award-winning book A New Kind of...

9781506454658

A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey

The Book That Launched a Movement The first installment of Brian D. McLaren?s trilogy recounts a lively and intimate conversation between fictional characters Pastor Dan...

9781506454610

Honoring the Body: Meditations on a Christian Practice

In Honoring the Body, Stephanie Paulsell speaks to those who have ever wondered how to celebrate the body's pleasures and protect the body's vulnerabilities in a world that seems confused about both. What we need, she shows, are practices that honor the body.

Paulsell invites readers to explore how we might honor the body in daily activities, seeking wisdom from Scripture, history, and contemporary experience, in story and song and poetry/

9781506454894

A Song to Sing, A Life to Live: Reflections on Music as Spiritual Practice

In A Song to Sing, A Life to Live, Don and Emily Saliers help readers see the connections between Saturday night music and Sunday morning...

9781506454719

Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People

Practicing Our Faith offers help to Christians who are asking how our faith can help us discern what we might do and who we might become. Practices are shared activities that address fundamental needs of humankind and creation and that, woven together, form a way of life. The twelve practices explored in this book are practices that human beings simply cannot do without, particularly at this time in history.

9781506454733

The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier

Following on the questions raised by Brian McLaren in A New Kind of Christian, Tony Jones has written an engaging exploration of what this new...

9781506454955

Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time

In Receiving the Day, Dorothy C. Bass shows how Christian practices for rest and worship continually welcome us into a way of life attuned to the love of God, neighbor, earth, and self. Through them, we can learn to dwell more graciously, attentively, and faithfully within the hours and days we have and to share the gift of time with others.

9781506454757

Is That Poop on My Arm? Parenting While Christian

God meets us, and our kids, in the mess
Parenting is messy business. Joyful, but messy. When faith is combined with parenting, we double down...

9781506433004

Fat and Faithful: Learning to Love Our Bodies, Our Neighbors, and Ourselves

J. Nicole Morgan grew up fat and loving Jesus. But she was forever burdened by what she saw as her biggest spiritual flaw: her weight. In Fat and Faithful, she shares her journey from body shame to fat acceptance and shows us how to care for the image of God found in every body--including our own. When the world tells us that our bodies are too much, J. Nicole Morgan reminds us that all people--no matter their size or ability--are beloved of God.

9781506425221