Showing results by narrator "Jessica Schell" in All Categories

Every church, every organization, has experienced them: betrayal, deception, grumbling, envy, exclusion. They make life together difficult and prevent congregations from developing the skills, virtues, and practices they need to nurture sturdy, life-giving communities.

Adoption is one of the most radically inclusive aspects of God's kingdom. All of us belong to God's family - Jesus as God's son and the rest of us as his adopted children. In Adopted Kelley Nikondeha explores how the Christian concept of adoption into God's family can broaden our sense of belonging. Drawing on her own story as both an adopted child and an adoptive mother, Nikondeha invites listeners to a rich, biblically grounded understanding of adoption that reframes the way we perceive family, friends, and those in need of rescue.

"Like any other life-sustaining resource," says Marilyn McEntyre, "language can be depleted, polluted, contaminated, eroded, and filled with artificial stimulants." Today more than ever, language needs to be rescued and restored. Drawing on a wide range of sources, both critical and literary, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies is an engaging address to everyone concerned with preserving the vitality and precision of the spoken and written word.

On March 1, 1893, Princess Ka’iulani, the 17-year-old crown princess of Hawaii, stepped onto the pier at New York City. She was greeted by a crowd of reporters and onlookers who knew that, in many ways, she stood at a crossroads in history. Fully aware of the significance of her visit, she prayed that she could help persuade the American government to return her beautiful islands to the Hawaiian people.

This book is about the various places and ways that uncertainty shows up for parents who, having left or altered the faith they once knew, now must decide what to give their kids. It’s about church attendance, Bible memorization, school choices, and sex talks. It’s about forging new paths in racial justice and creation care while the intractable voices in your head call you a pagan Marxist for doing so.

Some of these quirky true stories might surprise even the most proud Texan. Austin sat the first all-woman state supreme court in the nation in 1925. A utopian colony thrived in Kristenstad during the Great Depression. Bats taken from the Bracken and Ney Caves and Devil's Sinkhole were developed as a secret weapon that vied with the Manhattan Project to shorten World War II. In Slaton in 1922, German priest Joseph M. Keller was kidnapped, tarred, and feathered amid anti-German fervor following World War I.

An exotic fortune cookie-maker hangs up her rolling pin to spare her customers the terrible truth. A dying man comes to terms with the Halloween inside to survive. A woman finds Ambrose Bierce's diary and resolves to break its curse by making her death the final entry. A long-dead lynching victim returns to punish the men responsible for his grotesque execution. The stories in award-winning author E. R. Bills’ first turn at horror fiction showcase an unsettling new voice in the genre.

Displays the amazing power of generosity to transform people and communities. When LaSalle Street Church in Chicago received an unexpected windfall, its leaders made the wild, counterintuitive decision to give $160,000 away to church members - 500 each. They were simply told to go out and do good in God's world. What happened next was amazing.

After centuries of waiting, the ancient goddess Lamashtu has been reborn. But this isn't exactly what Temperance wants to be for her sweet 16. Now, she will unite the werewolf and vampire races that made her what she is, or they will all die in her wake, torn limb from limb and head from neck. All will know that she can rule the earth. But how many will bow to her?

Meeting a vampire isn't something that happens every night, even on the New York City subway. But never in her wildest dreams did Cat ever expect to meet a vampire or survive an encounter with one. Instead, she became his confidant. Why was she so lucky?

Rachna Sengupta always knew that she wanted to be a figure skater. Ever since she laid her eyes on Jenny Nguyen, she fell in love with the sport. She knew she wanted to be just like Jenny one day. She was well on her way too, getting better with her skills and ready to take on the world. However, it all came crashing down when an injury took her out of competition. Broken up by that, she takes the year off from the rink and begins to contemplate retirement.

Neverland has a way of breaking people. It corrupts souls. It destroys hope. The evil festering inside it brings out the darkness in our hearts and leaves us worse than dead. No good has ever come from it. Ever. It is where I was born. Therefore, darkness is all I know. Corruption is in my bones. So when I see him, I mean to win his heart and then break him. I mean to lure him to my arms and then destroy him.

"Evil poisons everyone. Period. Our mouths water when we sink our teeth into what we have always craved. Surrendering to our desires by biting off a delectable piece of the forbidden fruit is nothing more than a meager confession: Poison tastes sinfully sweet. #SnowWhiteLies" - Confessions of the Big Apple Debutante, by blogger Miss Snow White.

With the troubling and painful events of the last several years - from the shooting of numerous unarmed black men at the hands of police to the rallying of white supremacists in Charlottesville - it is clearer than ever that the reconciliation paradigm, long favored by white Christians, has failed to heal the deep racial wounds in the church and American society. In this provocative audiobook, originally published in 2014, Jennifer Harvey argues for a radical shift away from the well-meaning but feeble longing for reconciliation toward a robustly biblical call for reparations.