Bone Worship


Book Description

A rich and soul-searching novel about an Iranian-American girl whose enigmatic father has decided to arrange her marriage. Jasmine Fahroodhi has always been fascinated by her enigmatic Iranian father. With his strange habits and shrouded past, she can't fathom how he ended up marrying her prim American mother. But lately love in general feels just as incomprehensible. After a disastrous romance sends her into a tailspin, causing her to fail out of college just shy of graduation, a conflicted Jasmine returns home without any idea where her life is headed. Her father has at least one idea—he has big plans for a hastegar, an arranged marriage. Confused, furious, but intrigued, Jasmine searches for her match, meeting suitor after suitor with increasingly disastrous (and humorous) results. As she begins to open herself up to the mysteries of familial and romantic love, Jasmine discovers the truth about her father, and an even more evasive figure—herself—in this highly original and striking debut novel.




Bone Worship


Book Description




The Way of Worship


Book Description

Learn to Live and Lead a Life of Authentic Worship The Way of Worship is a practical, hands-on guide for readers seeking to better equip themselves as worshipers and worship leaders. Written by veteran worship leader Michael Neale and worship-theologian Dr. Vernon M. Whaley, this book combines skillful storytelling and biblical wisdom to help guide readers through the scriptural foundations and essential practices of worship. This book is ideal for anyone wanting a deeper more biblical understanding of what worship truly is, including: Worship leaders Pastors Youth pastors Worship team members College or seminary students training for ministry Each chapter takes you on a journey of discovery through different important facets of worship. Each chapter features: River Story: Episodes in each chapter take you on a white-water rafting adventure and draw connections to the role of a worship leader Biblical Application: Provides concrete application of biblical principles to worship based on the most recent episode of the River Story Essential Wisdom: Addresses important issues facing worship leaders on a week-to-week basis Scripture Focused: Every chapter features an abundance of relevant Scripture passages to help you understand what the Bible really says about worship Engaging, wise, and thoroughly steeped in Scripture, The Way of Worship is the go-to guide for Christians who desire to live and lead authentic worship.




Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship


Book Description

Designed to empower preachers as they lead their congregations to connect their lives to Scripture, Connections features a broad set of interpretive tools that provide commentary and worship aids on the Revised Common Lectionary. For each worship day within the three-year lectionary cycle, the commentaries in Connections link the individual lection reading with Scripture as a whole as well as to the larger world. In addition, Connections places each Psalm reading in conversation with the other lections for the day to highlight the themes of the liturgical season. Finally, sidebars offer additional connections to Scripture for each Sunday or worship day. This nine-volume series is a practical, constructive, and valuable resource for preachers who seek to help congregations connect more closely with Scripture. This volume covers Year A for Lent through Pentecost.




Deeply Into the Bone


Book Description

Providing a personal, informed and cultural perspective on rites of passage for general readers, this text illustrates the power of rites to help us navigate life's troublesome transitions.




Exploring Worship Anew


Book Description

In search of a way to worship that is relevant today and into the twenty-first century, Moeller proposes an approach based on the "great commandment" to love God and one's neighbor as oneself. With special attention to the time, space, sounds, sights, touches, and symbols that form the context of every worship service, she argues for a collaborative approach to the worship service in which the participants are involved from preparation to celebration. Illustrating this highly evocative, thoroughly feminist theology of worship is a sample service that pays particular attention to how the process and design of worship impact the experience of the worshipers.







Traditional Ritual as Christian Worship


Book Description

A necessary task of missionaries in recent decades has been to help local Christians "inculturate" or "contextualize" their faith, although the criteria for doing so often came from outside the context in which new believers developed their understanding of Christianity. Highlighting the voices of non-Western scholars, this work recognizes the importance of ritual and ceremony in the life of communities that seek to worship God in ways that reflect culturally appropriate responses to Scripture. The contributors -- some of missiology's leading lights -- discuss rituals, beliefs, and practices of diverse peoples, supporting the conclusion that orthodox Christianity is hybrid Christianity.




Family Worship


Book Description

Family Worship offers solid solutions to the increasingly dysfunctional family in today's secularized society, and it provides constructive suggestions to those who want to reestablish their homes on biblical foundations. The Hebraic foundations fo the Christain faith establish the home as a small temple. This insight dramatically changes the dynamics of the home for those who believe in the God of the Bible and in his will for their lives. The Christian family was always designed by God to be the center for social, educational, and spiritual growth and maturity--a place of fellowswhip, study, and prayer. Now, you, too can experience these same powerful dyunamics that made the home the center of sanctity and security that it was for the biblical peoples. Family Worship presents these vivid images of a rich biblically Hebraic tradition for Christians today: The Domestic Temple, A Temple of Blessing, The Family Altar, A House of Prayer, A House of Study, Temples in Time, The Domestic Priesthood, and The Domestic Church. As you read this book, you'll be amazed at how your own family life will be revolutionized and enriched simply by restoring biblically Hebraic dynamics to your home.




Worship the First-Century Way


Book Description

If you would like to worship as the apostles did, this book is for you. Their worship was dynamic in its simplicity. Do you take for granted that the founders of major Christian denominations would approve of the way your denomination worships today? Find numerous quotes from them at the beginning of each chapter on various forms of worship we engage in. Do you take for granted that second-century apostolic fathers worshiped the same way your congregation worships today? You will find at the end of each chapter quotations from these early Christian leaders in the 2nd and 3rd centuries about what they approved of and did not approve of in Christian worship. Do you take for granted that the way your congregation worshiped is pretty much the same as Christian worship has been since Jesus’ apostles began the church? Numerous scriptures are quoted throughout each chapter in order to help the reader know what God wants in worship to him. Yes, we are worshiping God, not ourselves. Cain’s sin was that he worshiped to please himself. Are we a Cain or an Abel? In this book, every form of Christian worship common today is reviewed. Is your worship unbalanced with so much of one thing that it chokes out other ways that please God? This book ends with an appeal that is applicable also to the other book in this two-book series: Can the denominational world unite? Pagan religions and atheism are trying to take hold around the globe and to choke out Christianity. Divided we fall. United we stand. Let us go forward! Back to the first century.