Fresh Bread from the Pastor's Table


Book Description

Joel McGraw is a pastor at heart with a yen for writing. He writes from more than theory, but as a living "practitioner." He was born the youngest of 13 children on a farm in Conecuh County, Alabama, during the Great Depression. He did not wait until college for Cooperative Education. He began "co-oping" in pre-school and continued through grade school, college, and grad school where he earned his Master of Ministry Degree. Pastor Joel's writing is punctuated with gutsy life-workables. He believes a "disappointing" detour in his academic education early in his ministry proved to be a valuable God-send. During that "interruption" he worked gathering, writing, and reporting news and feature stories to help "support my preaching habit." He did corresponding for Associated Press and United Press International, and a couple of dailies, Mobile Press-Register and Montgomery Advertiser. His employers at the local radio station and newspaper in Evergreen, Alabama, were his competent instructors. This writer sees the "body of Christ" as multi-national, multi-denominational, and multi-racial. He is founding pastor of Faith Chapel, an International Pentecostal Holiness Church, in Huntsville, Alabama, where he has pastored and "pastured" for more than 40 years. He has been involved in and led in worship and people-care across many denominations, has assisted in hospital chaplaincy, led in city wide prayer gatherings, and served in leadership in various ministerial groups. For more than 20 years McGraw was a daily radio voice sharing God's Word, practical life helps, and interviews with other pastors and life-care professionals. He and his wife, Janelle Barbee McGraw, have three children - Steven McGraw, David McGraw, and LaNita McGraw Eby - who with their families are all committed Christians. [email protected]




Eat Your Way to Life and Health


Book Description

Let the holy Communion revolutionize your life and health! Through engaging Bible-based teaching, Pastor Joseph Prince unpacks a revelation of the Communion that has never been more relevant than right now. Along with showing you why the holy Communion is God’s ordained way to release life, health, and healing to us, Pastor Prince also tackles the tough questions: Is God punishing me with sickness and disease? Is it really God’s will to heal me? Do I qualify for His healing power? What do I do when I don’t see results? Can God heal my loved ones? The enemy wants you to believe that God doesn’t care and that your situation is hopeless. But because of the cross, you can have full assurance in your heart that God wants you healed and whole. Learn how you can access His healing power with just the simple act of eating. In Eat Your Way to Life and Health, discover a God who loves you so much, His Son paid for your healing on Calvary’s cross. Be deeply encouraged as you read powerful testimonies from people who have received healing through a revelation of the Communion, despite being told their conditions were terminal or incurable. Whatever circumstances you are confronted with today, God has a word for you: Don’t give up. There is hope. He has made a way for you!




We Will Feast


Book Description

Explores the practice of eating together as Christian worship The gospel story is filled with meals. It opens in a garden and ends in a feast. Records of the early church suggest that believers met for worship primarily through eating meals. Over time, though, churches have lost focus on the centrality of food— and with it a powerful tool for unifying Christ’s diverse body. But today a new movement is under way, bringing Christians of every denomination, age, race, and sexual orientation together around dinner tables. Men and women nervous about stepping through church doors are finding God in new ways as they eat together. Kendall Vanderslice shares stories of churches worshiping around the table, introducing readers to the rising contem­porary dinner-church movement. We Will Feast provides vision and inspiration to readers longing to experience community in a real, physical way.




Bread and Wine


Book Description

Join New York Times bestselling author Shauna Niequist as she offers an enchanting mix of funny and vulnerable storytelling in this collection of recipes and essays about the surprising and sacred things that happen when people gather around the table. Bread & Wine is a literary feast about the moments and meals that bring us together. With beautiful and evocative writing, Shauna celebrates the sweet and savory moments that happen when family and friends sit down together. She invites us to see how God teaches and feeds us even as we nourish the people around us, and she explores the ways that hunger, loneliness, and restlessness lead us back to the table again. Part cookbook and part spiritual memoir, Bread & Wine sheds light on: How sharing food together mirrors the way we share our hearts with each other—and with God What it means to follow a God who reveals His presence in breaking bread and passing a cup What happens when we come together, slow down, open our homes, look into one another’s faces, and listen to one another’s stories A satisfying read for heart and body, you’ll want to keep Bread & Wine close at hand all year round. Recreate the meals that come to life in each essay with recipes for any occasion, from Goat Cheese Biscuits and Bacon-Wrapped Dates to Mango Chicken Curry and Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Toffee. For anyone who has found themselves swapping stories over plates of pasta, sharing takeout on the couch, laughing over a burnt recipe, and lingering a little longer for one more bite, this book is for you.




Preacher in a Hard Hat: a Guide to Preaching for Pastors and


Book Description

Can you imagine Jesus preaching to roughneck fishermen without ever climbing into one of their boats? Jesus' preaching was packed with references to everyday life. His words had immediate appeal and lasting effect. This book is intended to help the people of God, preachers and listeners alike, make vital connections between the altars in our churches and the lunchrooms at work, between the washing of one's car and the cleansing of one's soul. Preacher in a Hard Hat is an invitation for everyone involved in preaching-the speaking, listening, studying, and shaping of God's word-to coordinate their efforts and focus their energies. It explores the unique partnership between a pastor and the parishioners, one in which the parishioners invite the pastor into their daily lives. Preacher in a Hard Hat is a collection of wry observations, personal ruminations and copious notes on the challenge of making the Word of God arresting, current and compelling for today's believers. Each chapter includes a sample homily/sermon that illustrates the insights and strategies discussed.




The Relational Pastor


Book Description

Practical theologian Andrew Root dissects relational ministry as we have come to understand it, calling for a new breed of "empathic minister" to take the helm in our churches. Bringing current practice in touch with incarnational theology, Root searches for a more robust understanding of the relationships that make up the body of Christ.




Jesus, Bread, and Chocolate


Book Description

Farmer’s markets, artisanal dark chocolate, home-made bread, craft-brewed beer, and independent boutique coffee shops may not immediately call to mind issues of faith, but they should. As the “American Dream” starts to fray at both ends, millions of people are embracing values that seem to hail from a bygone era. They are seeking out the local, the small, the responsible and the nourishing instead of the cheap, the homogenized, the mass-produced and the canned. Is it possible that this renewed interest in these pre-modern values may actually offer an open door into the hearts and minds of this generation? Is there a way to explore specific, inspiring stories about coffee, bread, chocolate and art that lead people toward a truly Biblical understanding of the person, words and work of Jesus to reveal the truth, goodness and beauty of the Gospel? With fascinating stories and a thread of memoir, Jesus, Bread, and Chocolate explores the emerging—actually re-emerging—values of this post-industrial age and points out parallels between them and the teaching and ministry of Jesus and his earliest followers. Rather than seeking to tie the faith to trends in the culture, it shows how trends in the culture are already very close to the organic kind of faith that could reenergize the church and bring countless young and middle-aged people into a saving experience of Christ.







The Caring Congregation Ministry Implementation Guide


Book Description

Pastors and church leaders genuinely want to care for people in their congregations and communities. But pastors cannot care for an entire church, and most laypersons don't have the training to do it. The Caring Congregation Ministry is a model for person-to-person care that's been proven to work in small and large churches across the U.S. It is a laity-centered ministry, where laypersons receive rigorous training and then are commissioned to serve as Congregational Care Ministers, caring for others in their own congregation and their extended community. This remarkable approach to congregational care was first developed by author Karen Lampe and her team at The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, in Kansas City. It has been tested, refined, and strengthened, and is now being adapted in all sorts of congregational settings. One early adapter was co-author Melissa Gepford, who launched a Caring Congregation Ministry in her own rural church. Together, they have created this immensely practical guide for any pastor or leader seeking to create a congregational care ministry. This Implementation Guide is the main book for getting started. It introduces the ministry model and explains the Five Essentials which form the ministry's foundation. It is extremely practical, full of checklists and other tools to help pastors and other leaders understand (and explain) this way of providing congregational care. The Implementation Guide also includes a section focused on the crucial component of this ministry–the Congregational Care Minister, or CCM. This section fully describes the characteristics of CCM's, how to recruit people to this ministry, how to discern if candidates are a good fit, and how to conduct the CCM training over a multi-week period. It details the critical information CCM's must know, and the behaviors and habits they must practice in order to be effective. Note that the companion book, The Caring Congregation Ministry: Care Minister's Manual, is required for the CCM training. It serves as a training workbook, which then becomes the CCM's personal reference manual.




Traditional European Breads


Book Description

This text comprehensively covers the rituals, traditions and receipts of ancestral processes of bread making from multiple countries, including the scientific and technological character of the science of bread making and sourdough biotechnology. Individual chapters cover the scientific aspects of bread making in different cultures and traditions as well as the technological phenomena occurring during the bread making process, utilizing the full network of SOURDOMICS from the COST initiative. Pictures and illustrations are used to explain the science behind bread making processes and the cultural, historical and traditional elements associated with bread making in multiple countries. Authored by bread making experts from the breadth of Europe, the process of bread fermentation in each country and region is covered in detail. The traditions surrounding bread making are simply the empirical know-how passed between generations, and this book's main purpose is to perpetuate these traditions and know-how. Provides a description of the culture of European peoples with respect to the technology of bread making and sourdough biotechnology; Explains the process of bread fermentation using simple language combined with scientific rigor; High quality pictures and illustrations enrich the scientific and cultural elements mentioned in each chapter.