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› Find signed collectible books: 'Better Together: Restoring the American Community'
In his acclaimed bestselling book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert Putnam described a thirty-year decline in America's social institutions. The book ended with the hope that new forms of social connection might be invented in order to revive our communities.
In Better Together, Putnam and longtime civic activist Lewis Feldstein describe some of the diverse locations and most compelling ways in which civic renewal is taking place today. In response to civic crises and local problems, they say, hardworking, committed people are reweaving the social fabric all across America, often in innovative ways that may turn out to be appropriate for the twenty-first century.
Better Together is a book of stories about people who are building communities to solve specific problems. The examples Putnam and Feldstein describe span the country from big cities such as Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Chicago to the Los Angeles suburbs, small Mississippi and Wisconsin towns, and quiet rural areas. The projects range from the strictly local to that of the men and women of UPS, who cover the nation. Bowling Alone looked at America from a broad and general perspective. Better Together takes us into Catherine Flannery's Roxbury, Massachusetts, living room, a UPS loading dock in Greensboro, North Carolina, a Philadelphia classroom, the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, naval shipyard, and a Bay Area Web site.
We meet activists driven by their visions, each of whom has chosen to succeed by building community: Mexican Americans in the Rio Grande Valley who want paved roads, running water, and decent schools; Harvard University clerical workers searching for respect and improved working conditions; Waupun, Wisconsin, schoolchildren organizing to improve safety at a local railroad crossing; and merchants in Tupelo, Mississippi, joining with farmers to improve their economic status. As the stories in Better Together demonstrate, bringing people together by building on personal relationships remains one of the most effective strategies to enhance America's social health. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Better Together: Restoring the American Community'
In his acclaimed Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam describes the United States as a nation in which we have become increasingly disconnected from one another and in which our social structures have disintegrated. But in the final chapter of that book he detects hopeful signs of civic renewal. In Better Together Putnam and coauthor Lewis Feldstein tell the inspiring stories of people who are reweaving the social fabric by bringing their own communities together or building bridges to others.
Better Together examines how people across the country are inventing new forms of social activism and community renewal. An arts program in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, brings together shipyard workers and their gentrified neighbors; a deteriorating, crime-ridden neighborhood in Boston is transformed by a determined group of civic organizers; an online "virtual" community in San Francisco allows its members to connect with each other as well as the larger group; in Wisconsin schoolchildren learn how to participate in the political process to benefit their town. As our society grows increasingly diverse, say Putnam and Feldstein, it's more important than ever to grow "social capital," whether by traditional or more innovative means. The people profiled in Better Together are doing just that, and their stories illustrate the extraordinary power of social networks for enabling people to improve their lives and the lives of those around them. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality'
I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve...I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened.In Donald Miller's early years, he was vaguely familiar with a distant God. But when he came to know Jesus Christ, he pursued the Christian life with great zeal. Within a few years he had a successful ministry that ultimately left him feeling empty, burned out, and, once again, far away from God. In this intimate, soul-searching account, Miller describes his remarkable journey back to a culturally relevant, infinitely loving God. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community'
Once we bowled in leagues, usually after work; but no longer. This seemingly small phenomenon symbolizes a significant social change that Robert Putnam has identified and describes in this brilliant volume, "Bowling Alone."
Drawing on vast new data from the Roper Social and Political Trends and the DDB Needham Life Style -- surveys that report in detail on Americans' changing behavior over the past twenty-five years -- Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and social structures, whether the PTA, church, recreation clubs, political parties, or bowling leagues. Our shrinking access to the "social capital" that is the reward of communal activity and community sharing is a serious threat to our civic and personal health.
Putnam's groundbreaking work shows how social bonds are the most powerful predictor of life satisfaction. For example, he reports that getting married is the equivalent of quadrupling your income and attending a club meeting regularly is the equivalent of doubling your income. The loss of social capital is felt in critical ways: Communities with less social capital have lower educational performance and more teen pregnancy, child suicide, low birth weight, and prenatal mortality. Social capital is also a strong predictor of crime rates and other measures of neighborhood quality of life, as it is of our health: In quantitative terms, if you both smoke and belong to no groups, it's a close call as to which is the riskier behavior.
A hundred years ago, at the turn of the last century, America's stock of social capital was at an ebb, reduced by urbanization, industrialization, and vast immigration thatuprooted Americans from their friends, social institutions, and families, a situation similar to today's. Faced with this challenge, the country righted itself. Within a few decades, a range of organizations was created, from the Red Cross, Boy Scouts, and YWCA to Hadassah and the Knights of Columbus and the Urban League. With these and many more cooperative societies we rebuilt our social capital.
We can learn from the experience of those decades, Putnam writes, as we work to rebuild our eroded social capital. It won't happen without the concerted creativity and energy of Americans nationwide.
Like defining works from the past that have endured -- such as "The Lonely Crowd" and "The Affluent Society" -- and like C. Wright Mills, Richard Hofstadter, Betty Friedan, David Riesman, Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson, and Theodore Roszak, Putnam has identified a central crisis at the heart of our society and suggests what we can do. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Building a Church of Small Groups: A Place Where Nobody Stands Alone'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Careless Society: Community and Its Counterfeits'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology'
Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places reunites spirituality and theology in a cultural context where these two vital facets of Christian faith have been rent asunder. Lamenting the vacuous, often pagan nature of contemporary American spirituality, Eugene Peterson here firmly grounds spirituality once more in Trinitarian theology and offers a clear, practical statement of what it means to actually live out the Christian life.
Writing in the conversational style that he is well known for, Peterson boldly sweeps out the misunderstandings that clutter conversations on spiritual theology and refurnishes the subject only with what is essential. As Peterson shows, spiritual theology, in order to be at once biblical and meaningful, must remain sensitive to ordinary life, present the Christian gospel, follow the narrative of Scripture, and be rooted in the "fear of the Lord" -- in short, spiritual theology must be about God and not about us.
The foundational book in a five-volume series on spiritual theology emerging from Peterson's pen, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places provides the conceptual and directional help we all need to live the Christian gospel well and maturely in the conditions that prevail in the church and world today. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Church Re-Imagined: The Spiritual Formation of People in Communities of Faith'
The Spiritual Formation of People in Communities of Faith. This book isn't about quick-fix methods or bulleted, how-to lists. And it's certainly not a dry lecture about a heady theological topic. Instead this book is about striving, about trying, about experimenting with the idea that the old ways of approaching spiritual formation may not be the only avenues toward living lives in harmony with God in our day. Inside these pages you'll spend a full week with Solomon's Porch---a holistic, missional, Christian community in Minneapolis---and get a front row seat at their gatherings, meetings, and meals. Along the way, you'll also discover what spiritual formation looks like in a church community that moves beyond education based practices by including worship, physicality, dialogue, hospitality, belief, creativity, and service as means toward spiritual formation rather than mere appendices to it. Specifically, you'll get a glimpse into the lives of six people from Solomon's Porch and track their growth through their journals as they wrestle with various approaches to spiritual development. Church Re-Imagined is ideal for thinkers, pastors, church leaders, and anyone else seeking fresh ways of experiencing life with God. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cohousing : A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Coming Community'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Community & Growth: Our Pilgrimage Together'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Community and Growth'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Community and the Politics of Place'
Thomas Jefferson envisioned a nation of citizens deeply involved in public life. Today Americans are lamenting the erosion of his ideal. What happened in the intervening centuries? Daniel Kemmis argues that our loss of capacity for public life (which impedes our ability to resolve crucial issues) parallels our loss of a sense of place. A renewed sense of inhabitation, he maintains of community rooted in place and of people dwelling in that place in a practiced waycan shape politics into a more cooperative and more humanly satisfying enterprise, producing better people, better communities, and better places.
The author emphasizes the importance of place by analyzing problems and possibilities of public life in a particular place those northern states whose settlement marked the end of the old frontier. National efforts to keep citizens apart by encouraging them to develop open country and rely upon impersonal, procedural methods for public problems have bred stalemate, frustration, and alienation. As alternatives he suggests how western patterns of inhabitation might engender a more cooperative, face-to-face practice of public life.
Community and the Politics of Place also examines our ambivalence about the relationship between cities and rural areas and about the role of corporations in public life. The book offers new insight into the relationship between politics and economics and addresses the question of whether the nation-state is an appropriate entity for the practice of either discipline. The author draws upon the growing literature of civic republicanism for both a language and a vantage point from which to address problems in American public life, but he criticizes that literature for its failure to consider place.
Though its focus on a single region lends concreteness to its discussions, Community and the Politics of Place promotes a better understanding of the quality of public life today in all regions of the United States.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities'
There's been a marked shift in the philosophy of developing successful Web sites. The technologies (HTML, JavaScript, JavaServer Pages) no longer occupy center stage. Rather, functional objectives and the communities that grow up around them seem to be the main ingredient in Web site success. In her carefully reasoned and well-written Community Building on the Web, Amy Jo Kim explains why communities form and grow. More importantly, she shows (with references to many examples) how you can make your site a catalyst for community growth--and profit in the process. From marketing schemes like Amazon.com's Associates program to The Motley Fool's system of rating members' bulletin-board postings, this book covers all the popular strategies for bringing people in and retaining them.
Nine core strategies form the foundation of Kim's recommendations for site builders, serving as the organizational backbone of this book. The strategies generally make sense, and they seem to apply to all kinds of communities, cyber and otherwise. (One advocates the establishment of regular events around which community life can organize itself.) Some parts of Kim's message may seem like common sense, but such a coherent discussion of what defines a community and how it can be made to thrive is still helpful.
Read this book to help crystallize your thinking about community building, and to review strategies that work for real sites already. --David Wall
Topics covered: Strategies for designing Web sites around the needs of particular groups of people, attracting those people to your site, and motivating them to return frequently. Community identification, member profiling, community leadership, and organization (of information, time, and relationships) all receive ample coverage. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Connecting'
In this groundbreaking work, Larry Crabb shows readers how to build intimate, healing connections with others-mini-communities where God's power to heal souls is quickened and released through individuals' compassionate, authentic relationships with others.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Connecting Church: Beyond Small Groups to Authentic Community'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Connecting: Healing Ourselves and Our Relationships'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Created for Community: Connecting Christian Belief With Christian Living'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Creating Community'
Small Groups That Succeed.
Small groups are the key to impacting lives in your church. But a healthy small-group environmentone that fosters meaningful, lasting connectionsdoesnt just happen.
So pull up a chair. Lets talk about how to make it happen.
Bill Willits and bestselling author Andy Stanley share their successful approach, which has resulted in nearly eight thousand adults becoming involved in small groups at North Point Community Church in Atlanta . Simply put, the five principles clearly described here have passed the test.
This is not just another book about community; this is a book about strategystrategy that builds a small group culture. Creating Community shares clear and simple principles to help people connect into meaningful relationships. The kind God desires for each of us. The kind He uses to change our lives.
Put this proven method to work in your ministry and enjoy the tangible resultsGods people doing life TOGETHER.
The small-group program at North Point Community Church is not an appendage; it is not a program we tacked on to an existing structure. It is part of our lifestyle. We think groups. We organize groups. We are driven by groups. Creating Community contains our blueprint for success. And I believe it has the potential power to revolutionize your own small-group ministry! Andy Stanley
Story Behind the Book
Creating Community flows out of the North Point Community Church story. The message here is not just some new small group program, but reflects a passion lived out and implemented in their church from the very beginning. Even with phenomenal growth, the church has stayed true to its commitment to small groups and has fine-tuned its ministry process into one of the most unique and effective models in churches today. Andy Stanley and Bill Willits have put these successful principles into this new book with the hope and prayer that pastors, churches, and leader with put them into practice. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Creating Community Anywhere: Finding Support and Connection in a Fragmented World'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Creating Community Anywhere: Finding Support and Connection in a Fragmented World'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities'
Jane Jacobs sets out to produce an attack on current city-planning and rebuilding in America and to introduce new principles by which these should be governed. Throughout the post-war period, planners temperamentally unsympathetic to cities have been let loose on the urban environment. Inspired by the ideals of the Garden City or Le Corbusier's Radiant City, they have dreamt up ambitious projects based on self-contained neighbourhoods, super-blocks, rigid "scientific" plans and endless acres of grass. Yet they seldom stop to look at what actually works on the ground. The real vitality of cities, argues Jacobs, lies in their diversity, architectural variety, teeming street life and human scale. It is only when we appreciate such fundamental realities that we can hope to create cities that are safe, interesting and economically viable, as well as places that people want to live in. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Different Drum'
In his ground-breaking bestseller, The Road Less Traveled, Peck took readers on a personal journey of psychological and spiritual development. In his new national bestseller, The Different Drum, he takes the next step--to the larger experience of living and working in community. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures'
The "emerging church" movement is perhaps the most significant church trend of our day. The emerging church offers and encourages a new way of doing and being the church. While it largely resonates with an eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-old audience--the first fully postmodern generation--it is also gaining popularity with older Christians and encompasses a broad array of traditional and contemporary churches. Emerging Churches explores this movement and provides insight into its success.
Filled with the latest research and interesting, anecdotal testimonies from those on the cutting edge of ministry, this book provides pastors, church leaders, and interested readers with an insightful glimpse into the thriving churches of today--and tomorrow. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts and How They Get You Through the Day'
A look at informal gathering places--coffe shops, community centers, beauty parlors, general stores, bars and others. The author considers their importance to our communities and the reasons for their gradual disappearance. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Habits of the Heart'
Habits of the Heart is required reading for anyone who wants to understand how religion contributes to and detracts from America's common good. An instant classic upon publication in 1985, it was reissued in 1996 with a new introduction describing the book's continuing relevance for a time when the country's racial and class divisions are being continually healed and ripped open again by religious people. Habits of the Heart describes the social significance of faiths ranging from "Sheilaism" (practiced by a California nurse named Sheila) to conservative Christianity. It's thoroughly readable, theologically respectful, and academically irreproachable. --Michael Joseph Gross [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life'
Habits of the Heart is required reading for anyone who wants to understand how religion contributes to and detracts from America's common good. An instant classic upon publication in 1985, it was reissued in 1996 with a new introduction describing the book's continuing relevance for a time when the country's racial and class divisions are being continually healed and ripped open again by religious people. Habits of the Heart describes the social significance of faiths ranging from "Sheilaism" (practiced by a California nurse named Sheila) to conservative Christianity. It's thoroughly readable, theologically respectful, and academically irreproachable. --Michael Joseph Gross [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin And Spread of Nationalism'
What makes people love and die for nations, as well as hate and kill in their name? While many studies have been written on nationalist political movements, the sense of nationality - the personal and cultural feeling of belonging to the nation - has not received proportionate attention. In this widely acclaimed work, Benedict Anderson examines the creation and global spread of the 'imagined communities' of nationality. Anderson explores the processes that created these communities: the territorialisation of religious faiths, the decline of antique kingship, the interaction between capitalism and print, the development of vernacular languages-of-state, and changing conceptions of time. He shows how an originary nationalism born in the Americas was modularly adopted by popular movements in Europe, by the imperialist powers, and by the anti-imperialist resistances in Asia and Africa. This revised edition includes two new chapters, one of which discusses the complex role of the colonialist state's mindset in the development of Third World nationalism, while the other analyses the processes by which all over the world, nations came to imagine themselves as old. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Irresistible Revolution: Living As an Ordinary Radical'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us'
The First Lady, a longtime child advocate, expresses her concerns for the children of today's world and offers her ideas for developing our society into one that values children's unique contributions. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Life Together'
After his martyrdom at the hands of the Gestapo in 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer continued his witness in the hearts of Christians around the world. His Letters and Papers from Prison became a prized testimony to Christian faith and courage, read by thousands. Now in Life Together we have Pastor Bonhoeffer's experience of Christian community. This story of a unique fellowship in an underground seminary during the Nazi years reads like one of Paul's letters. It gives practical advice on how life together in Christ can be sustained in families and groups. The role of personal prayer, worship in common, everyday work, and Christian service is treated in simple, almost biblical, words. Life Together is bread for all who are hungry for the real life of Christian fellowship.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Life Together: A Discussion of Christian Fellowship/Leaders Guide'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Life Together/the Classic Exploration of Faith in Community'
A beautiful gift edition of Bonhoeffer's classic work on the meaning and importance of Christian community. This inspiring account of a unique fellowship in an underground seminary during the Nazi years in Germany reads like one of Paul's letters and gives timeless advice on how life together in Christ can be sustained in families and groups. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Listening Hearts: Discerning Call in Community'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Making Sense of Church: Eavesdropping on Emerging Conversations About God, Community, and Culture'
Samplings of online discussions about God, truth, and church---from theOoze.com Our culture is rapidly changing and people are searching for new models and paradigms to find meaning in their lives. As in all transitional periods, this search takes place in grass-roots conversations where the 'new' is taking form. No other place so uniquely captures this struggle more than the message boards at theOoze.com, the premier melting pot of emerging spiritual conversation. Making Sense of Church is a snapshot of this 'community conversation' as it tries to make sense of God in the emerging worldview. It represents a gathering of individuals with different points of view, theologies, life contexts, and feelings. Author Spencer Burke, creator of theOoze.com, provides the framework writing for each chapter and acts as a 'guide' to the accompanying e-mail postings that supplement the chapters. Subjects discussed include: * Authentic Community * Experiential Worship * The Internet and God * Art as a Vehicle for Communicating Truth * Spirituality and Sexuality * What Is the Church? * What Is Postmodernism? [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools and Ideas for the Twenty-First Century'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Cultural Setting'
Robert Bank's widely read "Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in their Cultural Setting" is once again available to laypeole, pastors and scholars alike. In this extensively revised edition Banks has rewritten chapters for clarity, taken into account recent scholarship on Paul's writings, updated and expanded the bibliography, and added an index. This new edition retains, however, all the freshness and vitality of the original.
"The book draws fully upon the wealth of recent scholarly analysis of the New Testament churches, but in such a skilled way that the picture is not buried in learning, but brought to life for present-day readers. . . . People will be startled to find how much of modern church life has departed form the New Testament spirit. And yet the modern communities still possess in the New Testament, as illuminated through a book like this, the sources from which church life can be reawakened to the community consequences of accepting the Pauline gospel."
" Edwin A. Judge, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
"It is good news that Robert Banks's "Paul's Idea of Community" is once more available, now in a thoroughly revised, expanded edition. Convinced that Paul's distinctive contribution to Christianity is his idea of community, Banks demonstrates how this notion informs Paul's instruction to his churches. . . . [I]t is striking how naturally discussions of such topics as Paul's teaching on freedom and on eschatology fall within the purview of this stimulating book."
" Abraham J. Malherbe, Yale University [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Reimagining Spiritual Formation: A Week in the Life of an Experimental Church'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony'
In this bold and visionary book, two leading Christian thinkers explore the "alien" status of Christians in today's world and offer a compelling new vision of how the Christian church can regain its vitality, battle its malaise, reclaim its capacity to nourish souls, and stand firmly against the illusions, pretensions, and eroding values of today's world. Hauerwas and Willimon call for a radical new understanding of the church. By renouncing the emphasis on personal psychological categories, they offer a vision of the church as a colony, a holy nation, a people, a family standing for sharply focused values in a devalued world. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Safest Place on Earth'
In today's frenetic society, people rarely develop intimate friendships. Instead, they spend their lives essentially disconnected from others, rushing through life content with brief visits and casual conversations. But what if one were to develop a community, a spiritual community, of people who walked with and supported each other through life's journey? A community of real friends who listened to each other's personal tragedies without merely trying to fix the problems, who encouraged and nurtured each other's strengths, and who accepted people for who they really are, instead of the image they try to portray. In The Safest Place on Earth, Larry Crabb explores such a place, where God can heal disconnected people and allow them to reconnect with each other and, ultimately, with Him. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Search to Belong: Rethinking Intimacy, Community, and Small Groups'
A practical guide for those struggling to build a community of believers in a culture that wants to experience belonging over believing Who is my neighbor? Who belongs to me? To whom do I belong? These are timeless questions that guide the church to its fundamental calling. Today terms like neighbor, family, and congregation are being redefined. People are searching to belong in new places and experiences. The church needs to adapt its interpretations, definitions, and language to make sense in the changing culture. This book equips congregations and church leaders with tools to: * Discern the key ingredients people look for in community * Understand the use of space as a key element for experiencing belonging and community * Develop the 'chemical compound' that produces an environment for community to spontaneously emerge * Discover how language promotes specific spatial belonging and then use this knowledge to build an effective vocabulary for community development * Create an assessment tool for evaluating organizational and personal community health [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Seek'

› Find signed collectible books: 'Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as If People Mattered'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered'
Nothing less than a full-scale assault on conventional economic wisdom. Newsweek
One the 100 most influential books published since World War II
The Times Literary Supplement
Hailed as an eco-bible by Time magazine, E.F. Schumachers riveting, richly researched statement on sustainability has become more relevant and vital with each year since its initial groundbreaking publication during the 1973 energy crisis. A landmark statement against bigger is better industrialism, Schumachers Small Is Beautiful paved the way for twenty-first century books on environmentalism and economics, like Jeffrey Sachss The End of Poverty, Paul Hawkens Natural Capitalism, Mohammad Yuniss Banker to the Poor, and Bill McKibbens Deep Economy. This timely reissue offers a crucial message for the modern world struggling to balance economic growth with the human costs of globalization.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Small Is Beautiful: Economics as If People Mattered'
Small is Beautiful is the perfect antidote to the economics of globalization. As relevant today as when it was first published, this is a landmark set of essays on humanistic economics. This 25th anniversary edition brings Schumacher's ideas into focus for the end-of-the-century by adding commentaries by contemporary thinkers who have been influenced by Schumacher. They analyze the impact of his philosophy on current political and economic thought. Small is Beautiful is the classic of common-sense economics upon which many recent trends in our society are founded. This is economics from the heart rather than from just the bottom line. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution'
From Tokyo to Helsinki, Manhattan to Manila, Howard Rheingold takes us on a journey around the world for a preview of the next techno-cultural shift-a shift he predicts will be as dramatic as the widespread adoption of the PC in the 1980s and the Internet in the 1990s. The coming wave, says Rheingold, is the result of super-efficient mobile communications-cellular phones, personal digital assistants, and wireless-paging and Internet-access devices that will allow us to connect with anyone, anywhere, anytime.From the amusing ("Lovegetty" devices in Japan that light up when a person with the right date-potential characteristics appears in the vicinity) to the extraordinary (the overthrow of a repressive regime in the Philippines by political activists who mobilized by forwarding text messages via cell phones), Rheingold gives examples of the fundamentally new ways in which people are already engaging in group or collective action. He also considers the dark side of this phenomenon, such as the coordination of terrorist cells, threats to privacy, and the ability to incite violent behavior.Applying insights from sociology, artificial intelligence, engineering, and anthropology, Rheingold offers a penetrating perspective on the brave new convergence of pop culture, cutting-edge technology, and social activism. At the same time, he reminds us that, as with other technological revolutions, the real impact of mobile communications will come not from the technology itself but from how people use it, resist it, adapt to it, and ultimately use it to transform themselves, their communities, and their institutions. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Spirit of Community : Rights, Responsibilities, and the Communitarian Agenda'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Spirit of Community: The Reinvention of American Society'
A regular guest on "The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour" and NPR, Etzioni explores the rapidly growing grass-roots political movement that calls for a new balance between individual rights and social responsibilty. "Shows us . . . how a philosophy based on shared values and mutual understanding can restore our nation's promise and moral leadership."--Sen. Bill Bradley. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope'
Ten years ago, bell hooks astonished readers with Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Now comes Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope - a powerful, visionary work that will enrich our teaching and our lives. Combining critical thinking about education with autobiographical narratives, hooks invites readers to extend the discourse of race, gender, class and nationality beyond the classroom into everyday situations of learning. bell hooks writes candidly about her own experiences. Teaching, she explains, can happen anywhere, any time - not just in college classrooms but in churches, in bookstores, in homes where people get together to share ideas that affect their daily lives.
In Teaching Community bell hooks seeks to theorize from the place of the positive, looking at what works. Writing about struggles to end racism and white supremacy, she makes the useful point that "No one is born a racist. Everyone makes a choice." Teaching Community tells us how we can choose to end racism and create a beloved community. hooks looks at many issues-among them, spirituality in the classroom, white people looking to end racism, and erotic relationships between professors and students. Spirit, struggle, service, love, the ideals of shared knowledge and shared learning - these values motivate progressive social change.
Teachers of vision know that democratic education can never be confined to a classroom. Teaching - so often undervalued in our society -- can be a joyous and inclusive activity. bell hooks shows the way. "When teachers teach with love, combining care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust, we are often able to enter the classroom and go straight to the heart of the matter, which is knowing what to do on any given day to create the best climate for learning."
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Theology for the Community of God'
This proven systematic theology represents the very best in evangelical theology. Stanley Grenz presents the traditional themes of Christian doctrine--God, humankind, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the church, and the last things--all within an emphasis on Gods central program for creation, namely, the establishment of community. Masterfully blending biblical, historical, and contemporary concerns, Grenzs respected work provides a coherent vision of the faith that is both intellectually satisfying and expressible in Christian living. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Truly the Community: Romans 12 and How to Be the Church'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier'
Cyberculture authority Howard Rheingold was the first to write about online communities in this style that is part-travelogue and part-anthropological guide. This groundbreaking classic explores the entire virtual community, beginning with a selective but probing look at the author's original online home, The Well. Rheingold relates plenty of anecdotes that demonstrate the upsides of online life, such as how he was able to get information on removing a tick from his child before his doctor could respond to his phone call. But the bulk of the material relates to how individuals interact online much as they do in a face-to-face community.
Rheingold speaks to how both friendships and enmities are formed online and how people come together to support each other through misfortune. He gives the example of how computer-moderated communication enabled members of one Well community to send vital medical aid to a friend hospitalized halfway around the world. Rheingold goes on to show how communities can form by various electronic communication methods, using the conferencing system of The Well as one example. He also examines how people interact through mailing lists, live chat, and the fantasy cyberenvironments of online role-playing games. In the process, he questions what kind of relationships can really be formed in a medium where people can change their apparent identity at will.
This book questions whether a distinction between "virtual" communities and "real-life" communities is entirely valid. The Virtual Community argues that real relationships happen and real communities develop when people communicate upon virtual common ground. Rheingold also shares his far-reaching knowledge of how technology effects our social constructs. If you are involved in an online community, here is your cultural heritage. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Watership Down'
Watership Down has been a staple of high-school English classes for years. Despite the fact that it's often a hard sell at first (what teenager wouldn't cringe at the thought of 400-plus pages of talking rabbits?), Richard Adams's bunny-centric epic rarely fails to win the love and respect of anyone who reads it, regardless of age. Like most great novels, Watership Down is a rich story that can be read (and reread) on many different levels. The book is often praised as an allegory, with its analogs between human and rabbit culture (a fact sometimes used to goad skeptical teens, who resent the challenge that they won't "get" it, into reading it), but it's equally praiseworthy as just a corking good adventure.
The story follows a warren of Berkshire rabbits fleeing the destruction of their home by a land developer. As they search for a safe haven, skirting danger at every turn, we become acquainted with the band and its compelling culture and mythos. Adams has crafted a touching, involving world in the dirt and scrub of the English countryside, complete with its own folk history and language (the book comes with a "lapine" glossary, a guide to rabbitese). As much about freedom, ethics, and human nature as it is about a bunch of bunnies looking for a warm hidey-hole and some mates, Watership Down will continue to make the transition from classroom desk to bedside table for many generations to come. --Paul Hughes [via]
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