Contact has begun, yet it is not Contact of a beneficial form for humanity. We are facing an alien Intervention into human affairs and this represents a threat to our freedom and survival as a race. And yet it also represents a great opportunity. Our isolation in the universe is now over, and humanity's emergence into the Greater Community has begun. This is perhaps the greatest event in human history and it is happening right now, in our time. Yet we are unaware and unprepared. In addition, Contact is occurring at a time when we are racing towards a dangerous and uncertain future in our world. Humanity is outstripping the Earth of its life-giving resources at an alarming rate, changing the climate of the world and destroying the natural environment as never before. At the same time, political, social and religious conflict and division are escalating, fracturing the human family when instead we must be working to find a real and functioning unity to ensure our collective survival. We are divided, and this makes us vulnerable to outside influence and intervention from the universe around us.
Are you really ready for change? Are you prepared for a world changing as fast as you can read this sentence? Most leaders say they are prepared for the future, yet many organizations and communities are doing things in the same old way they’ve been working for decades. We’re living on the precipice of a new era in human history. Preparing For A World That Doesn’t Exist - Yet offers an approach to getting ready for an emerging society that will be increasingly fast paced, interconnected, interdependent, and complex. In Preparing For A World That Doesn’t Exist - Yet, you will learn about an emerging Second Enlightenment and the capacities you’ll need to achieve success in this new, fast-evolving world. Higher education, health and wellness, governance and the economy are transforming in ways few of us could have imagined ten or even five years ago. In this book, you’ll get the skills you need to ride the wave of the future and the perspective you’ll need to be ready to catch the next wave, too. Planners, physicians, government and higher-education leaders are using the principles and capacities described in this book to create better organizations, and best of all communities of the future that will lead to a planet that can thrive. Join them in looking at the future with excitement and anticipation.
Are children safe at your church? What precautions have you taken to ensure they won't be abused? Do you know how to recognize the signs of child abuse and neglect? What should you do if you suspect a child in your church or neighborhood is being abused or neglected? If you aren't sure how to answer those questions, you need Let the Children Come, a new book from Herald Press that helps churches and church-related ministries learn how to keep children safe and strengthen families. In the context of the Bible and faith, Let the Children Come helps Christians learn about their role in ending child abuse and neglect in all communities: church, home, extended family, neighborhood, school, work. Each chapter contains real-life stories, discussion questions and action items; the appendix includes prayers, readings and exercises for use in adult education. About the author Jeanette Harder is on faculty at the Grace Abbott School of Social Work at the University of Nebraska of Omaha, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses. She is a member of First Mennonite Church in Lincoln, Nebraska. Endorsements "A valuable tool for helping make our homes, churches and communities safer places for children." —Carolyn Holderread Heggen, author Sexual Abuse in Christian Homes and Churches "In clear, readable, and quite practical terms, Harder provides fundamental resources for understanding and taking seriously our responsibility to protect our children." —David A. Sherwood, Editor-in-Chief, Social Work & Christianity "Weaving biblical texts, social research, and stories, Let the Children Come arrives at a compelling conclusion: the faith community must respond to child abuse .. . . there is no excuse for every church not to own a copy and to share it with staff, volunteers, and parents." —Beth A. Swagman, Director of Safe Church Ministry for Christian Reformed Church in NA "Let the Children Come offers valuable equipping tools for all congregations." —Jane Woelk, Program Coordinator Voices for Non-Violence, MCC Manitoba About the book In the context of the Bible and faith, Let the Children Come will help Christians learn about their role in ending child abuse and neglect in all communities: church, home, extended family, neighborhood, school, work. Each chapter contains real-life stories, discussion questions and action items; the appendix includes prayers, readings and exercises for use in adult education. From the author "Sadly, children are being hurt and killed every day through abuse and neglect. While the church would like to believe that 'it doesn't happen here,' research and experience tell us that it does. Members of our faith communities need training to recognize the signs of abuse and to know how to respond. Faith communities need to be reminded of their role in protecting children, strengthening families, and ending child abuse and neglect." Read a press release about the book Read a feature article by the author Read the full list of endorsements Table of Contents
Are we prepared for Christ's return? How will He return? When will He return? Where will He return? Will Christ's name be different when He returns? Compare your views with those held by a Christian and a Baha'i as they study Scripture together.
In this second volume of Wisdom from the Greater Community, you will take another great step towards learning what Knowledge and Wisdom mean in the larger arena of life that is called the Greater Community. This will bring you to a new beginning and a new threshold, a beginning and a threshold that were never available before to humanity. Humanity is now at the threshold of the Greater Community, of which it has always been a part. Now humanity has an opportunity to learn its true heritage, the nature of its evolution and its greater challenge and promise of life within a larger arena that contains intelligent life in uncountable forms and expressions. You are here at this new beginning. This is no accident. You were sent here for this purpose. This is the meaning of your being here. The world’s emergence into the Greater Community is the context within which you can fully experience and learn to express the nature of your greater purpose and your greater identity. Humanity is emerging into the Greater Community. Greater Community forces are in the world today. This is the reality in which you now live, and for this you will need a greater Knowledge and a greater Wisdom. You already possess this Knowledge within you, for the Creator has endowed you with the Knowing Mind, which you will need to experience and to call upon increasingly as the revelation of your real purpose and the meaning of your existence here unfold step by step. In this second volume of Wisdom from the Greater Community, we introduce to you new thresholds of learning, new arenas of application and a greater opportunity to experience the reality of Knowledge and the importance of its expression and contribution in the world. Here you will have the opportunity to begin to learn about the Greater Community, about the mental environment, about the meaning of discernment and discretion, and the great application of The Greater Community Way of Knowledge as it pertains to every aspect of your life as you know it today and as you will need to know it in the future. We bring this great Teaching to you from the Creator, for this Teaching represents a new testament of the Creator’s presence and will within the world and a new expression of your Divinity and your intrinsic association and relationship with life around you. We bring with us a promise, a confirmation and a great challenge. The promise is that your purpose and your calling in the world may become fully realized within the context of the world’s emergence into the Greater Community. Here you will finally come to understand why you have a unique nature and a unique design. This will enable you to discover who your Designer is. The confirmation is that you will come to realize what you know and what you have always known, and this will restore to you your self-respect, your ability to love and the greater strength that has been given to you. And, yet, we bring you a challenge as well, a challenge to learn what Knowledge and Wisdom mean within the Greater Community and why they are necessary both to heal the great problems that humanity faces within the world and to face the greater challenge of encountering intelligent life from the Greater Community. Come with us, then. Come to receive and come to give. Come to learn and come with the willingness to experience and to explore with an open mind. The Greater Community Way of Knowledge is not here to fulfill the past or even to explain the past. It is here to bring you into the present and to prepare you for the future. This is why you have come into the world, and this will give meaning and direction to all that you have done thus far. The Greater Community Way of Knowledge will give you a new foundation to fully realize why you are here and who sent you.
There are an endless number of disasters to worry about. Preparing for every possible disaster leaves you with a long, disorganized list of things to buy or do, which may not match personal needs. Preparation can seem unattainable. We check off the first few items from our list, give up, and hope the zombies eat us first. It's time to start preparing with one simple change: Prepare for disruptions, not disasters. It doesn't matter whether a power outage was caused by a flood, backhoe, or grandma backing into a pole. Just prepare for the power outage! Preparing for a few disruptions will prepare you for any disaster. You really can prepare for everything. We prepare better when we prepare together. How to Prepare for Everything gives you a simple, step-by-step approach to prepare yourself and your neighbors for emergencies, accidents, adventures, and life's ups and downs. This book will give you: More hope for the future. A personalized preparation plan, gap analysis, and 72-hour kit plan. A healthy way to talk about preparation, without fear. Stronger relationships and a list of people in your support system. Plans to not just survive, but to help your neighbors. Training to share a community preparation workshop. Prepare for disruptions. Prepare together. Prepare for everything.
School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Preparing Educators and Improving Schools addresses a fundamental question in education today: How will colleges and universities prepare future teachers, administrators, counselors, and other education professionals to conduct effective programs of family and community involvement that contribute to students' success in school? The work of Joyce L. Epstein has advanced theories, research, policies, and practices of family and community involvement in elementary, middle, and high schools, districts, and states nationwide. In this second edition, she shows that there are new and better ways to organize programs of family and community involvement as essential components of district leadership and school improvement. THE SECOND EDITION OFFERS EDUCATORS AND RESEARCHERS: A framework for helping rising educators to develop comprehensive, goal-linked programs of school, family, andcommunity partnerships. A clear discussion of the theory of overlapping spheres of influence, which asserts that schools, families, and communitiesshare responsibility for student success in school. A historic overview and exploration of research on the nature and effects of parent involvement. Methods for applying the theory, framework, and research on partnerships in college course assignments, classdiscussions, projects and activities, and fi eld experiences. Examples that show how research-based approaches improve policies on partnerships, district leadership, andschool programs of family and community involvement. Definitive and engaging, School, Family, and Community Partnerships can be used as a main or supplementary text in courses on foundations of education methods of teaching, educational administration, family and community relations, contemporary issues in education, sociology of education, sociology of the family, school psychology, social work, education policy, and other courses that prepare professionals to work in schools and with families and students.
In the Greater Community of Worlds the idea of God is presented differently than it is in this world. In the Greater Community, the idea of God must be translatable from one society to another where the customs and the rituals, the ideas and the areas of specific application will be unique to each world’s spiritual awareness and devotional practices. All that can be translated is the pure experience of Knowledge—the experience of Universal Mind, profound awareness and total relationship. This is the experience which will be presented in this book—an experience of translatable spirituality that is shared between intelligent life everywhere. Its application is universal. Its experience is universal. Its communication is universal. The direction that it establishes for sentient beings everywhere is universal. Greater Community Spirituality encompasses a larger panorama of life and includes all that has been created here and beyond, in all dimensions, in all frameworks. So complete is it that you cannot fathom its Mystery, exhaust its Wisdom or penetrate its Knowledge. But you can be the recipient of these things, and you can translate them into your own experience and apply them here at great benefit to yourself and to others. The world is now emerging into a Greater Community of Worlds. Therefore, it is necessary for Greater Community Spirituality to be presented here to enable humanity to prepare mentally, emotionally and spiritually for the great change that is coming and the great opportunities that this change represents. To learn about the Greater Community, you must learn of its reality. This, then, is a blessing: that you may receive a Greater reality, a Greater religion and a Greater God.
In this companion to The Universal Christ, Richard Rohr and Patrick Boland offer forty reflections and practices exploring what it means to live “in Christ.” In his landmark book The Universal Christ, Richard Rohr articulated a transformative view of what it means to recognize Jesus as “Christ”—as a portrait of God’s constant, unfolding work in the world. Now, in partnership with Patrick Boland, a psychotherapist and member of Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation community, he invites readers to engage with the themes of the book through spiritual practice. Each reflection in this book draws on a key passage of The Universal Christ, paired with prayers, journal prompts, and embodied exercises that invite readers into a more personal encounter with the truth that the presence and compassion of the Christ are in every thing. Whether read daily for the season of Lent or explored over the course of a year, Every Thing Is Sacred is a hope-filled journey into the love at the heart of all things.
