"As a start or an addition to your library, few books would make a better choice than The Christian Educator's Handbook series offered by Baker Books. Noted Christian education authorities such as Kenneth Gangel, James Wilhoit, Howard Hendricks, and Robert Choun have edited or written these books. Their scope ranges from adult to children's education and covers spiritual formation, teaching, and family life ministries."--Christian Education Counselor
Evan Howard, a noted authority on Christian spirituality, provides a holistic, accessible, and informed introduction to Christian spiritual formation written from a broadly evangelical perspective. Howard joins Scripture with themes of community, spirit, formation, and mission in a single integrative guide. The book includes helpful features such as figures, charts, chapter overviews, and formation-focused questions. Its evangelical-ecumenical and global perspectives will appeal to a wide audience. Resources for professors and students are available through Baker Academic's Textbook eSources.
Most books on spiritual formation focus on the individual. But spiritual formation is at the heart of the church's whole purpose for existence. It must be a central task for the church to carry out Christ's mission in the world. This book offers an introduction to spiritual formation set squarely in the local church. The first edition has been well received and widely used as a textbook. The second edition has been updated throughout, incorporates findings from positive psychology, and reflects an Augustinian formation perspective. Foreword by Dallas Willard.
Adele Calhoun's Spiritual Disciplines Handbook has become a standard for those who want to expand their knowledge of spiritual practices. Now this beloved resource has been revised throughout and expanded to include thirteen new disciplines along with a new preface by the author, giving us practical guidance in our continuing journey toward intimacy with Christ.
This book will deepen your regard for the church's task of didache, the act of teaching Christians. The chapters explore what the writers believe are several key biblical texts and themes for teaching, select doctrines of the church that inform teaching as a ministry, and features of teaching in the Lutheran tradition and its current practice. We authors address these matters with deep commitment to our shared Lutheran tradition, yet also with profound respect for what the Holy Spirit has done across the centuries in other orthodox traditions of the Great Church. Welcome to our conversation, a conversation the church has shared--though not without dispute--for centuries (from Chapter 1).
In this thought-provoking new volume, Susanne Johnson counters what she sees as "wrong-thinking" in much contemporary Christian education by offering forceful ideas about spiritual formation and faith development. First, she shows the "flabbiness" of much recent talk of spiritual formation in the church. She demonstrates the importance of learning about and achieving Christian formation instead. Second, she shows how the present theories of stages in faith development must be replaced by a perceptive understanding of the way persons actually learn and believe. Third, she replaces the popular focus on individual psychology with one that emphasizes the corporate nature of the church and the grace of God. This volume brings innovative ideas into the practical arena, where they can be applied by Christian educators in local churches. Christian Spiritual Formation in the Church and Classroom challenges the way the entire discipline is currently approached.
Building on the success of his 1992 collection Foundations of Ministry (over 17,000 sold), Michael Anthony offers Introducing Christian Education to fill the need in the C.E. curriculum for an introductory foundations textbook--one that provides an overview and understanding of the broad range of subjects included in C.E.--for college and seminary use. Thirty-one chapters are offered under the following sections: 1) Foundations of C.E.; 2) Developmental Perspectives of C.E.; 3) Educational Implications of C.E.; 4) Organization, Administration, and Leadership; 5) C.E. Applied to the Family; and 6) Specialized Ministries. Contributors include Robert PazmiƱo, Jim Wilhoit, Julie Gorman, Klaus Issler, and Ted Ward. FROM THE FOREWORD BY LESTER C. BLANK JR. Introducing Christian Education will become a major resource text for church leaders and Christian education leaders who are professors of Christian education. It will be a valuable resource in my personal library. The desired outcome will be Psalm 78:72: "He cared for them with a true heart and led them with skillful hands."