Advice on how to care for pastors' kids and allow them to find their own faith and identity. Pastors' kids are often burdened by others' expectations, but there is a wonderful solution, both at home and in the church: grace. In this revised, refreshed version of Barnabas Piper's best-known book, the author candidly shares his own experiences as son of pastor and bestselling author John Piper, offering a challenge to our churches and to the families at their very heart: how to care for pastors' kids and allow them to find their own faith and identity. Foreword by John Piper.
Memoir's of a Preacher's Kid is a journey through the life of a girl who searches to find herself and wants to be accepted. She recognizes the need to love herself first.
Born into an evangelical church family, Ronna rebels, believing she can walk away, unscathed. Ronna is forced to examine her joyless existence and find the courage to stand on her own. In the process, she falls in love with her own life.
The New York Times bestselling memoir about identity, love and understanding. Now a major motion picture starring Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, and Lucas Hedges, directed by Joel Edgerton. "Every sentence of the story will stir your soul" (O Magazine). The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small town Arkansas, as a young man Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality. When Garrard was a nineteen-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents, and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to “cure” him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends, and the God he had prayed to every day of his life. Through an institutionalized Twelve-Step Program heavy on Bible study, he was supposed to emerge heterosexual, ex-gay, cleansed of impure urges and stronger in his faith in God for his brush with sin. Instead, even when faced with a harrowing and brutal journey, Garrard found the strength and understanding to break out in search of his true self and forgiveness. By confronting his buried past and the burden of a life lived in shadow, Garrard traces the complex relationships among family, faith, and community. At times heart-breaking, at times triumphant, this memoir is a testament to love that survives despite all odds.
In The Pastor, author Eugene Peterson, translator of the multimillion-selling The Message, tells the story of how he started Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland and his gradual discovery of what it really means to be a pastor. Steering away from abstractions, Peterson challenges conventional wisdom regarding church marketing, mega pastors, and the church’s too-cozy relationship to American glitz and consumerism to present a simple, faith-based description of what being a minister means today. In the end, Peterson discovers that being a pastor boils down to “paying attention and calling attention to ‘what is going on now’ between men and women, with each other and with God.”
Long before Kevin Jennings began advocating to end anti-LGBT bias in schools, he was a victim of it. In Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son, Jennings traces the roots of his activism to his elementary school days in the conservative South, where "faggot" became more familiar to him than his own name. Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son is that rare memoir that is both a riveting personal story and an inside account of a critical chapter in our recent history. Creating safe schools for all youth is now a central part of the progressive agenda in American education—and Kevin Jennings is at the forefront of that fight. Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son earned an A- in Entertainment Weekly, was featured in Salon and The Advocate, and was called "a great read" by People.
It is the year 1899 and a new century is fast approaching. Robbie Hewitt intends to get in as much living as possible between now and the new year, but his antics eventually entangle him in a dangerous scheme--one that holds the life of a man in balance.
Is being a pastor's kid an asset or a liability in someone's life? I have lived on both sides of this perspective. As a bitter teen, I loved God but hated the church; I was loving people but hating "church people." What I had seen had ruined me...or had it? Might it have been the difference between dysfunction and destiny? Let me take you through my entire journey as a 3rd generation pastor's kid and let you peek into both sides of this PK issue. Was it tragedy or triumph? You decide. Residing in Santa Maria, CA, Rob and Cindy Litzinger pastor Church for Life, a multi-generational, multi-ethnic gathering of incredible people. Having an open door in their home, they have had a mix of adopted, foster, and natural children--currently 5 girls and a boy. Life is good.
Carl Braaten’s memoirs tell the story of his life as a theologian, from his early years as a missionary kid in Madagascar to his years of study at the universities of Paris, Harvard, Heidelberg, and Oxford to his decades of teaching. Throughout the book, he delves into the many theological movements, controversies, and personalities that shaped his thinking and writing. Braaten’s fight for the faith is reflected in his theological work―spoken and written―that tangles with the “isms” of the surrounding culture of American religion. Because of Christ is more than simply a biography; it is a chronicle of the chief theological conflicts of the twentieth century that put the integrity of the gospel to the test.
Abner Garcia Falero, the son of a renowned pastor, grew up in the shadow of his parents' painful divorce. His life began to unravel at an escalating pace when, as a young boy, he realized that his broken family now lived in the shade of poverty and rejection. Confronted by constant struggle, juvenile delinquency, a life of crime and violence, and an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness, Abner had to choose between life and death. It was the consequences of his decisions that led him to the singular most life-altering encounter he would ever experience. This moment of divine intervention ultimately led him to his destiny-to be a witness of God's tremendous power and grace to rescue a life from the grip of darkness and bring it into the light.
