Augsburg Fortress

Incline Your Ear: Cultivating Spiritual Awakening in Congregations

Incline Your Ear: Cultivating Spiritual Awakening in Congregations introduces faith communities and individuals to the centuries-old practice of spiritual direction. Authors Chad R. Abbott and Teresa Blythe explore ways to become more aware of the presence of the Holy, deepen our relationship with God, discern where God is leading, share our spiritual gifts, and evaluate these fruits of the Spirit. Readers will find new ways to be in love with God and listen to the Spirit.

9781506465838

A Primer on Pastoral Care

Based on her twenty years of teaching and on her own experience in pastoral care, Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner has written a basic pastoral-care text to assist in...

9780800637606

Faithful yet Changing: The Church in Challenging Times

"I have a passion for the gospel of Jesus Christ, a love for the people of God, and an ache for the brokenness of the world," declares Mark S. Hanson, newly...

9780806644745

Embodied Liturgy: Lessons in Christian Ritual

Embodied Liturgy marks a “return to the body” in thinking about Christian liturgy and sacramental practice. With the body as a primary focus, the volume explores the crucial content of liturgical theology, examining the offices of prayer, the church’s liturgical calendar, sacraments and sacramental theology, word and sacramental liturgy, ritual studies, music and art, and cultural issues.

9781451496277

Empowering Couples: A Narrative Approach to Spiritual Care

This book outlines five tasks focused on identity, agency, and meaning that spiritual caregivers can use to empower couples for significant change in just three to five conversations.

9780800663421

Pastoral Care of Older Adults

By the year 2000 more than half of mainline Protestants will be over the age of sixty. Older adults have special needs to which many pastors are not...

9780800629649

Cultural Architecture: A Path to Creating Vitalized Congregations

Cultural Architecture: A Path to Creating Vitalized Congregations serves to assist pastors and leaders as they guide their congregations through the painstaking and intensive process of redevelopment. It provides hands-on tools to guide congregational leaders in creating vision, core values, and strategic plans. Although Hill's approach is grounded in his experiences within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, his systems for cultural architecture can be applied to congregations of any denomination.

9781506466972

A Future without Walls: Confronting Our Divisions

A Future without Walls offers a comprehensive and complex analysis of Othering, while unveiling the connections between our divisions and the roots, forms, and consequences of the walls that have been erected. The dividing walls are more than a problem calling for a quick fix. They are embedded in both our history and our current culture and demand fundamental transformation. The book offers concrete steps forward to help us dismantle these walls.

9781506466033

Faith in Action: A Handbook for Activists, Advocates, and Allies

You want to make the world better. This book can help. Faith in Action offers quick dives into a range of topics, from racial justice...

9781506432564

Church Administration: Programs, Process, Purpose

This comprehensive guide, from two experienced and thoughtful churchmen, treats each aspect of congregational governance as a sacred calling with an overriding religious mission.

9780800637422

Turn Your Church Inside Out: Building a Community for Others

A primer for reinvigorating church life Drawing on his experience as pastor of one of the largest and fastest-growing congregations in America, Walt...

9780806640341

Faith-Based Organizing: A Congregational Planning Resource for Addressing Poverty

Faith-Based Organizing: A Congregational Planning Resource for Addressing Poverty presents a faith-based effort to identify what sustains poverty and to organize people to work together to overcome its root causes. The result is collaborative relationships that change systems contributing to poverty. Within this process, new leadership will emerge, relationships will be enriched, and congregations will experience renewed love for people by undergoing transformation.

9781506470153

A Spirituality for Doing Justice: Reflections for Congregation-based Organizers

Dennis Jacobsen brings his many years of experience doing congregation-based organizing for justice into conversation with unique spiritual reflections. Jacobsen turns to his work creating and meditating on icons to connect biblical themes and Christian personalities to guide those who are preparing for congregation-organizing and faith-based social action. His unique perspectives help anyone engaged in such work go deeper in prayer and devotion before diving into the messy work of organizing.

9781506464367

A Formula for Parish Practice: Using the Formula of Concord in Congregations

The most up-to-date English commentary on the Formula of Concord, A Formula for Parish Practice provides helpful, concise descriptions of key theological debates and a unique weaving of historical and textual commentary with modern Lutheran experience. Covering the entire Formula of Concord the book includes discussion questions at the end of each chapter. 

9781506427034

Ways of the Word: Learning to Preach for Your Time and Place

Preaching, and the discipline of preaching, is at a crossroads. The changing realities of church and theological education, the diversity of our classrooms, and our increasingly complex community contexts leave us in search of tools to help train a rising generation of preachers for a future whose contours are far from clear. In Ways of the Word, a dynamic team of master preachers, Sally A. Brown and Luke A. Powery, speaks with one voice their belief that preaching is a witness to the ongoing work of God in the world. 

9780800699222

Exploring Practices of Ministry

The authors share their wisdom with seminarians and other readers seeking to deepen theological reflection and expand skills as ministry practitioners. This book is a companion journal for pilgrims on the way to becoming confident practitioners of ministry.

9781451488937

Delivering the Sermon: Voice, Body, and Animation in Proclamation

Teresa L. Fry Brown introduces preachers to the effective use of voice and body in the animation of the word in the preaching moment. Suggestions and exercises...

9780800604479

Theology Is for Proclamation

9780800624255

Preaching at the Crossroads: How the World—and Our Preaching—Is Changing

David Lose takes preachers on a tour of the major cultural influences of the last century, exploring how they offer opportunities to cultivate a more relevant faith in the twenty-first century.

9780800699734

The Evangelizing Church: A Lutheran Contribution

In a series of engaging essays and responses, the book explores how evangelism has functioned within Lutheranism...

9780806651095