Book reviews
Beating Guns
Beating Guns: Hope for People Who Are Weary of Violence is not just a book; it’s a movement. Authors Shane Claiborne and Michael Martin recently conducted a thirty-seven-city Beating Guns Tour, literally hammering guns into garden tools at each stop, alluding to...
The Dog in the Dentist Chair
Let’s face it – kids and animals have a special affinity and watching them interact brings smiles to adult faces. While pets, usually dogs and cats, provide love and companionship, there is a special class of animals who go above and beyond that. These are service...
Retreats to Go
A well planned retreat is a great gift to give your congregation or other spiritual friends. Anyone who has taken the opportunity offered by a retreat to get away and spend some time with God and their own spirit knows the value of retreats. But planning a good...
Candle Walk: A Bedtime Prayer to God
Children love repetition and ritual and at no time is that more important than at bedtime. Little ones need a calming routine to help them transition from the excitement of the day to a time of rest and quiet. For Christian parents, a bedtime routine usually includes...
Paul and His Friends
I love the children’s book The Day When God Made Church which tells the story of Pentecost, so when a review copy of another book by author Rebekah McLeod Hutto came across my desk, I read it with interest. It did not disappoint. The book is Paul and His Friends: A...
Coloring Women of the Bible
Until a few years ago, coloring was for kids. Then adults discovered that it was a wonderful, meditative spiritual practice which required little preparation or equipment. Now there has been a profusion of adult coloring books featuring everything from animals to...
Loving and Leaving a Church
Let’s face it – for many pastors the perception they have of their ministry when they set off to their first pastorate and the reality of that ministry are two very different things. Barbara Melosh’s Loving and Leaving a Church: A Pastor’s Journey tells the story of...
My Favorite Color Is Blue. Sometimes
Life is hard. Sometimes, children find that out sooner rather than later. For a child the loss of a loved one may be difficult to process. Children lack the vocabulary to express their feelings as adult do; their brains are not fully developed so completing the...
Crafting Gratitude
Most of us know that practicing gratitude has many benefits including greater happiness, better health, and increased productivity. Gratitude journals, where you might list five things each day which you are thankful for, are one way to focus on gratitude, but after a...
The Lifesaving Church
From the title, you might think this book is a how-to for churches and other faith communities on how to prevent suicides. It is that, but also much more. It is the story of the author, Rachael A. Keefe, her struggles in a highly dysfunctional family, her eating...
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