We publish occasional pamphlets which intend to foster conversation about faithful discipleship in the local church. They embody our vision of Christian discipleship as an allegiance to the Gospel lived out in the Church taking precedence over all other loyalties. To order handsomely bound printed copies (for around $1 each), contact Wipf and Stock Publishers.
Pamphlet Titles
A School For Subversive Friendships: The Ekklesia Project
Stanley Hauerwas and Michael L. Budde, 2000
If the Ekklesia Project is about anything it is about friendship. In particular it is about discovering friends we did notknow we had. Such a discovery is possible because most of us in the Ekklesia Project have discovered that we do not just “happen” to be Christian, but being Christian makes our lives possible.
A School For Subversive Friendships: The Ekklesia Project
Preparing for Christian Marriage
John McFadden and David McCarthy, 2002
Even as there are both secular and sacred settings for wedding ceremonies, there are secular and sacred understandings of the institution of marriage. This booklet is designed to explain how the Christian church understands the meaning and purpose of marriage, and also to suggest specific practices within Christian marriage that can keep your relationship healthy and growing.
Preparing for Christian Marriage
Paganism and the Professions
Robert Brimlow, 2002
When a theologian of some note writes a popular book whose title proclaims Business as a Calling, we should be worried. We could conclude that the author, Michael Novak, is merely performing his function as the theological shill for corporate America.
God’s Beautiful City: Christian Mission After Christendom
Stephen Fowl, 2001
This essay was already completed long before the events of11 September, 2001. While the themes I articulate clearly touchon issues surrounding how Christians in America are to live inthe light of the those horrific events, they do so indirectly.
God’s Beautiful City: Christian Mission After Christendom
Church Membership: An Introduction to the Journey
John McFadden and David McCarthy, 2002
Congratulations on the commitment you have made to become amember of a Christian church. Christian congregations are diverse, but through baptism we all share in the common fellowship of the church universal, the body of all Christian believers that is not bound by time, national borders, or denominational identity.
Church Membership: An Introduction to the Journey
Authority, Freedom, and the Dreams that We Are Made Of
Dale Rosenberger, 2002
If one word makes the hair on back of the neck stand up it is the word submit. Americans submit to nobody. Here, to submit is to be dominated and to forfeit freedom. … Yet for Christians, submission is not ugly, but beautiful. It is our ultimate end.
Authority, Freedom, and the Dreams that We Are Made Of
Missional Evangelism
Inagrace Dietterich and Laceye Warner, 2002
First Peter asserts a “strong”—and to modern ears a strange—image of the church, an understanding of the followers of JesusChrist as a “chosen race,” a “royal priesthood,” and a “holynation.” Not a natural or traditional grouping, this is a peopleformed by God’s undeserved mercy.
Christian Worship and Capital Punishment
Allyne Smith and Tobias Winright, 2003
… what Christians do in worship, and especially in the Eucharist, has implications for how we are to reflect on moral issues such as that of capital punishment.
Christian Worship and Capital Punishment
How Christians Might Remember Well: Lessons from Moses before and after September 11
Charles R. Pinches, 2003
At the University of Scranton where I teach we are lucky enough to have a Jewish rabbi on our faculty in theology. A few summers ago he did us the favor of getting married. We knew this would be good for him, but had little idea howgood it would be for us until the invitations arrived in the mail.
How Christians Might Remember Well: Lessons
from Moses before and after September 11
What is so Holy about Scripture? Listening to Scripture in a Technological Age
Simon Perry, 2003
On vacation in Britain, a married couple marveled at the sight of one of Scotland’s most beautiful waterfalls, cascading through the bleak and rugged wilds of Glencoe. “Isn’t that breath-taking” gasped the wife, struck with awe by this wonder of Creation. “They ought to put a turbine inthere to create electricity” replied her husband, “Look at all that power going to waste.”
What is so Holy about Scripture? Listening to Scripture in a Technological Age
Being Subject to One Another As We Sing
Randy Cooper, 2004
Congregational singing is a gift of God given to the Church as part of God’s plan for bringing all things to Christ. When people sing together, thus joining our praises with the praise of the Son to the Father through the Holy Spirit, we are participating in a God-given means of unifying grace.
Being Subject to One Another As We Sing
God’s Grandeur: the Church in the Economy of Creation
Ragan Sutterfield, 2004
Our age has been one of denial. Central to this denial has been a rejection of our creatureliness, our dependence upon, and membership within creation. Embracing a culture of exploitation and consumption, we have come to understand ourselves as the masters of creation rather than its members, independent of God’s grace and life-sustaining gifts. Christianity possesses the resources to name and correct this denial, but rather than offer a prophetic voice against the idolatry of our age, the church has all too often been mute, or worse, joined its voice with the cacophony.
God’s Grandeur: the Church in the Economy of Creation
Christian Funeral Practices in a Changed Time and Culture
John McFadden and James M. Donohue, C.R., 2005
In life as in death, we belong to God: members of Christ’s own body and the communion of God’s saints. If our funerals and memorial services fail to make these joyous affirmations in ways that shape, form and sustain those who gather to worship, we will have served them poorly.
Christian Funeral Practices in a Changed Time and Culture
Just War as Christian Discipleship
Daniel M. Bell, Jr., 2005
Talk of just war abounds. On the editorial pages, over the airways, in church statements, during meals, around the water-cooler, in Sunday school classes and from pulpits we hear “just war” invoked either in support of or to discredit various wars and rumors of war. What exactly is a just war? What are its principles and practices? How does just war relate to the Christian life, to discipleship?
Just War as Christian Discipleship
Wordcare: Hauerwas, Language, and the Church
Edited by Stan Wilson and Kyle Childress, 2010
This pamphlet is a compilation of the testimonies of eleven pastors and three laypeople who have learned from Stanley Hauerwas … to practice disciplined attentiveness to what the church says and what the world says, as well as how these things are said and heard.
Wordcare – Hauerwas Language and the Church
Aging, Dementia, and the Faith Community
John McFadden
… Christians have a different story to tell about what gives our lives worth, value and meaning. Personhood is not defined solely by our corporal bodies or our cognitive abilities, but rather by our relationships with others. … If we should forget God, God will not forget us. And if we forget God, our community of faith can remember us to God and bring God’s presence into our lives through means that do not require us to grasp that presence cognitively.
The Taste of Discipleship: Cultivating the Flavor of Faithfulness
Ragan Sutterfield and Brent Laytham
This pamphlet seeks to cultivate the truth about taste and the goodness of discipleship by walking again through the beauty of God’s garden. Rereading Genesis 1-4, we invite the church to recover the flavor of fidelity in a world of liquid smoke and aspartame—a world of deceit, apathy, violence and greed. We suggest that faithful discipleship is cultivated and cultivating—it is agricultural and leads, when practiced well, to a savory, faithful flavor
How the Lord’s Supper Changes the Immigration Conversation
Craig Wong
What difference does a sacrament make in a society where the lines drawn between “legal” and “illegal” persons are hardened not only by prejudice, politics, and law, but also by by cement blocks, barbed wire, transport planes, and electronic ankle bracelets? This essay will suggest that a liturgical practice – more specifically, the Eucharist – can indeed make a difference, but not as a technique for church-based social activism. Rather, it explores the relational, economic, and eschatological dimensions of the Lord’s Supper and their implications for the Church’s engagement with the “strangers in our midst” and the policies that affect them.
How the Lord’s Supper Changes the Immigration Conversation
Blessings, Curses, and the Cross: A Scriptural View of Wealth
Kelly Johnson
I hope … to explore ways that an attentive study of scripture on the topic of blessing could challenge us to enrich ordinary thinking and daily prayer about possessions. In particular, I … attend to ways blessing can be understood in light of the stories of Israel and Jesus, rather than as a generality about creation understood to stand apart from redemption and eschatology.
Blessings, Curses, and the Cross: A Scriptural View of Wealth
Practicing Ecclesial Patience: Patient Practice Makes Perfect
Philip D. Kenneson
At the heart of Slow Church—or just Church, if you will—is the crucial recognition that the most central and important elements of being human unfold slowly, over time. Receiving God into our lives, as well as offering ourselves to God; receiving another person into our lives and offering ourselves to them; making room in our lives to take in the beauty and wonders of the created order and offer ourselves in turn to its care—all of these unfold slowly, over time. None of them can happen at the break-neck speed at which all of us are encouraged to live.
Practicing Ecclesial Patience: Patient Practice Makes Perfect