Pamphlets

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.

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 bookwhose title proclaims Business as a Calling, we should beworried. We could conclude that the author, Michael Novak, ismerely performing his function as the theological shill forcorporate America.

Paganism and the Professions

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.

Missional Evangelism

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