FaithLab is now publishing books, educational resources and music! Sign up for our email newsletter to be alerted as new items are added. Our emphasis will be on digital publications: ebooks, educational resources in PDF form, and downloadable music, although we will sometimes offer the ability to get physical media (printed books, CDs, etc).
Have a book, study, retreat, music or other resource you would like to talk to FaithLab about publishing? Click here to share your idea with us!
“While there is no starting over, this book is about imagining new pathways into old conversations. It is an invitation to question the terms of the debates into which we’ve been drawn. It is a book less concerned with answering questions and, instead, aims toward cultivating the imagination necessary to ask new questions. And new questions about queer lives and Christian faith couldn’t come at a more appropriate time.”
Polarizing debates are raging over queer lives in churches and the public square. But what if we were able to start the conversation over? Imagine the entire dialogue about LGBTQ lives and Christian faith had its start in your living room or your own local congregation. If you could ask the first question, what would it be? While there is no starting over, this book is about imagining new pathways into old conversations. It is an invitation to question the terms of our typical debates over sexuality and faith. Less concerned with answering questions, it aims to cultivate our imagination for asking new questions. Primary among them is this: “What can all Christians learn from LGBTQ people that will enhance our lives and strengthen our communities of faith?”
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eBook purchase provides ebook files for all readers (Kindle, iBooks, Nook, Sony, Kobo, etc).
FaithElement Studies for Women offers high-quality resources to help your group focus on relevant topics in a way that is theologically sound. We believe God calls and uses women in all areas of ministry, and have a high view of women’s roles at work, home and in the church. Our first study is focused on Intentional Living. Each study provides multiple sessions, complete with video, leader’s guide and participant’s journal prompts, as well as a discussing area.
Living intentional lives sounds like something for the most organized among us. Chances are, when you read the title, you either loved it or hated it. But living intentionally isn’t really about living organized, orderly lives. Even the most spirited and free-flowing among us can make decisions that put the most important things of our lives in the forefront and encourage the minutia to fall to the background.
We live in a time in which our lives rush by in a blur of activity. There are meals to fix, meetings to attend, aging parents to tend, forms to complete, and emails to return. The lists of daily tasks can stretch for miles. And in the middle of it all, we easily forget what is really important. Things like faith, love, family and community relationships, and prayer fall to the bottom of the list because they don’t have a deadline pressing our attention.
In this study, we are going to spend time talking about how to flip the priority list around. When we take the time to infuse meaning into our daily activities and conversation, we give more importance to things like faith, and love, and prayer.
Each session will look at a different aspect of what intentional living can look like. The first session discusses how God is an integral part of the process of living an intentional life. In the second session we discuss ways that we can engage our faith practice in intentional ways in order to make the space for a deeper faith to flourish. Session three discusses the importance of actively remembering and recalling the ways that God is present in our lives. And finally, in the last two session we will discuss ways that we live in community with other people of faith, and ways we engage the outside world with the love of Christ.
My hope is, when we take time to think about the ways that we can intentionally engage our life of faith with everyday tasks, that we can spark our imaginations to about how fulfilling our lives of faith can be and how our lives of faith can lead us to impact our communities and our world.
Answers offered by the most religiously conservative among us frequently sound too narrow. Questions asked by those outside the faith seem broad and unmoored. As thoughtful Christians, we often find it difficult to talk about our faith because at one extreme we’re met with simplistic truths and at the other extreme complex wonderings.
In Finding Your Voice, Jim Dant offers the thinking Christian a manageable and credible faith language. While respecting the evangelical language of his childhood and those who gave it to him, Jim addresses and offers fresh language regarding the issues of: God, Scripture, Jesus, Salvation, the church, the world, and more. He provides a language for the things we believe but are not quite sure how to say.
Jim takes us to his childhood home and introduces us to the language offered him by his faith community. He gives an honest accounting of that faith and, with an extreme dose of humanity and trust, shares with us how that faith has changed. The result is a language that makes sense both in and out of church.
Whether you agree or disagree with Jim’s conclusions, you are invited into a conversation and perhaps the discovery of your own voice.
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eBook purchase provides ebook files for all readers (Kindle, iBooks, Nook, Sony, Kobo, etc). Please first download your purchase on a computer (the purchased file will unzip to provide 2 kinds of ebook files) and then if you wish to add the ebook to a mobile device (smartphone or tablet), just email the ebook file to yourself and open it on the chosen device.
View CartISBN-13: 9780983986393
Publisher: Faithlab
Publication date: 5/24/2013
Pages: 200
Product dimensions: 5.50 (w) x 8.50 (h) x 0.42 (d)
Finding Your Voice: How to Speak Your Heart’s True Faith marries some of the best thinking about the Bible and Christianity with deep feeling and emotion. Jim Dant does not check his brain or his heart at the door of the church. This book will indeed help you speak about your faith, with integrity and transparency, from your heart and your head.
John Lepper, Coordinator
Kentucky Baptist Fellowship
“Jim Dant deftly weaves together threads of his life story with those of biblical stories to produce a tapestry that displays core Christian convictions in a way that is at once both simple and profound. He offers a thoughtful, confessional reflection on central Christian convictions that invites us to join him in finding our own voice. It is an invitation we should accept.”
Paul Lewis, Associate Professor of Christianity
College of Liberal Arts, Mercer University.
Jim Dant takes us on a journey toward a mature faith, one that moves from and to the love of God. He exegetes both scripture and his own soul with equal deftness and honesty, and disarmingly invites us to join him. Finding Your Voice challenges the mind and opens the heart at the same time.”
George Mason, Pastor
Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas
“With laundry fresh language and freeing ideas, Jim Dant teaches us anew how to speak some of the secrets of our hearts.”
Walter B. Shurden
Minister at Large
Mercer University
“This is an incredible piece of work! Through sharing rich and refreshingly honest real life experiences, Finding Your Voice invites the reader to more deeply encounter God through exploring their own story, engaging scripture and revisiting their “traditional” understanding of God, church, and the world.”
Deedra Rich
Associate Director of Spirituality
Columbia Theological Seminary
Whether preaching or writing, Jim Dant is masterful in telling stories, the stories of Biblical narratives and the stories of his own interesting and unusual life experiences. His stories make sense. They are true to life and consistent with good theology. And, they are wonderfully entertaining and inspirational. In Finding Your Voice: How to Speak Your Heart’s True Faith, he deftly weaves his life narratives with narratives of faithful tradition and encourages us to find our own voice to tell our faith stories. This is an important book for encouraging Christians to once again believe in the power of narratives and to develop the art of telling our stories.
Jack Glasgow
Pastor
Zebulon Baptist Church
Zebulon, NC
Rusted Yellow Memories is a collection of poems that tells stories of family and friends. Poignantly told from the perspective of a mother with children leaving for college, a daughter remembering her growing-up years, and a friend observing the world around her, these poems speak to the reader’s heart
Van Henderson is a poet living in Macon, Georgia. Follow her on her new blog.
Check out her other chapbook: Drop of Leftover Rain
A Drop of Leftover Rain explores the darker feelings of life but is ultimately redemptive. The difference in men and women, experiences of sorrow and despair, remembrances of people in the past and finally, hope for the future are topics in this collection of poetry.
Van Henderson is a poet living in Macon, Georgia. Follow her on her new blog.
The ebook is available for all ereaders, including Kindle, Nook, iPod/iPad/iPhone, Sony Reader, etc. When your purchase is complete, a link to the download page will be immediately emailed to you. Easy Instructions for adding the ebook to your device are here.
Check out her other chapbook: Rusted Yellow Memories
This creative short story from author Bert Montgomery offers a look at what a current-day interview with Thomas Merton might be like. Merton was a Trappist monk and mytic who died in 1968. His writings are widely considered to be classics.
Check out this brief video to learn more about the interview:
The ebook is available for all eReaders, including Kindle, Nook, iPod/iPad/iPhone, Sony Reader, etc. When your purchase is complete, a link to the download page will be immediately emailed to you. Easy Instructions for adding the ebook to your device are here.
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“Bert Montgomery has opened a fresh, wise, conversational way for Thomas Merton to speak anew to our time. Somebody should put this on stage and invite the audience to join in.”
~ Loyd Allen
Professor of Church History and Spiritual Formation
McAfee School of Theology (Mercer University)
“Death be not proud, but it can — occasionally — turn a buck. Bert’s post-mort interview with T-Mert is one for the ages. Now let the poor guy rest in peace.”
~ Robert Darden
Formerly Senior Editor of World’s Oldest, Largest
and Probably Only Religious Humor and Satire Magazine,
The late, great Wittenburg Door
“What a wonderful way to get before others some of Thomas Merton’s keen insights into the malaise of our society and ways to rethink the Christian life today. Merton himself would chuckle about it, but he would take delight in the fact that a young Baptist minister would understand so well and cherish his concern for contemplation in a world of action.”
~ Dr. E. Glenn Hinson
Senior Professor of Spirituality and Church History
Baptist Seminary of Kentucky (Georgetown College)
“Bert Montgomery’s interview style is reminiscent of David Lose’s “Making Sense” book series, taking complex theological issues, often unfamiliar to a lay audience, and placing them in a conversational context where they have some real-life relevance. It will be interesting to see how else Montgomery might apply this style. Perhaps a conversation with Martin Luther? John the Baptist? Maybe Paul? The possibilities are nearly limitless.”
~ Christian Piatt
www.christianpiatt.com
Author, Musician, Antagonist, God Nerd
“I can’t think of a better way to spend an afternoon than with Tom & Bert at a bookstore in Starvkille, MS. They share a keen sense of humor and dry socks. Well, I’m not sure about that last one. I don’t think Bert wears socks. But he’s definitely got that Joy of the Lord thing down pat.”
~ Karen Spears Zacharias
www.karenzach.com
author of Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide?
and Where’s Your Jesus Now?
A Journey for Lent or Other Days of Spiritual Reflection and Prayer.
This life will eventually carry us through a wilderness, a period of life epitomized by hard- ships, suffering, wandering, and grief. The wilderness can also be a time to withdraw from the world, to give up something of significance in order to think, pray, read, and gain spiritual insight on life.
Finding Our Way Through the Wilderness is designed to help those who are in a wilderness by no choice of their own and those who choose to enter the wilderness to prepare spiritually for the arrival of Easter or the next part of their journey. Readers will emerge from the wilderness stronger, healthier, wiser, and better equipped to continue on their way.
“This is a book that will stretch you spiritually.”
—R. Alan Culpepper
“…masterful storytelling offers a calming assurance that we can navigate through the wilderness.”
—Dink NeSmith
“While reading Finding Our Way Through the Wilderness, I felt calm coming into my chaotic life.”
—Jean Sasson
Buy the eBook ($6.99, 260 pages):
The ebook is available for all ereaders, including Kindle, Nook, iPod/iPad/iPhone, Sony Reader, etc. When your purchase is complete, a link to the download page will be immediately emailed to you. Easy Instructions for adding the ebook to your device are here.
Want the print version of the book? Get it from Amazon.
Dr. Michael Helms is the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Jefferson, Georgia, and the author of numerous books, including Finding Our Way: An Introspective Journey Through the Labyrinth of Life, Hoping Liberia: Stories of Civil War from Africa’s First Republic, and Finding our Way with the Magi—A Daily Guide Through the Season of Advent.
Rev. Erica Cooper is Associate Pastor/Minister to Families at the First Baptist Church of Jefferson, Georgia. She is a 2009 graduate of McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta.
Throughout the centuries, people of faith – both clergy and laity – have incorporated prayer into the rhythm of their daily living. This practice is tied to biblical references concerning hours of prayer (Psalm 119:164, Acts 1:14, Acts 3:1, Acts 10:9, Acts 16:25) as well as the prayer traditions of the church. This CD contains songs written for each of the traditional hours of prayer. You may listen to them during the prescribed hours or any time you choose. We hope they create a space for prayer and a language for prayer that is meaningful for you.
Album Songs1. Arise, My Darling – Lauds (Morning Prayer)
2. Fall on Me – Terce (Mid-Morning Prayer)
3. Your Love – Sext (Midday Prayer)
4. Take My Life – None (Mid-Afternoon Prayer)
5. Thank You, Lord – Vespers (Evening Prayer)
6. This Good Night – Compline (Night Prayer)
7. Rest in Peace – Vigils (Midnight Prayer)
8. Conversations – Personal Meditation
Buy the digital download version of the album (mp3 files) — $5.99
Buy the CD version of the album — $12.99 includes shipping & handling
View CartJim Dant is a partner at Faithlab and Joy Yee is a pastor in California. Both also enjoy writing, leading retreats and providing spiritual direction for people seeking to know God.
“The daily faith-living of the people of God is our passion. On our journey as ministers among the people we have realized that prayer is something that happens by the gift and grace of God. May you discover grace… as we have.” — Jim and Joy
Executive Producers – David Cassady & Jim Dant
Producer & Engineer – Pat Terry
Lyrics – Jim Dant
Music – Joy Yee
Vocals, Keyboard – Joy Yee
Background Keyboard, Bells – Pat Terry
For those who want something deeper than the commercialized trappings of the Advent season, Finding Our Way With the Magi gives readers a daily opportunity to be spiritually challenged, encouraged, inspired, and confronted with Jesus’ admonitions to live out our faith in an increasingly secular world.
Seamless shifts are made from common, sometimes humorous life stories that relate to biblical truths all of us need to apply to our daily lives. Creative “Advent Actions” appear at the end of each day’s reading to give concrete, practical suggestions for putting that day’s focus into practice during Advent. Guided prayers help readers begin a conversation with God based on the reading for the day. Few Advent books have the potential to change the lives of readers and the lives of those around them. This is one of those rare books.
Buy the eBook ($6.99):
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The ebook is available for all ereaders, including Kindle, Nook, iPod/iPad/iPhone, Sony Reader, etc. When your purchase is complete, a link to the download page will be immediately emailed to you. Easy Instructions for adding the ebook to your device are here.
Want the print version of the book? Get it from Amazon.
Looking for links mentioned in the book? Click here.
Dr. Michael Helms is the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Jefferson, Georgia, and the author of numerous books, including Finding Our Way: An Introspective Journey Through the Labyrinth of Life, Hoping Liberia: Stories of Civil War from Africa’s First Republic and Finding Our Way Through the Wilderness—A Journey For Lent and Other Days of Spiritual Reflection and Prayer.
Michael Helms clears away the layers of wrappings, ribbons, and assorted commercial glitz so that once again we can gaze upon the Christ Child. These delightful, often touching reflections usher us gracefully through the Advent season.
Dr. Jim Barnette
Professor, Samford University
With the narrative grace of a gifted pastor, Michael Helms offers meaningful devotional engagement along with thoughtful direction for actually living through the Advent season with purpose and intention.
Rev. Dr. Amy Butler
Senior Pastor
Calvary Baptist Church
Washington, DC
Michael Helms’ Finding Our Way with the Magi: A Daily Guide Through the Season of Advent is a Christ-centered GPS that will navigate your family through the Advent season with a gentleness and grace that fosters the peace and hope so often absent in the daily bustle of life.
Dr. Bruce Gourley
Executive Director
Baptist History & Heritage Society
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