COMING FALL 2022

Belonging

5 Keys to Unlock Your Potential as a Disciple

Karoline M. Lewis

What does it look like for you to belong to Jesus Christ? Not your colleague, or your professor, or your neighbor, or the leaders of your denomination, but you? How might your one-and-only life be patterned differently, to more truly align you with Christ? What pretense might you give up? What potential might open up for you as a leader and disciple?

Belonging: 5 keys to Unlock Your Potential as a Disciple helps readers to understand and live out Christian discipleship in a way that is most deeply authentic for themselves. It’s for the leader who is exhausted from trying to live by other people’s templates, who wants to figure out what it looks like to live and lead as only they can. It’s for the student or layperson desiring to follow Christ with integrity, to be themselves fully as a disciple.

This book is scholarly but accessible for pastors, students, ministry leaders, and laypersons. Karoline Lewis structures it around the story of the Samaritan woman and guides the reader to discover deep connection with biblical characters who lead to self-discovery. Questions for reflection throughout the book evoke deep insights about self, theology, and discipleship.

Belonging is excellent for clergy development and ministry leader development in any setting and can be read and studied alone or in groups. Pastors and other congregational leaders can work their way through the book together, in order to lead the church with greater integrity.

Karoline M. Lewis holds the Marbury Anderson Chair in Biblical Preaching at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN. She is a regularly featured presenter and preacher at the Festival of Homiletics and a frequent contributor for numerous Christian journals and online resources, including the popular website WorkingPreacher.org where she also co-hosts the site’s weekly podcast, “Sermon Brainwave,” and authors the site’s weekly column, “Dear Working Preacher.” She is the author of SHE: Five Keys to Unlock the Power of Women in Ministry and Embody: Five Keys to Leading with Integrity from Abingdon Press.

9781791025830 | $19.99 | September 2022

Fresh Expressions of the Rural Church

Michael Adam Beck and Tyler Kleeberger Congregations became the hub of rural life for a time. The place where people gathered not only on Sundays to hear a sermon but to help each other work the land, break bread, and form deep relationships. The rural church was the place where they found a community that could sustain them through the joys and struggles of life with the land. In many ways, a rural church expressed the essence of church in general: To be the guiding hand into the life of a place.

After disruptions from agriculture, industrialization, and technology, many rural churches (like the people around them) feel forgotten. Has urbanization made life outside the urban sprawl irrelevant? Can rural congregations struggling to survive find hope and new life? If so, can healthy rural churches catalyze a different future for the world?

Tyler Kleeberger and Michael Beck think so. They have served rural congregations for over a decade, Michael in North Central Florida and Tyler in Northwest Ohio. They have discovered the potential and beauty of life and faith in the rural setting. The ageing congregations they serve (in declining rural communities) found ways to cultivate “fresh expressions of church” with people who call rural simply “home.” They serve contexts in the often forgotten, wild places of our contemporary world.

This book includes breakthrough stories from the diversity of rural contexts across the US. It lays out a fresh theology for rural life and offers principles for harnessing the potential of what some consider the forgotten spaces.

Michael Adam Beck is Director of Re-Missioning for Fresh Expressions U.S. and Cultivator of Fresh Expressions for the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church. Michael serves as co-pastor of Wildwood UMC with his wife Jill. Michael earned a Master of Divinity from Asbury Theological Seminary and a Doctorate in Semiotics and Future Studies at Portland Seminary. He is the author of Deep Roots, Wild Branches and A Field Guide to Methodist Fresh Expressions.

Tyler Kleeberger is a church leader, writer, teacher, and community leader in Metamora, Ohio. He studied at Fuller Theological Seminary and leads The Farmhouse through connection, memory (honoring heritage - from barn parties and neighborliness to food emphasis and other more “traditional” components of church. His book (Abingdon, 2022) with Michael Beck is Fresh Expressions of the Rural Church. He publishes essays about building a better world on Medium through his channel, Becoming Human (tylerkleeberger.com).

American Methodism

Revised and Updated

Kenneth E. Rowe; Ashley Boggan Dreff; Dr. Russell E. Richey; Jean Miller Schmidt

Four of Methodism’s most respected teachers give us a vivid picture of 260 years of Methodist experience in America. The revised edition updates the Methodist movement’s story through 2020, including the social, political, economic, technological, and global disruptions that cause faith communities and denominations to pull apart.

American Methodism begins with the explosion of evangelical Pietism and revolutionary Methodism, the First Great Awakening, as an independent nation was formed.

It then highlights key 19th century themes and Methodist contributions, such as spreading scriptural holiness through missions and literature, planting tens of thousands of Sunday schools and churches by Circuit Riders, the pivotal Methodist schism between abolitionists and enslavers, the innovative building of schools and hospitals into the next century, and the revivalism of the Second Great Awakening.

Finally it explores the movements of 20th century Methodism, including the expansion of home and foreign missions, the Methodist drive for Prohibition, the decision for nationwide reunification on the cusp of World War II, reunification with the United Brethren during the Vietnam War, the Methodist ordination of women during the 1950s, Black Methodist leadership in the 1960s Civil Rights movement, and the liturgical renewal or reformation of worship (ancient and future).