The Last Pew

The Last Pew
Author: Sophia Sunshine Vilceus
Publisher:
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2015-10-12
Genre:
ISBN: 9781937741655

The Last Pew is the story of a young, single Christian woman who for most of her life lived a pure, wholesome, spiritual, and obedient existence. Upon moving to a new city and beginning her career as an educator, on the job she encounters a young unhappily married man who also happens to be a minister at a local Baptist church. Throughout a 2 year period of the two working together, she is courted; they fall in love, and commit to a life and relationship of immorality and sin. The narrative essentially tells the love story of the two. It shows how two people who know God intimately and have been doing God's will for so long can eventually walk down a path of spiritual destruction. The story illustrates the reasons that enabled the young woman's spiritual judgment to decline in order for this relationship to even take place. Moreover, the story shows the spiritual steps that the young woman had to take in order to be freed from the affair. The story clearly shows the power of God's Grace, Mercy, Forgiveness, and the true capacity of Prayer and Fasting. The Last Pew is an important story because it is an account on adultery which certainly is a muzzled issue within the Christian community. The story is an honest, transparent and appropriate narrative written with the hopes of providing its reader with a different take of who the other woman is. It is proof that the other woman can in fact be a woman of God who got lost while on her walk with Christ. At its core, The Last Pew is a story of redemption and finding purpose after sin. The title, The Last Pew, symbolizes how far the narrator was from God's altar and His will. But the story is a reminder that God's love can always allow for any lost soul to move back to the front of His altar. The end of the book serves as a workbook for struggling women coming out of their affair. There is a chapter devoted to points and scriptures to guide women through the process of their healing. The end of the book closes with an open letter to any woman who has had to deal with infidelity within her own marriage. A riveting testimony and a biblical based workbook, TLP is a resource for all women. Though adultery is a silent story within the Church, it certainly is a reality for many Christians, making this a conversation one that needs to be had. Whether the person reading this story is a woman trying to come out of an affair, a wife trying to heal from learning about an extra-marital affair, or a man of God that is caught in the middle---this book will minister.

Pew

Pew
Author: Catherine Lacey
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2020-07-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374720134

WINNER of the 2021 NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award. Finalist for the 2021 Dylan Thomas Prize. Longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. One of Publishers Weekly's Best Fiction Books of 2020. One of Amazon's 100 Best Books of 2020. “The people of this community are stifling, and generous, cruel, earnest, needy, overconfident, fragile and repressive, which is to say that they are brilliantly rendered by their wise maker, Catherine Lacey.” --Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers A figure with no discernible identity appears in a small, religious town, throwing its inhabitants into a frenzy In a small, unnamed town in the American South, a church congregation arrives for a service and finds a figure asleep on a pew. The person is genderless and racially ambiguous and refuses to speak. One family takes in the strange visitor and nicknames them Pew. As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. Pew listens and observes while experiencing brief flashes of past lives or clues about their origin. As days pass, the void around Pew’s presence begins to unnerve the community, whose generosity erodes into menace and suspicion. Yet by the time Pew’s story reaches a shattering and unsettling climax at the Forgiveness Festival, the secret of who they really are—a devil or an angel or something else entirely—is dwarfed by even larger truths. Pew, Catherine Lacey’s third novel, is a foreboding, provocative, and amorphous fable about the world today: its contradictions, its flimsy morality, and the limits of judging others based on their appearance. With precision and restraint, one of our most beloved and boundary-pushing writers holds up a mirror to her characters’ true selves, revealing something about forgiveness, perception, and the faulty tools society uses to categorize human complexity.

The Devil in Pew Number Seven

The Devil in Pew Number Seven
Author: Rebecca Nichols Alonzo
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2010-07-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1414338295

2011 Retailers Choice Award winner! Rebecca never felt safe as a child. In 1969, her father, Robert Nichols, moved to Sellerstown, North Carolina, to serve as a pastor. There he found a small community eager to welcome him—with one exception. Glaring at him from pew number seven was a man obsessed with controlling the church. Determined to get rid of anyone who stood in his way, he unleashed a plan of terror that was more devastating and violent than the Nichols family could have ever imagined. Refusing to be driven away by acts of intimidation, Rebecca’s father stood his ground until one night when an armed man walked into the family’s kitchen . . . And Rebecca’s life was shattered. If anyone had a reason to harbor hatred and seek personal revenge, it would be Rebecca. Yet The Devil in Pew Number Seven tells a different story. It is the amazing true saga of relentless persecution, one family’s faith and courage in the face of it, and a daughter whose parents taught her the power of forgiveness.

Hiding in the Pews

Hiding in the Pews
Author: Steve Austin
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2021-09-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1506470491

In 2012, Steve Austin, then a pastor, nearly died by suicide. His experience launched him on a journey that opened his eyes to the widespread problem of mental illness and how those who live with it are often treated in congregations. He began to wonder: if church folks had talked openly about mental health, therapy, suicide prevention, recovery from abuse, and other difficult issues, would that have changed his story? In Hiding in the Pews, people with mental illness--some of whom might be pastors themselves--will find comfort as they learn they are not alone. Those who know someone with mental illness will gain wisdom about how to be a safe presence. Those who hold the most power in church communities--pastors, board members, and lay leaders--will be challenged and equipped to transform their congregations into places of healing, where it is safe for people to be vulnerable about their suffering. Austin draws on his own experience, as well as on interviews with eighty current and former church leaders and members. Each chapter covers a topic or theme about mental illness and the church and includes practical applications to guide leaders on a journey toward transforming church culture. When a church champions vulnerability and establishes safety within its walls, especially for those who are suffering, the loving power of God heals. Austin offers hope that faith communities will be the first places people think of when they need a sense of safety and belonging.

Sittin' in the Front Pew

Sittin' in the Front Pew
Author: Parry Ann Brown
Publisher: Villard
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2002
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0375757058

Returning to Baltimore from Los Angeles to bury her late father, Glynda Naylor and her three sisters celebrate their father's life and search for answers about who the real Edward Naylor, who had raised them after their mother's death, was. Original. 35,000 first printing.

Empty the Pews

Empty the Pews
Author: Chrissy Stroop
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2019-12
Genre:
ISBN: 9781946093073

In Every Pew Sits a Broken Heart

In Every Pew Sits a Broken Heart
Author: Ruth Graham
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2009-05-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0310565855

Ruth Graham - daughter of beloved evangelist Billy Graham - offers a guide for those who are hurting or those who love them. She illustrates through personal stories and Scripture how nothing can keep you from experiencing the fullness of God's grace. Run with Ruth to the arms of the God you can trust, the Father God who embraces, sustains, and redeems your brokenness. Ruth Graham has discovered through bitter personal experience that God does his great work in the ruins of our lives. As Ruth's life descended through divorce, depression, and shame; as she bore heartrending parental struggles; and as she faltered trying to make wise choices in the wake of bad ones, she discovered the unending embrace of a faithful, forgiving, and grace-filled God. This book surpasses the testimony of her fascinating story as she brings sharp new insight from the Word of God for all who fear their actions may be beyond forgiveness or their broken circumstances may keep them from being used by God ever again. Through the words of Jeremiah - the weeping prophet - Ruth reveals the God who makes wasted places come to life. You'll explore the parable of the Prodigal Son as never before as Ruth discloses her own likeness to each character: The indignant older brother, struggling to understand God’s grace toward her husband's infidelity The prodigal, wading through the deep shame and painful circumstances of her own actions The father, running to embrace her children in the midst of bulimia, drug abuse, and unplanned pregnancy Ruth includes practical steps in every chapter anyone can take to offer care, support, and hope to the broken people they encounter in their lives and in the pews beside them every Sunday.

A Church in Crisis: Pathways Forward

A Church in Crisis: Pathways Forward
Author: Ralph Martin
Publisher: Emmaus Road Publishing
Total Pages: 435
Release: 2020-10-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1949013758

Nearly forty years ago, Ralph Martin’s bestselling A Crisis of Truth exposed the damaging trends in Catholic teaching and preaching that, combined with attacks from secular society, threatened the mission and life of the Catholic Church. While much has been done to counter false teaching over the last four decades, today the Church faces even more insidious threats—from outside and within. In A Church in Crisis: Pathways Forward, Martin offers a detailed look at the growing hostility to the Catholic Church and its teaching. With copious evidence, Martin uncovers the forces working to undermine the Body of Christ and offers hope to those looking for clarity. A Church in Crisis covers: -polarization in the Church caused by ambiguous teachings -initiatives that accommodate the culture without calling for conversion -Vatican-sponsored partnerships with organizations that actively contradict the teaching of the Catholic Church -and the recycling of theological errors long settled by Vatican II, Pope St. John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI. Powerfully written, A Church in Crisis reminds all readers to heed Jesus’ express command not to lead His children astray. With ample resources to encourage readers, Ralph Martin provides the solid foundation of Catholic teaching—both Scripture and Tradition—to fortify Catholics against the errors that threaten us from all directions.

Topical history

Topical history
Author: James Robert Jackson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 914
Release: 1905
Genre: Littleton (N.H.)
ISBN: