Books and Devotions

The Craving Brain: Science, Spirituality and a Pathway to Recovery

Authors: Anderson Spickard, Jr., and James Butler with Barbara R. Thompson

Combining firsthand accounts and simplified medical insights, The Craving Brain addresses how adolescent binge drinking plays a role in the development of alcohol addiction, explains why addicts don’t need to hit rock bottom before they can recover, and responds to some of the most compelling mysteries of addiction

Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help, And How to Reverse It

Author: Bob Lupton

Veteran urban activist Robert Lupton reveals the shockingly toxic effects that modern charity has upon the very people meant to benefit from it. Toxic Charity provides proven new models for charitable groups who want to help—not sabotage—those whom they desire to serve.

Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good

Author: Amy L. Sherman

Amy Sherman, director of the Center on Faith in Communities and scholar of vocational stewardship, uses the tsaddiqim as a springboard to explore how, through our faith-formed calling, we announce the kingdom of God to our everyday world. But cultural trends toward privatism and materialism threaten to dis-integrate our faith and our work. And the church, in ways large and small, has itself capitulated to those trends, while simultaneously elevating the “special calling” of professional ministry and neglecting the vocational formation of laypeople. In the process, we have, in ways large and small, subverted our kingdom mandate.