Fortress Press

Trauma and Race: A Path to Wellbeing

Micah L. McCreary (Author)

This book lives at the intersection of trauma, race, and counseling. African (Black), Latino/a/x, Asian, and Native (Indigenous) Americans (ALANAs) experience trauma in the context of systemic, institutionalized, and cultural racism. Any work by trauma-informed professionals must take into consideration the intersection of race and trauma.

Leading Faithful Innovation: Following God into a Hopeful Future

Dwight Zscheile (Author), Michael Binder (Author), Tessa Pinkstaff (Author)

Leading Faithful Innovation offers a practical, hands-on approach to addressing the challenges of change in the church and our culture. This three-step process is not another program or add-on to what readers are already doing. It is an ongoing way of following God that allows the Spirit of God to drive the energy among the people of the church.

Liberation and the Cosmos: Conversations with the Elders, Revised Edition

Barbara A. Holmes (Author)

These imagined dialogues between the elders on freedom, liberation, and more offer rich reflection and a unique vantage point for understanding the luminaries of liberation through the generations. An important resource for the contemporary task of Black liberation.

Blessing and Beseeching: Seventy Prayers Inspired by the Scriptures

Gail Ramshaw (Author)

Collected here are seventy new prayers that grew from Gail Ramshaw's close reading of the Bible in the quietest months of the pandemic. Surprises and riches are found on every page. By turns bold and humble, universal and deeply personal, Ramshaw's poetry in prayer will inspire individual reflection and enrich public worship settings alike.

Cultural Architecture: A Path to Creating Vitalized Congregations

Douglas A. Hill (Author)

Cultural Architecture: A Path to Creating Vitalized Congregations serves to assist pastors and leaders as they guide their congregations through the painstaking and intensive process of redevelopment. It provides hands-on tools to guide congregational leaders in creating vision, core values, and strategic plans. Although Hill's approach is grounded in his experiences within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, his systems for cultural architecture can be applied to congregations of any denomination.

Abundance: Creating a Culture of Generosity

Michael R. Ward (Author)

Pastor and certified fundraising executive (CFRE) Michael R. Ward provides church leaders a resource to lead their congregations to a new culture of generosity and abundance that raises more money as well as more disciples. This book guides a process of study, reflection, and action that is clear and practical. Ward taps into years of experience fundraising in the nonprofit sector to address the ongoing challenges of financing ministry.

Engage! Tools for Ministry in the Community

Dana Horrell (Author)

Author Dana Horrell calls on years of experience in community action to create this practical guide to help congregations reach out to their local communities. Engage! provides twenty-six practical and proven tools to help leaders develop methods and strategies to get started on a path of effective planning.

The primary audience for Engage! includes pastors, lay leaders, and members in local congregations who are engaged in community ministry.

Jobs Lost, Faith Found: A Spiritual Resource for the Unemployed

Mary C. Lindberg (Author)

Jobs Lost, Faith Found is for those who feel alone due to job loss. It is also for those who offer respect, companionship, guidance, and resources to the unemployed. Mary C. Lindberg draws on her family's experience of unemployment and the wisdom of many others to help readers discover a sense of worth and purpose on their way to a new job. Prayers, insights, stories, and reflections take readers from uncertainty to hope.

Mark: Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries

David Schnasa Jacobsen (Author/Editor)

The author draws together the strengths of two exegetical approaches to the Gospel of Mark in this volume. With liturgical sensitivity and exegetical skill, Jacobsen here provides a unique preaching resource that will build biblical literacy by assisting both preachers and listeners in understanding Mark's Gospel as narrative-theological whole, not just as a collection of loosely related stories.

The Everyday Advocate: Living Out Your Calling to Social Justice

Ross Murray (Author)

In The Everyday Advocate, Ross Murray encourages Christians to discern their call to advocate for justice and shows them how to respond faithfully by taking practical steps in everyday life. He also shows faith leaders how to help people think through their calling to advocacy and connect with communities that can use their passions and talents.

Leading with the Sermon: Preaching as Leadership

William H. Willimon (Author)

Prolific author William H. Willimon makes the compelling case that two key pastoral tasks--preaching and leadership--complement, correct, strengthen, and inform one another. Preaching is the distinctive function of pastoral leaders. Leadership of the church, particularly during a challenging time of transition in mainline Protestantism, has become a pressing concern for pastors. This book shows how the practices, skills, and intentions of Christian preaching can be helpful to the leadership of a congregation.

Becoming an Anti-Racist Church: Journeying toward Wholeness

Joseph Barndt (Author)

Martin Luther King's observation that 11 a.m. on Sunday is the most segregated hour of the week remains all too true. Christians addressing racism in American...

Grief: Contemporary Theory and the Practice of Ministry

Melissa M. Kelley (Author)

The experience of grief has been a source of intrigue and curiosity throughout history, and it continues to stimulate thought and theory in various fields of...

To Mend the World: A New Vision for Youth Ministry

Jason Lief (Author), Kurt Rietema (Author)

To Mend the World: A New Vision for Youth Ministry, based on the premise that the old models of ministry are no longer working, brings together practical theology, Christian ministry, and social entrepreneurship to offer a thoughtful, robust theological perspective and practical insights for youth ministry that will thrive into the future.

An American Muslim Guide to the Art and Life of Preaching

Sohaib Sultan (Author), Martin Nguyen (Revised by)

This book explores the art and craft of delivering Islamic sermons, while also providing a model of spiritual formation for those serving Muslim communities of faith in positions of religious leadership. Special attention is paid to the American Muslim context in which these faith leaders regularly live, operate, and faithfully engage.

N: My Encounter with Racism and the Forbidden Word in an American Classic

James Henry Harris (Author)

This book is about a Black man's experience of reading Mark Twain's classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for the first time while in graduate school. It captures the author's emotional struggle with Twain's use of the racial epithet more than two hundred times in the text. In these pages, Harris challenges his instructor and classmates and inspires readers to redress the long history of American racism and white supremacy bound up with the N word.

Life Unsettled: A Scriptural Journey for Wilderness Times

Cory Pechan Driver (Author)

The metaphor of wilderness journeying and the biblical book of Numbers take center stage in Cory Driver's creative account of life in wilderness times, a hallmark metaphor for the life of faith. The author combines the study of biblical texts, ancient Jewish legends, modern theological insights, and his own personal journeys to provide a guide for moving forward when we feel lost and confused. It includes a discussion guide ideal for group use.

Grace and Gigabytes: Being Church in a Tech-Shaped Culture

Ryan M. Panzer (Author)

Grace and Gigabytes explores the intersection of technology, culture, and church. Examining digital technology not as a set of tools, but as a force for cultural transformation, Ryan M. Panzer explores the networked values of the digital age--questions, connection, collaboration, and creativity; demonstrates the need for the church to change if it is to realize its mission; and makes recommendations for the practice of ministry today.

The Externally Focused Quest: Becoming the Best Church for the Community

Eric Swanson (Author), Rick Rusaw (Author), Alan Hirsch (Foreword by)

The Externally Focused Quest is for church leaders who want to transform their churches to become less internally focused and more oriented to the world around them. Using a highly practical approach, it outlines the ten changes needed to transform churches, changing the core of who they are and how they see themselves as a part of their community.

All-Age Everything: Worship for an Intergenerational church

Nick Harding (Author)

This revised edition of All-Age Everything is full of ideas and suggestions to make all-age worship a true intergenerational worship experience.