What's Each Book About?
The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended
What if it’s not your fault that sex is bad in your marriage?
Based on a groundbreaking in-depth survey of 22,000 Christian women, The Great Sex Rescue unlocks the secrets to what makes some marriages red hot while others fizzle out. Generations of women have grown up with messages about sex that make them feel dirty, used, or invisible, while men have been sold such a cheapened version of sex, they don’t know what they’re missing. The Great Sex Rescue hopes to turn all of that around, developing a truly biblical view of sex where mutuality, intimacy, and passion reign.
The Great Sex Rescue pulls back the curtain on what is happening in Christian bedrooms and exposes the problematic teachings that wreck sex for so many couples–and the good teachings that leave others breathless. In the #metoo and #churchtoo era, not only is this book a long overdue corrective to church culture, it is poised to free thousands of couples from repressive and dissatisfying sex lives so that they can experience the kind of intimacy and wholeness God intended.
Get your copy here: https://a.co/d/6MQENFy
Group is led by Malcolm Foley and Meets Thursday Nights.
The After Party: Toward Better Christian Politics
“For the exhausted, the hurting, and the faithful, The After Party helps reframe our political identity away from the “what” of political positions and toward the “how” being centered on Jesus.
This paradigm-shifting book complements The After Party Project–a six-part, video-based, highly interactive curriculum that provides churches, small groups, and individuals with an on-the-ground, biblically based approach to a very complex topic.
The After Party: Toward Better Christian Politics helps readers who feel despair about political divisiveness:
Engage with others across political differences, Learn specific steps to reframe political identity outside of partisan divides, Focus on how we relate to one another as Jesus teaches before moving to the what of political topics. This is a course as well as a book. Course: https://redeemingbabel.org/the-after-party/ Book: https://a.co/d/bTtHkqq
Wednesdays @ Noon @ the church. Led by Slim. (bring your lunch)
Practicing The Way: Be With Jesus. Become Like Him. Do as he did.
We are constantly being formed by the world around us. To be formed by Jesus will require us to become his apprentice.
To live by what the first Christian disciples called a Rule of Life—a set of practices and relational rhythms that slow us down and open up space in our daily lives for God to do what only God can do—transforms the deepest parts of us to become like him.
This introduction to spiritual formation is full of John Mark Comer’s trademark mix of theological substance and cultural insight as well as practical wisdom on developing your own Rule of Life.
Led by Cole Sussman and Meg Burleson. Saturdays @ 9:15 AM
Grab your book here: https://a.co/d/7oMi9MU
Take the Spiritual Health Reflection before the 1st meeting:
https://www.practicingtheway.org/reflection
These ancient practices have much to offer us. By learning to rearrange our days, we can follow the Way of Jesus. We can be with him. Become like him. And do as he did.
Practicing The King's Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give.
The church in the West is rediscovering the fact that God cares deeply for the poor. More and more, churches and individual Christians are looking for ways to practice economic discipleship, but it’s hard to make progress when we are blind to our own entanglement in our culture’s idolatrous economic beliefs and practices.
Practicing the King’s Economy cuts through much confusion and invites Christians to take their place within the biblical story of the “King Jesus Economy.” Through eye-opening true stories of economic discipleship in action, and with a solid exploration of six key biblical themes, the authors offer practical ways for God’s people to earn, invest, spend, compensate, save, share, and give in ways that embody God’s love and provision for the world.
Led by Karen Libassi
Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give
Thursday, June 20, 7 pm at the East Waco Library.
Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion
For twenty years, Gregory Boyle has run Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention program located in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, the gang capital of the world. In Tattoos on the Heart, he distills his experience working in the ghetto into a breathtaking series of parables inspired by faith.
Arranged by theme and filled with sparkling humor and glowing generosity, these essays offer a stirring look at how full our lives could be if we could find the joy in loving others and in being loved unconditionally. From giant, tattooed Cesar, shopping at JCPenney fresh out of prison, we learn how to feel worthy of God’s love. From ten-year-old Lula we learn the importance of being known and acknowledged. From Pedro we understand the kind of patience necessary to rescue someone from the darkness. In each chapter we benefit from Boyle’s gentle, hard-earned wisdom.
These essays about universal kinship and redemption are moving examples of the power of unconditional love and the importance of fighting despair. Gorgeous and uplifting, Tattoos on the Heart reminds us that no life is less valuable than another.
Led by Cheryl Cooper
Mondays at 6. 844 Country Ln Dr, McGregor, TX 76657
Strong Like Water
There’s a cost to being a certain kind of strong.
When it comes to difficult circumstances, we’ve all heard the platitudes: “No pain, no gain.” “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” But if we spend our lives trying to be “the strong one,” we become exhausted, burned-out, and disconnected from our truest God-given selves.
What if it were different? Could there be a different way to be strong? Could strength mean more than pushing on and pushing through pain, bearing every heavy burden on our own? What if, instead, true strength were more like the tide: soft and bold, fierce and gentle, moving together as one powerful force?
In Strong like Water, author and trauma therapist Aundi Kolber offers a framework for true flourishing.
With each page, you’ll:
- Learn how your nervous system shapes your experience so that we can move through pain instead of being stuck in it.
- Explore various practices, rhythms, and resources to support you in challenging circumstances with compassion and hope.
- Discover how to internalize connection, love, and safety―empowering you with greater resilience.
A different, more expansive way of healing, wholeness, and possibly―especially―strength is possible. We were made to be strong like water
Led by Silas West
Meets Sunday night every other week at 6 pm (117 Spring Creek St, Waco, 76705).
Welcoming The Stranger: Justice, Compassion, and Truth in the immigration debate
Immigration is one of the most complicated issues of our time. Voices on all sides argue strongly for action and change. Christians find themselves torn between the desire to uphold laws and the call to minister to the vulnerable. In this book World Relief immigration experts Matthew Soerens and Jenny Yang move beyond the rhetoric to offer a Christian response to immigration.
Led by Lorenz Villa. Group meets Thursday nights from 6:30 to 8:00 at (4321 Concord Rd. Lot D).
The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible
How are we to live out the Bible today?
In this updated edition of The Blue Parakeet, you’ll see how Scripture transcends culture and time, and you’ll learn how to read God’s Word in a fresh way.
The gospel is designed to be relevant in every culture, in every age, in every language. It’s fully capable of this, and we are called to discern how God is speaking to us today. But applying its words and directions on how to live our lives is not always easy.
Professor and author of The King Jesus Bible Scot McKnight challenges us to rethink how to read the Bible, not just to puzzle it together into some systematic belief or historical tradition but to see it as an ongoing Story that we’re summoned to enter and to carry forward in our day.
Throughout the Bible, God speaks in each generation, in that generation’s ways and beckons us to be a part of his amazing story. The Blue Parakeet is a profound meditation on how God is speaking to our generation through His Word.
Tuesdays @ 6:30. Led by Lynsey Holland and Sarah Jane Menefee.