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Item Reasonable Faith Christian Truth and Apologetics(Crossway Books, 2008-08-08) WILLIAM LANE CRAIGWhat is apologetics? Apologetics (from the Greek apologia: a defense) is that branch of Christian theology which seeks to provide a rational justification for the truth claims of the Christian faith. Apologetics is thus primarily a theoretical discipline, though it has a practical application. In addition to serving, like the rest of theology in general, as an expression of loving God with all our minds, apolo getics specifically serves to show to unbelievers the truth of the Christian faith, to confirm that faith to believers, and to reveal and explore the connections between Christian doctrine and other truths. As a theoretical discipline, then, apologet ics is not training in the art of answering questions, or debating, or evangelism, though all of these draw upon the science of apologetics and apply it practically. T his implies that a course in apologetics is not for the purpose of teaching you, “If he says so-and-so, then you say such-and-such back.” Apologetics, to repeat, is a theoretical discipline that tries to answer the question, What rational warrant can be given for the Christian faith? Therefore, most of our time must be spent in trying to answer this question. Now this is bound to be disappointing to some. They’re just not interested in the rational justification of Christianity. They want to know, “If someone says, ‘Look at all the hypocrites in the church!’ what do I say?” There’s nothing wrong with that question; but the fact remains that such practical matters are logically secondary to the theoretical issues and cannot in our limited space occupy the center of our attention. The use of apologetics in practice ought rather to be an integral part of courses and books on evangelism.Item Fighting for Your Marriage Positive Steps for Preventing Divorce and Preserving a Lasting Love(JOSSEY-BASS, 2001-01-11) Howard J. MarkmanThings change. Because of that simple fact, we’ve updated our work in order to bring you what we consider to be an even more practi- cal and potent version of Fighting for Your Marriage. What you hold in your hand is a major revision of the book we published in 1994. We wrote the original version to help couples build and nurture happy and strong marriages. This book is based on PREP®, which stands for the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program. PREP is based on over twenty years of research at the University of Denver as well as on research from universities around the world. PREP is a program we developed to help couples beat the odds. PREP workshops use specific steps and exercises to teach couples the skills and attitudes associated with good relationships. Because of its roots in solid research and its straightforward approach, PREP has received a great deal of attention from couples across the coun- try, professionals in the field of marital counseling, and the media. PREP is one of the most extensively researched programs for cou- ples ever developed. The strategies in PREP are based on our study of the key risks couples face as well as the most promising avenues for helping couples lower the risks. Marriage in our culture is risky business, and the costs of marital failure are staggering. The good news is that there are proven strategies that can help you preserve a lasting love. Whether or not you ever take a PREP workshop, this book presents the core of our thinking and strategies for couples.Item Faith-Based Organizations and Legislative Advocacy: A Qualitative Inquiry(M. Lori Thomas, 2008-08-08) Marye LorelleA dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2008 Major Director: F. Ellen Netting, Professor, School of Social Work Since the early 1990s, religion and matters of faith and spirituality have become a focal point in numerous arenas beyond the individual and traditionally sacred. With President George W. Bush’s White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives of 2001, the Charitable Choice provision of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act that preceded it in 1996, and the myriad of legal challenges that followed, matters of religion have become paramount in political discourse regarding social welfare. The viability of faith-based social service provision and the organizations providing the direct services have been the focus of speculation, debate, and a growing amount of research. Few studies, however, have explored the role of faith-based advocacy or lobbying organizations in shifting the social welfare climate, in proposing or opposing policy changes in the social welfare system, or in defining social welfare. Little is empirically known about the organizational dynamics of religious advocacy groups whose attempts at structural influence are, in part, affected by theological positions and religiously-informed values.Item Fighting for Your Marriage Positive Steps for Preventing Divorce and Preserving a Lasting Love(Jossey Bass, 2001-01-11) Howard J. MarkmanThings change. Because of that simple fact, we’ve updated our work in order to bring you what we consider to be an even more practi- cal and potent version of Fighting for Your Marriage. What you hold in your hand is a major revision of the book we published in 1994. We wrote the original version to help couples build and nurture happy and strong marriages. This book is based on PREP®, which stands for the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program. PREP is based on over twenty years of research at the University of Denver as well as on research from universities around the world. PREP is a program we developed to help couples beat the odds. PREP workshops use specific steps and exercises to teach couples the skills and attitudes associated with good relationships. Because of its roots in solid research and its straightforward approach, PREP has received a great deal of attention from couples across the coun- try, professionals in the field of marital counseling, and the media. PREP is one of the most extensively researched programs for cou- ples ever developed. The strategies in PREP are based on our study of the key risks couples face as well as the most promising avenues for helping couples lower the risks. Marriage in our culture is risky business, and the costs of marital failure are staggering.Item transformational leadership(LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS Mahwah, New Jersey, 2006-06-26) Bernard M. BassThere has been an explosion of interest in leadership. Each day stories appear in the newspapers discussing instances of successful leadership, as well as signifi cant failures of leadership. The stories usually concern world class and national politicians and statesmen, chief executive offi cers (CEO) of business and industry, directors of government and health care agencies, or generals and admirals. Sometimes the stories are of high-level leaders who are often in the spotlight. Carly Fiorina was the CEO of Hewlett Packard (HP) from 1999 until ousted in early 2005. As one of only a handful of women CEOs of Fortune 100 companies, she was often in the news, but no more so than when she led HP through the choppy waters of its merger with Compaq. Through a contentious fi ght to win over the support of HP’s board of directors, Fiorina kept her eyes on the vision of transforming HP into a “full service” technology company to rival IBM (Lashinsky, 2002). To make this a reality, Fiorina had to fi rst persuade board mem bers and inspire rank and fi le employees to buy in to her vision: Indeed, the day after the merger, she and Michael Capellas, the CEO of Compaq—now the No. 2 at HP—spent two hours simply marching through the one-mile-plus walkway that connects Compaq’s 17-building corporate headquarters in Houston, meeting and greeting as many people as they could. “She was like this massive fi gure,” recalls HP employee Antonio Humphreys, who worked for Compaq before the merger. “She took pictures and put on hats. The fact that she was willing to do that for the common folk—that earned her a lot of points.” (Lashinsky, 2002, p. 94) CEO Fiorina immediately focused on implementing the vision by empowering subordinates and providing an example of the hard work needed to transform an organization, its culture, and its trajectory.Item The World’s Most Powerful Leadership Principle: How to Become a Servant Leader(Crown Business, 2003-03-23) James C.HunterThese are not the best of times for leaders in corporate America. I write this at a time when CEO has become a four-letter word in many circles. We are in the midst of corporate scandals involving the likes of Adelphia, Arthur Andersen, Enron, Global Crossing, Tyco, and WorldCom. Just today I read a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll stating that seven in ten Americans say they distrust CEOs of large corporations. Fully eight in ten believe top executives of large companies will take “improper actions” to help themselves at the expense of their companies. Credibility for business leaders may well be at an all-time low. These corporate scandals leave me feeling ambivalent. On the one hand, I am pleased that corporate crooks are getting what they have coming and that the system is, at least in part, working. On the other hand, I feel sad for the many, many good, hardworking, and honest CEOs who are being painted with the same broad brush. Indeed, I have met far more honest CEOs than dishonest ones. As one pundit put it, saying all CEOs are crooks is like saying all priests are pedophiles.Item THE SHAPE of PRACTICAL THEOLOGY: Empowering Ministry with Theological Praxis(IVP Academic, 2001-01-11) Ray S. Andersonr > A^efore the theologian there was the storyteller. To say “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” is not the recitation of a genealogical litany but the recapitulation of a theolog ical legacy To say “Abraham” calls to mind a personal encounter that demanded a walk of faith and a witness to divine promise. To say “Isaac” reiterates the gracious intervention of the God who brings forth the promised seed from Sara’s barren womb. To say “Jacob” distinguishes Rebekah’s revelation as divine Word from Isaac’s natural inclination to honor a cultural custom. These were all storytellers; it remained for Moses to become the first theologian. Following the encounter with God at the burning bush, and the revelation of the new name—Yahweh—Moses outlined the contours of the divine covenant of grace and mercy as revealed through the liberation of his people from Egypt and the journey toward the Promised Land. The inner logic of God’s saving grace became the “spine” to which the stories lodged as fragments in the oral tradition could be attached as a coherent pattern of inspired and written Word of God. God’s act of reconciliation is simultaneously God’s Word of revelation.Item The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerfull Lessons in Personal Change(Jossey-Bass, 2000-02-12) Stephen R. CoveyStephen Covey has written a remarkable book about the human condition, so elegantly written, so understanding of our embedded concerns, so useful for our organization and personal lives, that it's going to be my gift to everyone I know. --Warren Bennis, author of On Becoming a Leader I've never known any teacher or mentor on improving personal effectiveness to generate such an overwhelmingly positive reaction.... This book captures beautifully Stephen's philosophy of principles. I think anyone reading it will quickly understand the enormous reaction I and others have had to Dr. Covey's teachings.--John Pepper, President, Procter and Gamble Stephen Covey is an American Socrates, opening your mind to the 'permanent things' --values, family, relationships, communicating.--Brian Tracy, author of Psychology of Achievement Stephen R. Covey's book teaches with power, conviction, and feeling. Both the content and the methodology of these principles form a solid foundation for effective communication. As an educator, I think this book to be a significant addition to my library.Item The Servant as Leader(The Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, 2008-08-28) Robert K. GreenleafSERVANT AND LEADER. Can these two roles be fused in one real person, in all levels of status or calling? If so, can that person live and be productive in the real world of the present? My sense of the present leads me to say yes to both questions. This paper is an attempt to explain why and to suggest how. The idea of The Servant as Leader came out of reading Herman Hesse’s Journey to the East. In this story we see a band of men on a mythical journey, probably also Hesse’s own journey. The central figure of the story is Leo who accompanies the party as the servant who does their menial chores, but who also sustains them with his spirit and his song. He is a person of extraordinary presence. All goes well until Leo disappears. Then the group falls into disarray and the journey is abandoned. They cannot make it without the servant Leo. The narrator, one of the party, after some years of wandering finds Leo and is taken into the Order that had sponsored the journey. There he discovers that Leo, whom he had known first as servant, was in fact the titular head of the Order, its guiding spirit, a great and noble leader.Item The responsible administrator: an approach to ethics for the administrative role(Jossey-Bass, 2006-06-16) Terry L. CooperAs I write these introductory comments for the fifth edition of The Responsible Administrator, I am struck by the fact that when I wrote the first edition, I never envisioned that the field of administrative ethics would grow so robustly that there would be four subsequent editions of this book. Indeed, this fifth edition is testimony not only to the growth of the field, but to the continued relevance of administrative ethics and the problem of responsibility. This fifth edition seeks to acknowledge the changes in the field and the advances in research while remaining true to the basic framework of the first edition. The Responsible Administrator was written for students and practitioners of public administration who want to develop their ethical as well as technical competence. It is for men and women in public service, or preparing for it, who sometimes worry about the right thing to do, but who either have not taken the time to read books on ethical theory or suspect that such treatises would not be helpful at the practical level. The education, training, and day-to-day practice of public administrators tend to be dominated by the practical problems of getting the job done. Concerns about what should be done and why it should be done get swept aside by the pressures of schedule and workload. Modern society is preoccupied with action, to the exclusion of reflection about values and principles. Theory is diminished to theories that concern means—“how to” crowds out “toward what end?” Ethical theory, in particular, tends to suffer under the sway of this mentality. Because ethics involves substantive reasoning about obligations, consequences, and ultimate ends, its immediate utility for a producing and consuming society is suspect. Principles and values, “goods” and “oughts,” seem pretty wispy stuff compared to cost-benefit ratios, GNP, tensile strength, organizational structures, assembly lines, budgets, downsizing, deadlines, outsourcing through contracts, interest group lobbying, and political pressures. The payoff for dealing formally with ethics is unclear for individual administrators and for organizations as well.