Six New Things – Week of August 05, 2024
August is a shoulder season. Let’s focus on inspiration and reflection for sustainable social action as together God’s people move into fall and winter with purpose, vision, and hope in building up the Beloved Community!
ONE
Inspire Littles for community activism with Barrio Rising (Dial), a fictional retelling of, ‘San Diego’s Chicano Park …and just one example of the Mexican American community’s rich history of resistance and resilience’.
Sustain adult’s work with, Social Change Now: A Guide for Reflection and Connection (Skinner), ‘a powerful roadmap for individuals and organizations who are ready to deepen their commitment to social justice’.
Find more inspiration for all ages in our Identity & Diversity – Latine Voices and Contemplative Activism lib guides.
TWO
Bring youth and YA into the work with Kindred: Young Adult Edition (Beacon), a ‘time-travel classic that makes us feel the horrors of American slavery and indicts our country’s lack of progress on racial reconciliation’.
Discover an essential perspective on race in literature in Everybody’s Protest Novel (Beacon), published in celebration of James Baldwin’s 100th-year anniversary, and ‘probing the shortcomings of the American protest novel and the harmful representations of Black identity in film and fiction’.
Find more wisdom and insight in our Antiracism lib guides for Tweens & Teens: Perspectives & Stories: Black Voices and Adults: Hearing/Reading Diverse Voices: Black Voices lib guides.
THREE
Collective concern for social action and justice is still somewhat new for congregations. On Mission with Jesus: Changing the Default Setting of the Church (Canterbury/Norwich) might help folx adjust to a new normal: it argues ‘that the Church’s inherited understanding of itself imprisons the imagination of local congregations’.
Giving the Church: The Christian Community through the Looking Glass of Generosity (SCM), might also help reshape the communal lens as it explores, ‘the nature of the church’ and asserts that ‘giving the church away can be a route to making the church a more attractive gift’.
Gain further empowerment in our Reimagining Church: Restructuring and Reorienting lib guides.
FOUR
Back those up – or set the stage for them – with God’s Gift of Generosity: Gratitude beyond Stewardship (WJK), which encourages us ‘to celebrate the timeless nature of God’s generosity and translate its profound truths into tangible, transformative actions in our contemporary world’. It includes a comprehensive group discussion and planning guide to support developing your generosity program. [Sale proceeds support Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.]
Find more in our Congregational Stewardship lib guide.
FIVE
As we move inexorably toward the coming school year, send your college-bound or work-bound youth/young adults off with a blessing: May You Love and Be Loved: Wishes for Your Life (Feiwel & Friends), is ‘a love letter to the infinite potential of the future’ – a lovely gift for new beginnings.
Take a new look at your Backpack / Back-to-School Sunday with the Backpack Blessing Wise Owl packet (Dandelion) – which includes storytelling prompts for Psalm 111:1-10 (RCL for August 18, 2024) and downloadable/printable Infinite Love backpack tags/stickers.
Find more in our Worship: Graduation & Post-High School and Backpack Blessing/Back-to-School lib guides.
SIX
And if you can believe it, Advent and Christmas resources are already popping up! From the Manger (Illustrated Ministry), considers the universal experience of hunger alongside, ‘peace, liberation, and meaning in this life’ as it ’embraces the playful symbolism of a newborn Jesus being laid down to sleep in a feeding trough in a town called “House of Bread”‘, with an invitation to ‘notice how the baby born in a bread town continues to feed a hungry world today’.
We’ve started re-populating our Advent & Christmas: Liturgical Arts – General and our Year C lib guides.
