Böcker av HALL

Abigail Nicole Baker grew up in upstate New York in the countryside. She didn't have the greatest childhood or parents that loved her, but she had a best friend and their family become her own. But at the age of 18, Abigail left the countryside after a traumatic event and never looked back. She worked multiple jobs to save every dime she had to open up her own business. Eventually, Abigail met Theodore Allen Kingston, a very wealthy man. He dotted on Abigail for the first few months, but after that, he acted as though she was an inconvenience for him for most of the time. Abigail ignored it, she got what she wanted, he had helped her with buying a store front and supplying it. Once the store took off with the tourist of New York City. They ate the stuff up that she sold. She didn't really need Theo anymore, but the company was nice sometimes.After a few years, Abigail met a mysterious man that wandered into her shop one night. Nicholas Alexander Thorne. He made her feel a way she had never felt before. She desired him more than she had any man before. She wasn't sure what it was about him, but she wanted to know him, to have him. But once Theo realized Abigail was falling for someone else, he declared her to be his and only his and no one else was allowed to have her. He would kill her if he had to, to keep her from being with anyone else. Abigail was torn between the two men. She realized she didn't really love Theo, but she feared the man. But loved Nicholas and she wanted to only be with him. Abigail found herself caught in between a world that she didn't even know existed. Vampires. She didn't know the two men in her life were apart of it and she was about to find out.

At the age of thirty, my calling to preach came to me in a dream, a strange man said, Let God Be the Judge. Many will try to deceive you by telling you God did not call you to preach. You Let God Be The Judge. When I awoke from that dream, I could not believe it. I thought to myself, Is God calling me to preach? A shy county girl like me could not be a preacher. This recurring dream haunted me for three and a half years. It was as if I could not run from it. The stranger in my dreams told me to read John 22:17: Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God. Jesus gave Mary Magdalene the task of spreading the good news. The good news of His Glorious resurrection and His ascending back to God. Mary thought she was there to visit Christs tomb, but Jesus redirected her task and she became the first female evangelist.

In our challenging economic times, it is no surprise that churches must get creative with their resources. But the authors of The More-with-Less Church believe pastors, leadership teams, and planning committees should look on times such as these not as hurdles to overcome but as opportunities to reconsider entrenched but inefficient ministry practices that are siphoning time, money, and energy from their churches. Drawn from time- and field-tested strategies, this practical resource helps church leaders avoid costly mistakes and maximize the return on their investment in four areas of church life--ministries, staffing, facilities, and finances.

John W. Hall is Assistant Professor of U.S. Military History in the Department of History at University of Madison-Wisconsin.

This volume of especially commissioned essays explains what is meant by "civil society", paying particular attention to the relationships between civil society and other social forces such as nationalism and populism.