What happens when being radical for God brings you to the edge of disaster? When Kay Bruner and her husband, Andy, took their young family to live on an island in the South Pacific, she found the purposeful, adventurous life she’d hoped for—along with isolated living, dangerous sea travel, tropical illnesses, and a floundering marriage. As they worked on a Bible translation project with a local language group, Kay sank into burnout and depression while Andy medicated his stress with a pornography addiction. Bringing life back from the brink required a radical reinvention of life, from a ministry and marriage built on high performance and spiritual heroism, to a nourishing daily walk of grace, freedom, and intimate connection. This is a story about going to extremes for spiritual acceptability and failing dismally, only to find that love and grace transcend failure. For anyone who’s ever asked, “When will I be good enough for love?” This book resoundingly answers: “Right now. You are loved, right this minute, in this mess.” While few of us will live on a tiny island in the South Pacific, many of us will find hope and healing in this story of a painful fall into the arms of love.

Rhythms of Grace emerges from a personal exploration of contemplative spirituality. Coming from an evangelical and charismatic background, Tony Horsfall felt an increasing desire to know God more deeply. At the same time, he felt an increasing dissatisfaction with his own spiritual life, as well as concern at the number of highly qualified and gifted people involved in Christian ministry who experience burn-out. In this book he shows how contemplative spirituality, with its emphasis on realising our identity as God's beloved children and on being rather than doing, has vital lessons for us about discovering intimacy with God.

Exhaustion, burnout, tiredness, even breakdown... sadly, such conditions are all too common these days, not least among those involved in some kind of Christian ministry, whether full-time, part-time or voluntary. In striving to do our utmost for God, we can easily forget that there were many times when Jesus himself was willing to rest, to do nothing except wait for the Spirit's prompting, so that he demonstrated the vital principle of 'working from a place of rest'. Check out our event on self-care with Tony.

Do you have the leadership skills you need to solve problems, reach goals, and develop others?

The COACH Model® is a radically different approach to leading people. Rather than providing answers, ask questions that draw out what God has already put into others. Learn how to create powerful conversations to assist others to solve their own problems, reach goals, and develop leadership skills in the process.

Whether you are working with employees, teenagers, or a colleague living in another city, you’ll find powerful tools and techniques you need to increase your leadership effectiveness.

Great coaching skills aren't enough to achieve great outcomes cross-culturally. Neglecting to adapt to the increasing cultural diversity of those we serve is like refusing to switch from driving on the right side in North America, to driving on the left in India: unsatisfying outcomes will result! Written by a master coach with a decade of cross-cultural coaching and training experience, Dancing between Cultures is loaded with stories, tips and real-life situations designed to help you implement practical faith-based strategies for culturally intelligent coaching. Understanding and adapting to culture is a foundational skill for the twenty-first-century coach. Dancing between Cultures is an essential guidebook on your journey to transformational conversations across cultures.

Life is filled with transitions. Sometimes they happen in one geographical place. We move from childhood to adulthood, singleness to marriage, health to chronic illness. Other times they occur when we relocate from one place to another. In Life in Motion, we see how ever since Adam and Eve had to leave the Garden of Eden, humans have had to deal with the reality of making geographic transitions. Amazingly, we discover that people who made such transitions in ancient times responded in remarkably similar ways as we do today. Through their stories, we gain insight into the normal stages of transition, how we often respond during each stage, and how we can grow through all transitions with strength and hope.

Find out more about Ruth Van Reken.

Ruth Van Reken describes herself as 'a person in process' – someone whose life is made up of the continuous interplay between her inner and outer journey. For more than twenty-five years, Ruth has traveled to over 45 countries sharing what she has learned while 'listening to life' about the often paradoxical nature of growing up globally. What she has learned resonates with expatriate children and adults from all sectors – corporate, diplomatic, military, missionary, immigrant and refugees.

Born and raised in Nigeria as the daughter of American missionaries, at age 39 Ruth needed to understand why, despite a life filled with rich experiences, a meaningful spiritual component, and family and friends who loved her, she often battled a secret depression. Through the journaling that became this book, she discovered that the very goodness of her life kept her from dealing with some of the challenges that also come with a global lifestyle – the realities of chronic cycles of separation and loss, reentry, and questions of identity. How could there be any struggles when she loved her childhood world so much?

As a way of examining this ‘other side’ of her story, Ruth's began to write many letters home such as the girl known as Miss Question Box might have written. This book contains her story from ages six to thirty-nine. Today, in her mid-sixties, renowned internationally for her compassion, knowledge and insight into what it means to be a child growing up among worlds, Van Reken, looks back over her life and adds a fascinating and reflective epilogue to a memoir that has already sold 32,000 copies and has helped and inspired its readers.

Journaling has always been Ruth's first port in a storm. Writing her memoir this way is a natural part of her process. That she would also turn to her journal as a way of making sense of the cancer that knocked her 'out of line' for a couple of years, is no surprise. As she writes: "This is the power of journaling – to see the obvious but not yet named places in life."