title: Small Truths

author: Jan A

category: fiction • subcategory: general • date submitted: 5.5.2022 • author id: AlJaSm8722

word count: 80980

The town of Cedar Island is in trouble. The tight-knit community has made poor choices that threaten the relationships that make their town unique. When Erin Price agrees to write short stories to attract customers to her struggling newsletter, she initiates a series of events that have the potential of getting more than the newsletter back on track. The stories are events from Erin’s past chosen for the lessons they convey, but for these lessons to work, she must be willing to expose her true self to her friends and neighbors. Although the stories have a way of pointing each reader to a different lesson, the town will soon discover that it will take more than stories to heal the fear, heartache, loneliness, and lack of trust invading their island community.

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title: The Disciple Dilemma (How Christian Traditions Are Bankrupting Discipleship)

author: Dennis A

category: nonfiction • subcategory: spiritualgrowth • date submitted: 7.21.2021 • author id: AlDeTh16921

word count: 80000

Synopsis: The studies and the newspaper headlines tell us something is amiss for followers of Christ. Desertion, disunity, timidity, nationalism, spectatorship and abuses, among others, are demonstrable, common and close by in our Christian communities. Christ told his people to make disciples.  Christian culture, traditionally, produces members. Which is one small tradition with large consequences for discipleship.  And that tradition, along with several others, looking back over sixteen hundred years have too often bankrupted Biblical discipling.  What are these traditions that silence, shun or slough off discipleship? How do they get a pass as good and right and normal in Christian community?  Do we stick with culture and traditions we own today and hope it all gets better?  Or, do we need to think about a massive reboot for our faith communities to flourish discipleship?  Welcome to the disciple dilemma. Gap Analysis: This is a book aiming at a gap.  Of the contemporary discipling books we’ve researched the published material clumps largely in one of three points on a triangle, with an empty space, the gap we want to address, in the middle, where The Disciple Dilemma is positioned.  The gap, we argue, is the root cause in declining discipleship.   One point on the triangle would be books talking to the behavioral aspects of discipleship, meaning personal growth and behaviors for an individual as a disciples.  In other words, “Here’s how to be a better disciple.” My favorite examples in this space are Dann Spader, Four Chair Discipling, (Chicago, Moody, 2014), Bill Hull, The Complete Book of Discipleship (Navpress, 2009), Hugh Hewitt, The Embarrassed Believer (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1998) and Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?, (Ada, MI, F.H. Revell, 1976)   The second point of the triangle represents books defining programs and techniques leaders can utilize.  “Use these tools and fix or improve your group discipleship efforts.”  Books I think about in this space are Thom S. Rainer and Eric Geiger, Simple Church: Returning to God’s Process for Making Disciples (Nashville: B&H Books, 2011), Chuck Broughton, Design for Discipleship, (Colorado Springs: The Navigators, 1973, 1980, 2006), Sherry Weddell Forming Intentional Disciples (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, 2012).   The third point of the triangle represents books about contemporary, or at least fairly contemporary diagnostics, looking at the societal trends that are eroding churches, parents and missionaries’ discipling efforts.  “We have to fix these big issues to get at better disciples, and at better Christianity.” Recent books speaking to this area of the triangle illustration are Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option, (New York: Penguin Random House, 2017), R.R. Reno, Return of the Strong Gods, (Washington D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 2019), Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove, Reconstructing The Gospel, (Downers Grove: IVP Books).   Where’s the gap?  The middle space outlined by those three triangulated points.  In other words, the gap is in talking to the crucial role leaders play to conform a Christian community toward personal discipling, toward disciple making and toward dealing with the supporting parts to flourish discipleship.  Leaders are the change agents in defining mission and culture – the driving force in any community trying to make people better, stronger and more mature.  No one seems to be coaching leaders on that role – which is absolutely not the role of making disciples, but supporting them.  I’m concerned many theologians and even their lay leadership have little grasp about forming organizations that motivate missionally focused disciples.  That sounds odd probably, since churches and para-churches always talk about missions.  But getting leadership to stay in their appointed lane so as to flourish a supporting organization (versus running a kind of mass production discipling factory) is a rarely addressed issue.  This is to say leaders must intentionally develop and sustain an organization about disciples if disciples are to flourish and make disciples.  This kind of organizational definition is my professional space.  Helping organizations grasp their real mission, get the right people doing the right things, and max-performing the results through people.  Leadership does not have the responsibility to make disciples in the Bible.  Disciples of all stripes are to make disciples.   A closer look at that critical nuance, which is Christ’s mission for individuals and the New Testament’s teaching on Christian community seems to be missing from the books we see on the shelves and servers about discipleship.  The Disciple Dilemma surveys many of the wonderful books on being a disciple, the books on program-based discipling and the books on big issues and causes impeding discipleship.  That gap, in the paucity of books describing old traditions that proved unworkable toward discipling (but the traditional way to keep the excitement, and peace) is the place to focus.   In my view there are few talking about this gap, with the most closely aligned example being Carl Wilson, With Christ in the School of Disciple Building (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978).   Target market This book is written for formal and informal leaders in Christian communities.  Pastors of course, but equally, men and women who lead in small group and in youth settings, and as ministers, elders, deacons, trustees and Boards.  We think leaders will resonate with this material, recognizing the significant exodus among the so-called Dones and Nones, and trying to work with spectators, woke and woeful alike.  A recurring theme among pastors we engaged with was “we don’t really understand why discipleship does not take, and we don’t know how to change that”.  The Disciple Dilemma is intended to look at the trends, numbers and stories that make believers go quiet in the marketplaces, go inert in spiritual growth, or remain unwilling to talk about the reason for the hope within them with people.  The Disciple Dilemma offers a path forward for leaders to escape the dilemma’s effects, to recenter mission, culture, strategy and execution in their communities, reinstating the fuller life of disciples, to live as Christ called us to live in personal sanctification and making more disciples.  

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title: Quantum Genesis, Speculations in Modern Physics and the Truth of Scripture

author: Stuart A

category: nonfiction • subcategory: theology • date submitted: 9.25.2015 • author id: AlS9455015

word count: 117,086

Our culture assumes that there is a conflict between science and Scripture, that the world that we can see and measure is not compatible with what the Bible tells us. But modern physics reveals a very different world, one that is not at all like the world of our experience. Relativity shows us time and space bound together, bending and stretching to form our universe. Quantum mechanics tells us of another world behind the one that we see, an insubstantial world where ‘solid’ matter is only light and shadow in a cloud of possibilities.
Scripture does not fit very well with the world of our experience, but what we experience is only an illusion. The world of modern physics is the true world, a true world that fits very well with the portrayal of Creation in Scripture.
Quantum Genesis presents the basics of modern physics, relativity, quantum mechanics, and particle physics, with an interpretation of Scripture that is compatible with the world of modern physics. At our current level of understanding, there is not necessarily any conflict between science and Scripture. Logically, modern physics supports an implication that we live in a Creation made by God.

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title: Strong Delusion

author: T.J. A

category: fiction • subcategory: scififantasy • date submitted: 4.25.2014 • author id: AlT3634514

word count: 58500

What does a mission to Mars, ancient astronauts, and the alleged “face” and pyramids on the surface of the red planet have to do with the rise of the antichrist or the return of Jesus? Jeremy Johnson and his fellow astronauts find out when they encounter other “life forms” in their exploration. Is some of the crew just seeing things? Extraterrestrials, angels or demons? Or are they possibly infected with some hallucinogenic Martian virus that is driving them to wreak apparent self-inflicted harm, to resolve to irrational behavior and even to kill themselves? They discover that the simultaneous disappearance of millions on earth and even some among them and the supernatural empowerment of their commander are not just coincidental. Mavor is an old world Chaldean word for “the rebel.” In Roman and Greek mythology, Mavor or Mars Quirinus is the “god of fortresses”.

“And the king shall do as he wills. He shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak astonishing things against the God of gods. He shall prosper till the indignation is accomplished; for what is decreed shall be done. He shall pay no attention to the gods of his fathers, or to the one beloved by women. He shall not pay attention to any other god, for he shall magnify himself above all. He shall honor the god of fortresses instead of these. A god whom his fathers did not know he shall honor with gold and silver, with precious stones and costly gifts.” Daniel 11:36-38, ESV

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title: The Seed Project:

author: Sunni A

category: Fiction, SciFi/Fanta • subcategory: Fiction, SciFi/Fanta • date submitted: 2.20.2010 • author id: AlS7800310

word count: 595

Rescued from a downed spacecraft specifically designed to preserve his body in cryosleep, Destin finds himself stranded, with no memory, on an alien pre-technological world. Haunted by questions of his origin and by premonitions of danger to the gentle race who adopt him, he is plunged into a struggle between his innate suspicious and aggressive nature, his attraction to the future servant-leader, Luz, and the simple trusting faith of her people. On a nearby planet, First Lord Volir and his underground remnant fight a deadly battle against his co-leaders' schemes to dominate neighboring worlds. The common purpose in this tale of multiple worlds emerges when Destin learns his identity - and his mission as a member of The Seed Project. His foreboding has proven correct, with Luz the focus of the threat. Now he must face his past, seek the enemy in its own realm, and discover the fortitude to serve alongside Luz. A story of the power of love in the battle of good versus evil; suspense, romance, vivid scenarios, and character study meld to illustrate God's relentless redemptive pursuit.

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title: Tough Little Guy

author: Kit A

category: nonfiction • subcategory: Children, Illustrate • date submitted: 4.20.2008 • author id: AlK7737508

Tough Little Guy is an intergenerational story that compares the style of two men parenting sons. The first boy has a strict father who loves him, but through actions and responses to his son believes harshness will turn him into a tough guy. When grown they boy becomes the father of a son. The father adores his son. He rejects the parenting style of his father and chooses to teach the boy how to love and forgive when life hurts. The boy ends up teaching his grandfather how to love.

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