PEABODY, MA—A new book by professional mediators helps families navigate the challenges associated with aging parents, overcome past hurts and resentment, and talk openly with one another in love and understanding.

In their mediation practice, Carolyn Miller Parr and Sig Cohen discovered that families in distress more often than not experience pain from two main sources: broken family relationships, and a parent’s failure to plan for the future. Love’s Way is their answer to this problem.

Parr and Cohen found that many older adults resist engaging in “The Conversation” about their wills, plans, and wishes as they age because they fear losing their independence and the freedom to change their minds. Adult children hesitate to push the issue because they’re afraid they’ll upset their parents or seem greedy. And both parents and children hate to think about their parents’ death. But according to the authors, it is necessary to have these conversations and plan for the future to avoid hurt, anger, and rifts in the family unit.

“We want to prevent families from making mistakes that can fracture relations among siblings and between them and their parents,” says Cohen. “One of our goals is to encourage and demonstrate how families can plan ahead before a crisis strikes and chaos ensues, whether it involves driving, asset distribution, or caregiving a loved one with a fatal illness.”

Ten practical chapters including “Transforming Fear and Anger,” “Siblings in War and Peace,” “Scaling the Twin Peaks of Paperwork and Planning,” and “Dying and Death” guide family members through the ups and downs of growing old together. Both aging parents and adult children will learn “10 Tips to Diffuse Anger,” how to have difficult conversations with empathy and understanding, and the proper legal documents that all aging adults need.

Carolyn Miller Parr is a retired judge, mediator, writer, and public speaker. She graduated from Stetson University (BA), Vanderbilt (MA English), and Georgetown Law (JD). Since 2002, Judge Parr has practiced peacemaking through her mediation practice Beyond Dispute and Tough Conversations with Sig Cohen.

Sig Cohen is a retired Foreign Service officer, fundraiser, and community organizer, and now serves as a mediator. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania (BS) and the University of Chicago (MA in International Relations).

Both authors reside in the Washington D.C. area.

Hendrickson Publishers has a strong history of producing outstanding academic, trade, reference books, and Bibles at a reasonable price. Their products include books on Christian living, biblical studies and reference works for pastors, thoughtful laypeople, and the academy.

Media Contact: Meg Rusick, Marketing & Communications Manager, mrusick@hendrickson.com  978-573-2147

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Endorsements for Love’s Way
January 1, 2019 • Paperback • 182 pages • Retail $14.95 • ISBN: 978-1-68307-195-2

“Above all, these two experienced mediators offer their practical and personal experience to help us through the most difficult transition—from midlife autonomy to increasing interdependence. Aimed at helpers, the book also invites us to be the ones walking the path of diminishment with dignity and grace. We all need to know this terrain!”
—Marjory Bankson, author of Creative Aging: Rethinking Retirement in a Changing World

“Our elders ‘have gone before us on a road . . . we too will travel.’ The authors quote Socrates, and then they present a plainspoken, insightful guidebook that illuminates a road many of us regard with dread, uncertainty, and the natural desire to put off to another day. This is a practical book, both honest and nonthreatening. It is full of wisdom that family members of several generations can use together, as they seek loving and respectful compromises to the dilemmas of old age.”
—Ann Barnet, MD, founder of The Family Place, Washington, DC, and coauthor (with husband Richard Barnet) of The Youngest Minds

“Judge Carolyn Miller Parr and Sig Cohen have authored a comprehensive guide for families preparing to care for an older adult member or planning their own future as elders. Their stories and suggestions about how to navigate the legal, emotional, and financial challenges ahead offer invaluable advice and evocative reading.”
—William Fralin, JD, Elder Law Attorney, and founder of The Estate Planning and Elder Law Firm, PC, Alexandria, Virginia, and Washington, DC

“Carolyn Parr and Sig Cohen’s book, particularly the chapter on siblings, gives practical and time-honored advice on the frustrating family dynamics that sometimes impacts even well-adjusted families. Love’s Way: Living Peacefully with Your Family as Your Parents Age is a great tool to add to your family emotional toolkit.”
—Marti Bailey, BS, CSA, CDP, Director, Sibley Senior Association and Community Health

“Anxious about talking with a parent or an aging relative about their living arrangements? This is your book! The authors’ rich background in law and mediation come together to challenge our incorrect assumptions, while providing clear and respectful ways to discuss and approach the questions around caring for aging people and their families. Members of all ages in my church participated in a highly popular study around this book, with immediately positive results as they had the courage and the tools to directly address this issue in their families. This book not only helps people think through everything about caring for their parents, but it also helps them plan ahead for themselves!”
—The Rev. Ryan P. Sirmons, Pastor, The United Church of Christ of Annapolis, Maryland

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Nashville, Tenn (December 11, 2018)–B&H Publishing is proud to announce that “The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home” by Russell Moore has been named the Christianity Today 2019 Beautiful Orthodoxy Book of the Year. This honor is given to a release “best embodies CT’s pursuit of truthfulness and loveliness” and is Moore’s second time receiving the award, as “Onward” won in 2016.

“We live in strange times, when some Christians question the value of the family, and others think that devotion to family is the same as devotion to God. Moore refuses to let the conversation remain on the extremes,” comments Mark Galli, Christianity Today editor-in-chief. “Moore recognizes that the family is crucial in God’s economy, but he doesn’t turn it into an idol. He explains persuasively how the church is our first family while giving practical, realistic direction in how to nurture and maintain a healthy, biblical family life, one that reflects the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord. In other words, he tells the truth about what it means to be a biblical family (orthodoxy) and does so in a way that makes the family good news (beautiful).”

Published in September 2018, “The Storm-Tossed Family” addresses questions such as “why do our families have so much power over us?” and explores how family makes us who we are and how understanding this can liberate us to live without fear.

A longtime pastor, a former professor and provost of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and current president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Moore brings theological insight and pastoral approach to this most sensitive of topics.

“Dr. Moore’s work–really, everything he writes–is a rare combination of equal parts truth and beauty,” said B&H Trade Books Publisher Devin Maddox. “It’s fun to see Dr. Moore receive honor he so richly deserves.”

For the complete award announcement and additional judges’ comments, click here.

Russell Moore is president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the moral and public policy agency of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. He is a frequent cultural commentator, an ethicist and theologian by background and an ordained Southern Baptist minister. Moore is the author of several books, including ”Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel.” A native Mississippian, he and his wife Maria are the parents of five sons. For more information, visit russellmoore.com.

B&H Publishing Group, an imprint of LifeWay Christian Resources, is a team of mission minded people with a passion for taking God’s Word to the world. Because we believe Every Word Matters® we seek to provide intentional, Bible-centered content that positively impacts the hearts and minds of people, inspiring them to build a lifelong relationship with Jesus Christ. Among our print and digital releases for the trade, church, and academic markets, titles include The New York Times No. 1 bestsellers “The Love Dare” and “The Vow,” No. 1 CBA bestseller “I Am a Church Member” as well as the newly-revised Christian Standard Bible (CSB) version.

WESTMONT, IL—Christianity Today has released the winners of its 2019 Book Awards, and InterVarsity Press is pleased to announce that it received top honors in four categories: Church/Pastoral Leadership, Fiction, Missions/Global Church, and Politics and Public Life. IVP also received the Award of Merit in the Apologetics/Evangelism category.

The IVP title that received the 2019 Book of the Year in the Church/Pastoral Leadership category was Preaching as Reminding: Stirring Memory in an Age of Forgetfulness by Jeffrey D. Arthurs. Jason Helopoulos, author of The New Pastor’s Handbook said, “This book just became required reading for any young pastor I have the privilege of ministering to in the future. Thankfully, the evangelical church over the past half century has emphasized the need for expositional preaching. Yet much of what passes as expositional preaching today lacks impact. It tends to feel more like a running commentary on the text, rather than preaching. Arthurs underscores the importance of remembering in preaching. He provides a helpful biblical theology of the role of memory, cites modern science’s help in this area, and then applies the knowledge to the discipline of preaching. This book is engaging, informative, and lively—just like our preaching should be.”

Megachurch Christianity Reconsidered: Millennials and Social Change in African Perspective by Wanjiru M. Gitau was the winner in the Missions/Global Church category. Building from a behind-the-scenes case study of Kenya’s Nairobi Chapel and its “daughter” Mavuno Church, Gitau expands their story into a narrative that offers analysis of the rise, growth, and place of megachurches worldwide in the new millennium. Megachurch Christianity Reconsidered is part of the Missiological Engagements Series from IVP.

“Gitau’s even-handed examination of Mavuno Church in particular (and megachurches in general) is a welcome addition to an ongoing conversation that tends either to glorify or denigrate the megachurch model,” said Jaclyn Parrish, writer, editor, and social media associate for the International Mission Board. “Moreover, Gitau provides a poignant example of contextual understanding that Christians around the world would do well to emulate. Her examination of Mavuno Church’s history and growth takes into full account the living, breathing world in which this congregation took root and grew. Sociological and cultural insights are combined with an incisive understanding of theology, politics, and globalization, opening new horizons for understanding how these factors affect the local church. As such, Gitau’s work exemplifies the process of gospel contextualization for churches of every size and in every culture.”

The top title in the Politics and Public Life category went to Scars Across Humanity: Understanding and Overcoming Violence Against Women by Elaine Storkey. Acts of violence against women produce more deaths, disability, and mutilation than cancer, malaria, and traffic accidents combined. Storkey offers a rigorously researched overview of this global pandemic, exploring how violence is structured into the very fabric of societies and cultures around the world.

Mae Elise Cannon, writer and minister, executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace, said, “Elaine Storkey courageously identifies how violence against women—be it physical, sexual, psychological, or economic—is, as her title suggests, a scar across humanity. Her work addresses the broad-sweeping manifestations of patriarchy in Christian history, the internalized gender discrimination and justification of abuse in societies around the world, and the church’s inadequate response to these violations and injustices. But this book isn’t just a broad-sweeping condemnation of Christian failure, as Storkey offers direct and clear recommendations for how violence against women can be overcome. Not an easy read, Scars Against Humanity is an essential work calling the Christian community to address one of the greatest injustices of our day.”

The top fiction winner for Christianity Today’s 2019 Book Awards was An Extra Mile: A Story of Embracing God’s Call by Sharon Garlough Brown. In this final installment of the Sensible Shoes Series, readers are invited to travel with these beloved friends as they endure trials that test their trust and their willingness to walk an extra mile.

“Even for those who have not read the first three books, Brown does a masterful job familiarizing readers with her four main characters and providing the necessary backstory,” said Rebecca LuElla Miller, freelance writer and editor, blogger at A Christian Worldview of Fiction. “Each character is realistic and believable, faced with inner and outer struggles that intermingle in ways that readers may recognize. These aren’t ‘strong females’ after the fashion of Hollywood blockbusters—they aren’t leading armies or embracing their destiny as the chosen one—but they prove themselves strong in the truest sense of the word: they face the needs in their everyday lives, recognize their spiritual condition, and struggle to walk with Christ day by day.”

The Morals of the Story: Good News About a Good God by David Baggett and Marybeth Baggett received the Award of Merit in the Apologetics/Evangelism category. Tawa Anderson, professor of philosophy, Oklahoma Baptist University, said, “The Baggetts are convinced that the moral argument for God’s existence and nature is among the most resonant and persuasive arguments available in contemporary society, and they do a masterful job of pooling the relevant resources. They highlight the inability of secular ethical theories to account for objective good and evil and human moral obligation. They also demonstrate the rich explanatory power of the Christian worldview in accounting for those same moral realities. If humanity’s deep and unshakable moral intuitions are correct, then The Morals of the Story demonstrates that the rational observer should embrace Christian theism in response.”

For a complete list of IVP award winners visit ivpress.com/award-winners.

About InterVarsity Press:  Founded in 1947 as an extension of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, InterVarsity Press serves those in the university, the church and the world by publishing thoughtful Christian books that equip and encourage people to follow Jesus as Savior and Lord in all of life. For more information, visit ivpress.com.

Contact: Krista Clayton | 630.734.4013 | kclayton@ivpress.com

CT’s 2019 Book Awards recognize works “most likely to shape evangelical life, thought, and culture”

Colorado Springs, Colo. (December 12, 2018) – Christianity Today has announced that NavPress’s (@NavPress) White Picket Fences: Turning toward Love in a World Divided by Privilege, by Amy Julia Becker (@amyjuliabecker), has received an “Award of Merit” as part of the iconic Christian magazine’s 2019 Book Awards. The entire list of winners is available here: CT Book Awards.

In White Picket Fences, Becker welcomes readers into her life, from the charm of her privileged southern childhood to her adult experience in the northeast, and the denials she has faced as the mother of a child with special needs. She shows how a life behind a white picket fence can restrict even as it protects, and how it can prevent us from loving our neighbors well. The book invites readers to respond to privilege with generosity, humility, and hope, and presents to us questions we are afraid to ask, so that we can walk further from fear and closer to love, in all its fragile and mysterious possibilities.

“What an honor to be included on this list,” said Becker. “I have been so encouraged by the responses from people across the country who are eager to engage in conversation about the challenging topic of privilege. I’ve learned so much in conversation with women and men who are considering the painful aspects of social divisions and who are seeking out ways to participate in God’s healing work.”

In all, twenty-seven books were recognized in thirteen different categories, which included “Theology/Ethics,” “Politics and Public Life,” and “History/Biography,” among others.White Picket Fences, which released October 2018, was one of two books recognized in the “CT Women” category, along with Perfectly Human by Sarah C. Williams.

“We couldn’t be more pleased for Amy Julia,” said Don Pape, Publisher, NavPress. “The CT Book Awards are recognized as some of the most prestigious book awards in Christian culture, and White Picket Fences deserves to be in that discussion. It is a culture-shaping book that will have a profound impact on how privilege is studied and discussed for years to come.”

Wrote Ruth Everhart, pastor of Hermon Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland, and author of Ruined: A Memoir about White Picket Fences in the Christianity Today awards announcement, “Amy Julia Becker writes from her context as an affluent white woman who could live comfortably within the white picket fences of suburbia. Yet she chooses to broaden her definition of neighbor. Told with grace and humility, this memoir will be a helpful companion to those who are wrestling with similar questions about privilege.”

Added Gabe Lyons, author and founder of Q Ideas, “Without shaming or victimizing, Becker considers painful truths and beautiful possibilities for healing the divisions of our present moment.”

Additional information about White Picket Fences and other NavPress resources are available at www.navpress.com.

About NavPress:  The NavPress mission is to advance the calling of The Navigators by bringing biblically rooted, culturally relevant, and highly practical products to people who want to know and love Christ more deeply. Through The Message Bible and other insightful resources, NavPress seeks to bring positive spiritual movement to peoples’ lives. In January 2014, NavPress entered into an alliance with Tyndale House Publishers to strengthen and better position NavPress and its rich content for the future. NavPress provides books and other content that bring spiritual impact and life transformation, and help lead in the mission of making disciples.

WHEATON, Ill. (December 12, 2018)—Crossway is pleased to announce that Rosaria Butterfield’s book The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World (Crossway, April 2018) has won the 2019 Christianity Today Book Award in the Christian Living & Discipleship category.

The Christianity Today book awards honor outstanding books of special interest to the Christian community. Winners are awarded in 14 categories including Apologetics/Evangelism, Biblical Studies, and Christian Living/Discipleship.

“It seems that God has raised up Rosaria Butterfield, with her incredible background, example, and prophetic voice, as a gift to the twenty-first-century church for such a time as this,” commends Justin Taylor, Crossway’s publisher for books. “We were honored to partner with her on this book, urging Christians to live out their calling in radically ordinary ways.”

In The Gospel Comes with a House Key, Butterfield shares engaging stories from her own life-changing encounter with radically ordinary hospitality to equip Christians to use their homes as a means to showing a post-Christian world what authentic love and faith really look like.

“Those who live out radically ordinary hospitality see their homes not as theirs at all but as God’s gift to use for the furtherance of his kingdom,” Butterfield writes. “They open doors; they seek out the underprivileged. They know that the gospel comes with a house key. They take biblical theology seriously, as well as Christian creeds and confessions and traditions.”

Available in both hardcover and ebook formats, The Gospel Comes with a House Key has received commendations from Russell D. Moore (president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission), Sam Allberry (speaker with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries), Gloria Furman (author of Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full), and many others.

Butterfield is also the author of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Crown & Covenant, 2012) and Openness Unhindered (Crown & Covenant, 2015). For more information about the author, visit rosariabutterfield.com.

Rosaria Butterfield (PhD, Ohio State University) is an author, speaker, pastor’s wife, homeschool mom, and former tenured professor of English and women’s studies at Syracuse University. She is the author of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert and Openness Unhindered.

About Crossway: Founded in 1938, Crossway is a not-for-profit global Christian publishing ministry that publishes gospel-centered, Bible-centered content, to honor our Savior and serve his Church. Crossway seeks to help people understand the all-encompassing implications of the gospel and the truth of God’s Word—for all of life, for all eternity, and for the glory of God alone. Crossway is the global publisher of the ESV® (English Standard Version®) Bible, more than 1,000 Christian books, and an extensive list of gospel literature. For additional information, visit crossway.org.

Contact: Lauren Harvey, lharvey@crossway.org, (630) 682-4300, ext. 6031, crossway.org

WHEATON, Ill. (December 12, 2018)—Crossway is pleased to announce that Cameron Cole’s book Therefore I Have Hope: 12 Truths that Comfort, Sustain, and Redeem in Tragedy (Crossway, July 2018) has won the 2018 WORLD Magazine Accessible Theology Book of the Year.

“Many Christian authors have produced tear-jerking books centered on a child’s death or a friend’s demise. It is good and right to cry about death stalking those we love—Jesus wept and thus gave all of us permission to weep—but manipulating emotion to gain more clicks or sell more books seems not only unseemly but sub-Christian,” writes Marvin Olasky, World Magazine editor in chief. “That backstory is why Cameron Cole’s cry from the heart and mind is our Accessible Theology Book of the Year. Therefore I Have Hope can benefit both sufferers and their friends who want to help. Not settling for bathos, Cole steps through the Bible honestly in pursuit of—as the subtitle says—12 Truths That Comfort, Sustain, and Redeem in Tragedy.”

WORLD Magazine honors 5 nonfiction books, 25 short-list honorees, and four theological honorable mentions each year. Awards are given in the following categories:

• Science
• Understanding America
• Understanding the World
• History
• Accessible Theology

Therefore I Have Hope was written after the sudden death of Cole’s three-year-old son, when he and his wife found themselves clinging to Christ through twelve key theological truths—truths that became their lifeline in the midst of unthinkable grief. Weaving together their own story of tragic loss and abiding faith, Cole explores these twelve life-giving truths to offer hope and comfort to those in the midst of tragedy.

“Partnering with Cameron for this book has been a unique privilege and a holy responsibility,” says Dave DeWit, Crossway’s vice president of book publishing. “His poignant storytelling ability and his exposition of Scripture against the backdrop of the terrible grief and pain of loss serves readers well as he pictures the brilliance and power of the gospel in the midst of tragedy. Cameron epitomizes 2 Corinthians 1:3–4.”

Available in both paperback and ebook formats, Therefore I Have Hope has received commendations from Jen Pollock Michel (author of Teach Us to Want and Keeping Place), Scotty Ward Smith (pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church), Jay and Katherine Wolf (founders of HOPE HEALS), and many others.

Cameron Cole (MA, Wake Forest University) serves as director of children, youth, and family at the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama, and is the chairman of Rooted, a ministry dedicated to fostering gospel-centered student ministry. He is the coeditor of Gospel-Centered Youth Ministry.

About Crossway: Founded in 1938, Crossway is a not-for-profit global Christian publishing ministry that publishes gospel-centered, Bible-centered content, to honor our Savior and serve his Church. Crossway seeks to help people understand the all-encompassing implications of the gospel and the truth of God’s Word—for all of life, for all eternity, and for the glory of God alone. Crossway is the global publisher of the ESV® (English Standard Version®) Bible, more than 1,000 Christian books, and an extensive list of gospel literature. For additional information, visit crossway.org.

Contact: Lauren Harvey, lharvey@crossway.org, (630) 682-4300, ext. 6031, crossway.org

Six Additional Crossway Titles Named Runners-Up

WHEATON, Ill. (December 12, 2018)—Crossway is pleased to announce that John Onwuchekwa’s book Prayer: How Praying Together Shapes the Church (Crossway, August 2018) has won the 2018 TGC Book Award in the Ministry category.

Each year, the Gospel Coalition awards winners in nine categories, including Public Theology & Current Events, Children’s, and Evangelism & Apologetics. The books selected are written and applied from a gospel-centered perspective, exemplify faithfulness to Scripture, encourage discernment in contemporary issues, and build up the church locally and globally.

In Prayer, part of the 9Marks: Building Healthy Churches series, Onwuchekwa emphasizes corporate prayer in the local church—not just as a tool in times of major crisis, but in all aspects of church life. He examines Scripture’s teaching on prayer, the early church’s example of prayer, and practical advice for individuals and churches looking to prioritize prayer.

“We—by which I mean we as Christians and church members together—should pray bigger and better and more biblical prayers,” writes Onwuchekwa. “In a sentence, that’s the goal of this book: learning how to pray better and more as churches. Just as our private prayer lives can be improved by God’s grace, so too can our corporate prayer lives.”

Available in both hardcover and ebook formats, Prayer has received commendations from Mark Dever (pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church), Thabiti Anyabwile (pastor of Anacostia River Church), Trillia Newbell (author of Enjoy and Fear and Faith), and many others.

Onwuchekwa also serves as the pastor of Cornerstone Church in Atlanta, Georgia. He was a contributor to 15 Things Seminary Couldn’t Teach Me (Crossway, March 2018).

Six additional Crossway titles were named runners-up in their respective categories:

• Remember Death by Matthew McCullough (Christian Living)
• Echoes of Exodus by Andrew Wilson and Alastair J. Roberts (Popular Theology)
• Expository Exultation by John Piper (Ministry)
• Lewis on the Christian Life by Joe Rigney (History & Biography)
• Can We Trust the Gospels? by Peter J. Williams (Evangelism & Apologetics)
• Therefore I Have Hope by Cameron Cole (First-Time Author)

Justin Taylor, Crossway’s publisher for books, writes, “Given our admiration for and resonance with the theological vision for ministry embodied by TGC, we always find these awards especially meaningful. We pray that the Lord would use these recognitions to encourage more readers to take up these books and to let them shape life and ministry.”

John Onwuchekwa (MA, Dallas Theological Seminary) serves as pastor of Cornerstone Church in Atlanta, Georgia.

About Crossway:  Founded in 1938, Crossway is a not-for-profit global Christian publishing ministry that publishes gospel-centered, Bible-centered content, to honor our Savior and serve his Church. Crossway seeks to help people understand the all-encompassing implications of the gospel and the truth of God’s Word—for all of life, for all eternity, and for the glory of God alone. Crossway is the global publisher of the ESV® (English Standard Version®) Bible, more than 1,000 Christian books, and an extensive list of gospel literature. For additional information, visit crossway.org.

Contact: Lauren Harvey, lharvey@crossway.org, (630) 682-4300, ext. 6031, crossway.org

WESTMONT, IL—The Gospel Coalition (TGC) has announced that Christianity at the Crossroads by Michael Kruger was chosen as one of its best books of 2018.

TGC reviews around three hundred titles each year between its regular book review section and its academic journal, Themelios. From those titles judges selected one 2018 TGC Book Award winner and one runner-up for each of nine categories. Christianity at the Crossroads was chosen as the award winner in the History & Biography category.

In an April 2018 Themelios review of Christianity at the Crossroads, David A. Evans wrote, “A masterful account of the church in the second century, this book skillfully describes Christianity’s movement into the wider pagan world and provides insight into the development of doctrine, formation of the canon, and Christian worship and practices. With an excellent summary of contemporary research on the second-century church, Christianity at the Crossroads could also be a manual for the church of the 21st century.”

Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church by Michael J. Kruger examines how Christianity took root in the second century, how it battled to stay true to the vision of the apostles, and how it developed in ways that would shape both the church and Western culture over the next two thousand years.

David A. deSilva, trustees’ distinguished professor of New Testament and Greek at Ashland Theological Seminary, said, “Kruger takes us into a world in which ‘Christianity’ is still very much at risk and up for grabs, struggling to find its identity in the midst of forces within and without seeking to define its identity or suppress its existence. His book invites us into the tensions and trajectories that would eventually give shape to what we, in distant retrospect, take for granted as Christian faith, practice, and polity. I recommend it highly, alongside the texts that have richly informed it (the apostolic fathers, the early martyrologies, and the apologists), to all those interested in learning how ‘New Testament faith’ found its footing and began to take root.”

TGC winners and runners-up are chosen based on whether they offer gospel-centered argument and application; include faithful and foundational use of Scripture, both Old Testament and New Testament; foster spiritual discernment of contemporary trials and trends; and encourage efforts to unite and renew the church.

For a complete list of IVP award winners visit ivpress.com/award-winners. 

About InterVarsity Press: Founded in 1947 as an extension of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, InterVarsity Press serves those in the university, the church and the world by publishing thoughtful Christian books that equip and encourage people to follow Jesus as Savior and Lord in all of life. For more information, visit ivpress.com.

Contact: Krista Clayton | 630.734.4013 | kclayton@ivpress.com

NORTH CANTON, Ohio, Dec. 13, 2018 — The award-winning children’s book, The Sparkle Box: A Gift with the Power to Change Christmas, has sparked a movement to put the focus on the true meaning of Christmas by giving a gift to Jesus on His birthday. In a show of support, Worthy Publishing, the book’s publisher, did something unprecedented in the traditional world of children’s book publishing: it made The Sparkle Box available to read online for free through December 31, 2018.

The movement is inspired by a tradition called The Sparkle Box that is revealed at the end of the book. What The Sparkle Box contains catches readers by surprise. Unlike traditions pointing to the North Pole, The Sparkle Box points to the origin of Christmas: a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ and the message he taught to care for those in need.

The Sparkle Box tradition requires the participant to give a gift to someone in need of basic necessities such as food, clothing, clean water or kindness. They write down the gift given and place it in the box. On Christmas morning, they remember Jesus by reading The Sparkle Box gift given in celebration of his birthday.

Author Jill Hardie said the ability to read the book for free is fueling a movement to do The Sparkle Box tradition. “When people read the book, there’s often an ah-ha moment of ‘This is what we’ve been missing in our celebration of Christmas.’ People want to share that. They want to be part of putting the focus on Jesus at Christmas and celebrating his birthday by giving him a gift,” said Hardie.

To read The Sparkle Box online for free visit, TheSparkleBox.com.

The Sparkle Box: A Gift with the Power to Change Christmas was published in hardback in 2012 by Ideals Children’s Books. The Sparkle Box received the EPCA Christian Book Award in 2014. On October 2, 2018, The Sparkle Box was released in paperback by Worthy Publishing. Both the hardback and paperback editions come with a foldable Sparkle Box. Written by Jill Hardie and illustrated by Christine Kornacki, The Sparkle Box is available at many local bookstores and online at Barnes & Noble, Christian Books and Amazon. The book can be read for free at TheSparkleBox.com through December 31, 2018.

Contact: Jill Hardie, 330-418-4492