Religion & Spirituality Audiobooks

Wounded Pastors: Navigating Burnout, Finding Healing, and Discerning the Future of Your Ministry

You're not alone in your ministry. And you don't have to suffer in silence. Ministry is a stressful vocation, with unspoken expectations, projected anxieties, and conflicting demands. After the pandemic caused a sudden shift to online worship and factions fighting over when and how to return to in-person worship, pastors have been leaving congregational ministry at even higher rates than usual. The emotional fallout of burnout and abuse at the hands of parishioners is something pastors carry for years, whether they stay or leave the congregation. Seasoned pastor Carol Howard Merritt and psychotherapist and former pastor James Fenimore join their expertise to offer validation, support, and guidance for pastors who have been hurt by the church. With wisdom that can come only from experience, they describe and define aspects of struggle and pain listeners may have difficulty articulating or claiming for themselves, and they offer compassionate, informed guidance on how to find healing. A systems approach to conflict sheds light on the dynamics of church conflict and how clergy can tend their own well-being amid leadership challenges. The final chapter helps listeners consider their overall vocational path based on what they've experienced and decide whether they can remain in congregational ministry or need to pursue a different line of work.

Carol Howard, Carol Howard Merritt, James Fenimore (Author), Nan Mcnamara (Narrator)

Audiobook

Beyond Ethnic Loneliness: The Pain of Marginalization and the Path to Belonging

'So what are you? Go back where you belong!' Majority white American culture has historically marginalized people of color, who at times feel invisible and alienated and at other times are traumatized by oppression and public discrimination. This reality leads to a particular kind of aloneness: ethnic and racial loneliness. An Indian American immigrant who grew up in white Southern culture, Prasanta Verma names and sheds light on the realities of ethnic loneliness. She unpacks the exhausting effects of cultural isolation, the dynamics of marginalization, and the weight of being other. In the midst of disconnection and erasure, she points to the longing to belong, the need to share our stories, and the hope of finding safe friendships and community. Our places of exile can become places where we find belonging-to ourselves, to others, and to God.

Prasanta Verma (Author), Prasanta Verma (Narrator)

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Loose of Earth: A Memoir

Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn was the oldest of five children, a twelve-year-old from Lubbock, Texas, whose evangelical family eschewed public education for homeschooling, and wove improbable scientific theories into literal interpretations of the Bible. Then her father, a former air force pilot, was diagnosed with cancer at the age of thirty-eight, and, 'it was like throwing gasoline on the Holy Spirit.' Stirred by her mother, the family committed to an extreme diet and sought deliverance from equally extreme sources: a traveling tent preacher, a Malaysian holy man, a local faith-healer who led services called 'Miracles on 34th Street.' What they didn't know was that their lives were entangled with a larger, less visible environmental catastrophe. Firefighting foams containing carcinogenic compounds had contaminated the drinking water of every military site where her father worked. Commonly referred to as 'forever chemicals,' the presence of PFAS in West Texas besieged a landscape already burdened with vanishing water, taking up residence in wells and in the bloodstreams of people who lived there. An arresting portrait of the pernicious creep of decline, and a powerful cry for environmental justice, Loose of Earth captures the desperate futility and unbending religious faith that devastated a family, leaving them waiting for a miracle that would never come.

Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn (Author), Tanya Eby (Narrator)

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Wishful Thinking: How I Lost My Faith and Why I Want to Find It

Donna Freitas wants to believe. Raised Catholic, she sang songs about Jesus as a child and lived in a house where nuns and priests were regular guests, yet she found herself questioning the faith of her family, examining the reasons none of it added up, and distancing herself from the God of Christianity. Despite her questions-or perhaps because of them-she made a career out of trying to understand God, pursuing a Ph.D. in religion and writing books about Christianity for a living. But even as she taught college students about mystics, theologians, and others who wrestled with God, she was never able to embrace a faith of her own, no matter how hard she tried. In this searingly-honest and deeply personal book, Freitas retraces her roundabout path up and out of the wilderness toward hope, and her dogged-and ongoing-search for faith. She talks about her experience with the Catholic abuse scandal; about being embraced as a speaker at hundreds of evangelical colleges; about how the death of her mother and the loss of her marriage made her question everything she thought she knew about love; how she cannot reconcile the ways the concept of God makes absolutely no sense; and how she cannot stop trying to believe, despite it all. Real, raw, and beautifully-written, Wishful Thinking is a powerful story about the author's search for belief in God, and of finding God in the most unexpected places.

Donna Freitas (Author), Donna Freitas, TBD (Narrator)

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Flirting with Disaster: True Travel Tales of Fear, Failure, and Faith

Join travel blogger Angie Orth on a journey of self-discovery as she empowers readers to buck expectations, take leaps of faith, and trust that God's plan is better than anything we think we want for our lives. Angie Orth should have at least 2.5 kids by now-everyone else back home did. Despite a successful PR career in New York, Angie was failing at the role she was born to play: submissive wife and grandchild incubator. Without a photogenic family and Instagrammable spirituality, folks were starting to wonder if Jesus even liked her. With her 30th birthday looming, she was at a crossroads. Should she hightail it home to find a man like a good girl or run the rat race in NYC and hope for the best? Orth chose Plan C: escape! She quit her job, launched a travel blog, and booked a one-way ticket to the South Pacific while her Southern family gnashed their teeth in protest. But the timing couldn't have been worse for a solo trip. She dodged tsunamis and earthquakes, revolutions, grabby men, and incessant DMs from her worrywart relatives in a journey spanning five continents. In the midst of global misadventures, Orth's hilarious, vulnerable journey of faith and wanderlust shows that God is so much more creative than society's expectations for women. Buckle up for this sassy, relatable memoir about living life unscripted, yet still on mission. By the time readers turn the last page of Flirting with Disaster, they'll feel empowered knowing God's plan is better than anything we think we want-or are supposed to want-for our lives. And they'll be ready to take on the world in their own way.

Angie Orth (Author), Angie Orth, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

How Women Invented Christianity

Kathleen E. Corley (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War Between Science and Religion

Brought to you by Penguin. From fossil-hunting to the end of faith, Impossible Monsters is a gripping narrative history of the culture war that toppled religion and gave birth to our secular age. In 1811, when the self-schooled daughter of a carpenter pulled some strange-looking bones from Britain's southern shoreline, few people dared to question that the Bible told the accurate history of the world. But Mary Anning had discovered the 'first' dinosaur, and over the next seventy-five years - as the science of palaeontology developed, as Charles Darwin posited theories of evolutionary biology, and as religious scholars identified the internal inconsistencies of the Scriptures - everything changed. By the 1850s, dinosaurs were a prominent feature of the second Crystal Palace exhibition. By the 1860s, when Matthew Arnold stood on Dover Beach and saw faith ebbing away, Britain had plunged into a crisis of religious belief. By the 1870s, T.H. Huxley - Darwin's 'bulldog' - was preaching a new history of the world in which mankind was merely an accident of evolution. By 1886, following a six-year battle which had seen him beaten, imprisoned, and forcibly removed from Parliament, Charles Bradlaugh was able to take his seat in the House of Commons as the first openly atheist MP. Told through the lives of the men and women who found these vital fossils and who fought about their meaning, some humble, some eccentric, some utterly brilliant, Impossible Monsters tells the story of the painful, complicated relationship between science and religion over these seventy-five years, of the growth of secularism, and of the role of dinosaurs and their discovery in changing perceptions about the Bible, history and mankind's place in the world. 'As thrilling as it is sweeping, populated by a brilliantly drawn cast of characters' TOM HOLLAND ©2024 Michael Taylor (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Michael Taylor (Author), James Maccallum, TBD (Narrator)

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Imagine Freedom: Transforming Pain into Political and Spiritual Power

A social activist, journalist, public theologian, and international speaker who has become a powerful and brilliant voice of her generation offers a bold path to liberation and healing for people of African descent struggling in the shadows of the American Dream. The United States is at a critical juncture in its history. Not since the 1960s has the nation been so racially divided. White supremacy remains America’s Achilles’ heel—a moral failure that haunts us and holds us back from being the great nation we profess. For centuries, people of African descent have endured unimaginable hatred and discrimination which has manifested in pain and trauma passed from generation to generation. To break free from this historical cycle of suffering and be truly free at last, Black and brown people must reimagine ourselves, our communities, this country, and our relationship to Africa. Weaving storytelling, socioeconomic analysis, and cultural criticism with the spiritual and political threads of liberation theology and Pan Africanism, Imagine Freedom empowers us to begin the difficult but necessary work of decolonizing our minds and overcoming the lies we have been told about ourselves for centuries. Sobering and inspiring, filled with despair and hope, Rahiel Tesfamariam dares us to see the world through a larger historical and global lens— to understand how our quests for freedom and healing are intrinsically connected to our past, present, and future. By widening our vision, we discover new ways of imagining self, community, nation, and world, and most importantly, a new way to achieve the freedom that has been too long denied.

Rahiel Tesfamariam (Author), Rahiel Tesfamariam, TBD (Narrator)

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Really Very Crunchy: A Beginner's Guide to Removing Toxins from Your Life without Adding Them to You

Find your Inner Crunchy without becoming that person with this helpful guide from social media star Really Very Crunchy. Are you tired of being bombarded by toxins at every turn? Do you want a more natural, 'crunchy' approach to the world (with or without the beige aesthetic)? Well, grab your kombucha and join Emily Morrow on a journey to a more wholesome existence with Really Very Crunchy: A Beginner's Guide to Removing Toxins from Your Life without Adding Them to Your Personality. Emily Morrow, creator of the viral 'Really Very Crunchy' social media accounts, guides you through the ins and outs of starting and maintaining a crunchy lifestyle. With her signature humor and a delightfully sincere approach, she will show you how crunchy is a spectrum and how every little choice you make is one small step away from crunch-ifying your own life. From the basics of crunchy to the more advanced choices (beets instead of blush, anyone?), you will quickly say goodbye to toxic chemicals and hello to a healthier, happier way of living. Funny, accessible, and encouraging--never judgmental or fear-based--Emily will help you: - Learn how to make simple, mindful steps toward natural living - Implement healthy, life-giving activities into your family's routine - Navigate the challenges of adopting the crunchy way of life with sensible, easy-to-implement ideas - Develop a new mindset when it comes to shopping for clothes, food, and cleaning products - Discover natural remedies for just about everything So what are you waiting for? Embrace your inner crunchy (or silky, if that's where you're starting) and dip your toes into a healthier, more sustainable life. Who knows? You may find out you're Really Very Crunchy after all.

Emily Morrow (Author), Emily Morrow (Narrator)

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Buddhist Meditation: Classic Teachings from Tibet

A Tibetan Buddhist anthology of accessible and authentic contemplative exercises to help cultivate innate yet undeveloped powers of mind, emotion, and body. A Penguin Classic Drawn from Tibet's rich contemplative literature, Buddhist Meditation offers classic exercises focused on the opportunities and challenges of life; cultivating inner calm; fostering a wider perspective on oneself in relationship to others; working with negative emotions, and the highest values of the Buddhist tradition, love and compassion. Several dozen meditation instructions are collected in twelve chapters. All major traditions of Tibetan Buddhism are represented. The book is structured on 'foundation practices', practice manuals that immerse the reader in the search for meaningful and compassionate responses to the ubiquity of human suffering, and in the contemplative techniques that translate that search into consequential action. Spiritual exercises introduce 1) the opportunity for self-betterment and to be of benefit to other living beings; 2) the inescapable persistence of suffering in life, and the reality of death; 3) the workings of ethical cause and effect, otherwise known as karma; and 4) the ever-repeating succession of frustration known as cyclic existence, or samsara. The second set of foundation practices provide tools to build upon including: 5) taking refuge in Buddhism-a deep formal commitment to integrate Buddhist contemplative and ethical teachings into one's life; 6) cultivating love and compassion for all living beings; 7) clearing away cognitive, emotional, and behavioral impediments to actualizing love and compassion; 8) developing with wisdom and the experience and excellent qualities necessary to put love and compassion into practice; and 9) dedicating oneself to a spiritual mentor to serve as a guide through this intensive program of training. Part existential philosophy, part ethics, part self-help program, part cosmology-the foundation exercises present a complete Buddhist picture of life, the ethical universe, and the first steps in making a positive impact in life for ourselves and others, steps anyone can begin to take by dedicating themselves to train in contemplative exercises.

Penguin Random House (Author), Lee Osorio, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Garden Within: Audio Bible Studies: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful

"How does that make you feel?' It's a therapy joke punchline, but do therapists really ask every client that question? Yes. The not-so-funny part is how few people can answer it. For many of us, thinking is simply our default mode as we try to build a safe space for ourselves within the confines of our mind. After all, feelings can't be trusted, right? Feelings are unreliable reactions, right? It's dangerous to be emotional, right? The mind has been enthroned as our source of control. The subjugation of feeling is celebrated while tears are equated with weakness, especially in men. The demand to separate ourselves from emotion has left most of us with an extremely limited emotional vocabulary as well as an inability to properly identify and process what we are feeling. We are getting this whole thing wrong. In The Garden Within, Dr. Anita Phillips informs and encourages us to care for our hearts so we can understand our emotions and live free and empowered. The heart has always been our rightful guide; it's time we start listening to it. In this six-week study, you will: - Define man's original design as from God's heart. - Learn to elevate your heart to a position of authority. - Recognize the lies you believe surrounding emotions and the heart. - Identify personal trauma and learn ways to process through it. - Realize the daily power of faith, hope, and love. Coordinating study guide available separately. The Audio Bible Studies series provides a unique audio learning experience. Unlike a traditional audiobook's direct narration of a book's text, this audio Bible study includes high-quality, live audio sessions from the author that cover important Bible-based topics. These sessions will reflect the ambiance of the unique recording locations, immersing the listener into the teaching. While not required for the audio experience, these studies are designed to partner with the coordinating study guide, sold separately.

Dr. Anita Phillips (Author), Anita Phillips (Narrator)

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I Could Be Wrong, But I Doubt It: Why Jesus Is Your Greatest Hope on Earth and in Eternity

Discover the completely unique qualifications and accomplishments of Jesus Christ--the Creator of everything, the King who will set you free, and the best friend you could ever have. Over nearly five decades of walking with God, podcaster, author and Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson has learned a thing or two about why Jesus is the only one worth following. Of all the things we could put our trust in, only Jesus has the answers to our questions and the solutions for our problems. Plenty of people claim to have the answers for a better life. Politicians claim they can fix our nation. Scientists and technologists trumpet the latest and greatest discoveries that'll make everything right. Self-help gurus offer one pathway to peace after another. But it's no secret that our world is increasingly divided and broken--and we've got the fear, anxiety, and hopelessness to prove it. Jesus alone can make good on the promise of lasting peace, real freedom, and life eternal. With his trademark directness, humor, and insight, Phil will help you - experience Jesus as the Creator and all-powerful Sustainer of all creation; - reconcile your own brokenness and sinfulness with Jesus' unending well healing, forgiveness, and peace; - develop the eyes to see Jesus for who he really is: the friend who will always be there for you, no matter what mistakes you've made; and - look to the Bible to get to know Jesus and better understand His grace and love for you. Politics won't save you. Science can't give you the power to sidestep death. The pleasures and joys of this world are fleeting at best, damaging counterfeits at worst. But Phil has good news for you: Jesus offers life, joy, and peace, and he's never more than a prayer away. Look for additional bold, biblical content from Phil: - Uncanceled - Jesus Politics - Theft of America's Soul - Your Daily Phil

Phil Robertson (Author), Milton Bagby, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook