Moral Values: What I Learned Growing Up in Church
A new book by Jimmy Reader
Can the Christian church, divided over different beliefs about moral values, create safe places so people can live together in love through the practices of compassion, grace, and generosity? Moral Values: What I Learned Growing Up in Church is an invitation to the church to find common ground in Jesus’ life and words. Love is the ultimate moral value; and compassion, grace, and generosity are the practices of love which empower us to live together in the love of God and one another to which Jesus called us. Listen to scripture and to the story of one man’s journey of transformation rooted in what he learned as a child growing up in church – that moral values follow the path of love.
Jesus said that the love of God and neighbor is the foundation of the Law and the Prophets, of all that God desires for us. Then he gave us a new command: to love one another as he has loved us. Paul said that love fulfills the whole law and that “the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself in love.” The letters of James and 1 John build on that theme of love as the ultimate moral value.
The practices of compassion, grace, and generosity fill the pages of scripture, based on God’s nature and God’s relationship with human beings, especially with the church. God calls the church to follow Jesus and to be transformed by love in the way we live with each other and with the whole world.
Yet the church is often not experienced as a safe place for people. In congregations and at denominational meetings, do we feel listened to, respected, trusted? Do we feel safe with other people in the groups where we are engaged in conversation, study, business, and worship? Many people do not. Moral Values offers a proposal for how the church, locally and denominationally, can create Safe Places for people to be together by following the way of love through the practices of compassion, grace, and generosity.
To order a copy of Moral Values, go to www.lulu.com/lifelistening where you can read more about the author and see a preview of the book. It can be ordered in print ($12.74, plus tax and shipping) or as a download ($5.00). This company uses print-on-demand printing, so each book is printed and shipped when it is ordered. By February 2005 it should be available online through Amazon and Barnes & Noble as well.
About the author: Jimmy Reader was the Ministers Council senator from the American Baptist Churches of the Central Region and the national secretary-treasurer in the 1990s and currently serves as 1st Vice-President and Senator from the American Baptist Churches of Upstate New York. He has served American Baptist churches in the Central Region as a pastor and is active as a leader and consultant in the American Baptist Churches of the Rochester/Genesee Region. He has been an ordained minister since 1970. For other information about him, go to www.lifelistening.com.