Conversations with Scripture and with Each Other clearly comes from a pastor's heart. Bishop Shaw teaches engagingly and effectively about the gospels and their contexts, and invites readers into dialogue with those gospels. The conversations he encourages can promote profound change-in individual lives, in the parish, and beyond. -- The Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church In looking back at the early church, pondering the lives of the gospel authors and of St. Paul, Bishop Shaw opens a world of purpose, courage, and humanity. The labor, devotion, and communication needed to keep such communities vital are ongoing, and the recognitions of the first Christian community building, brought forward
by Bishop Shaw as suggestions to the present time, will inform, vitalize, and make increasingly thoughtful the hearts of his readers. -- Mary Oliver, Poet Bishop Shaw brings alive the spirit and struggles of the original Christian communities to show how we can revivify our own. He draw on a fresh analysis of the New Testament to pose provocative and practical questions for today's congregations on essential topics: the suffering of Jesus, the Eucharist, stewardship, evangelism, and more. Read this book to spark engaging, generative conversations that will help your community flourish. -- William M. Snyder, author of Cultivating Communities of Practice Impressive. Episcopal Life, March 2009 This is a book filled with biblical wisdom, deep spirituality, and pastoral experience. In Conversations with Scripture and with Each Other, Bishop Shaw shows how we twenty-first century Christians can find in the first century church spiritual mentors and pastoral guides for our time. St. Paul's letters and the gospels come alive as living records of communities not so different from our own, where our ancestors in faith wrestled with such issues as faithfulness, conflict, moral decision-making, money, prayer and worship, just as we do today. Here is a hopeful book that will provide encouragement and practical counsel for any congregation or individual Christian. -- The Very Reverend Sam Lloyd, dean, Washington National Cathedral
