Based on the 2016 conference of the Center for Pastor Theologians, this volume brings together the reflections of church leaders and academic theologians on the theme of human sexuality. Contributors engage with Scripture, draw on examples from church history, and delve into current issues in contemporary culture, including embodiment, marriage, homosexuality, pornography, transgenderism, and gender dysphoria.

Acts of violence against women produce more deaths, disability, and mutilation than cancer, malaria, and traffic accidents combined. How and why has this violence become so prevalent? Elaine 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.

What does the path to healing look like for survivors of sexual abuse? And how can ministry leaders, pastors, and counselors best help them as they walk this difficult road? Drawing on both his own experience and his wife's experience as survivors of childhood sexual abuse, Tim Hein presents clinical data and resources as well as practical guidance and empathy—for both ministry leaders and survivors themselves.

On the basis of a theologically grounded understanding of the nature of persons and the self, Jack O. Balswick, Pamela Ebstyne King and Kevin S. Reimer present a model of human development that ranges across all of life's stages. This revised second edition engages new research from evolutionary psychology, developmental neuroscience and positive psychology.

We long for diverse, thriving neighborhoods and churches, yet racial injustices persist. Why? Urban missiologist David Leong reveals the profound ways in which geographic structures and systems sustain the divisions among us and create barriers to reconciliation. For the flourishing of our communities, here is a vision of belonging and hope in our streets, cities, and churches.

Veteran missiologist Samuel Escobar explores the new realities of our globalized world, assesses the context of a changing mission field, sets forth a thoroughly biblical theology of missions, and considers implications for how Christians are to go about the task of global mission.

Since the 1930s, organizing movements for social justice in the U.S. have largely been built on secular assumptions. But what if Christians were to shape their organizing around the implications of the truth that God is real and Jesus is risen? Reverend Alexia Salvatierra and theologian Peter Heltzel propose a model of organizing that arises from their Christian convictions, with implications for all faiths.

Anthropologist Jenell Williams Paris argues that the Christian tradition holds a distinct vision for sexuality without sexual identity categories. She shows how this Christian framework accounts for complex postmodern realities and addresses problems with common Christian and cultural understandings of heterosexuality and homosexuality.