Sample Library

Like any public library, not every book you want or need will be in this collection. There are some books you may not believe should be here. But if you use good judgment and choose wisely, you can enjoy many hours browsing this collection and increasing your wisdom.

If you want to use this with your Church School, you may want to delete the section on Fiction & Nonfiction Books as well as the section on Children's Books.  As with any source given to children, the teacher needs to decide what is appropriate for their classroom.

Simply click on the area you would like to use.

Bibles

A tool for reading and researching scripture online, in the language or translation of your choice!

Reference Desk

Use as you would any reference desk. Ask questions. Get answers.

Ellen White Books

Search Ellen G. White's Writings, books & periodicals, in 11 languages.

Periodicals

Read Web based News & Periodical Resources.

Adventist Missions

Witness how God is improving lives through Adventist mission work around the world.

Books on Religion

Find information on any religion, Christian, Islam, Pagan, etc.

Children's Books

Illustrated children's stories for kids of all ages.

Poetry

A collection of 20 000 poems from over 550 poets, including some of the greatest poets.

Biographies

A collection of biographies about famous and not so famous men and women.

Fiction & Nonfiction Books

A word of caution; This is a public site includes thousands of public domain and original fiction books. Many not what a Christian would want to read. Choose wisely.

Top Ten Things Adventist Teachers Need To Do

10. Take care of yourself. Teaching is a marathon, not a sprint. Adventist teachers are out there early and often. Teachers have to take time for themselves every day. You MUST take time to talk with God, to study from The Word, read devotional books. But you also need to take trips, go to conferences, spend time with family and spend time with each other when you don't talk about school.

9. Understand that your class is only one of many things that kids have to do. What goes on in your class is important, but remember that, at any given moment in time, there are pressures on their kids' lives that makes what goes on in your class seem powerfully inconsequential. Help them to keep God, family, and friends in the proper perspectives. Your class needs to fit in with every part of their life.

8. Never be afraid to bring an idea or a critique to your superintendent or principal. Don't be afraid to tell them what you think. It is their job to help you be a better teacher. Share with them what you think would make your school a better place and ask them how they can help you.

7. Be as transparent as possible. That means opening your classroom door to colleagues, to parents, to visitors. Give students opportunities to publish their work. Publish a classroom newsletter or blog. Never play "gotcha" with the kids when it comes to expectations.

6. Dictatorship may make for an orderly class, but it rarely helps kids improve. Give students opportunities to feel ownership of the classroom. In the end, you will get what you want or you will get much more. Let them feel that they have a say in the society of the classroom.

5. Remember that inquiry isn't just for kids. If we want our students to push themselves to question more, dig deeper, figure it out for themselves, we must be willing to do that too. Learn with your students.

4. Take ownership of the school outside your classroom. Adventist schools work because everyone makes it happen. Run a club, chair a committee, write a grant, do the thing you always wanted to do in a school but never thought the structure of school could support.

3. Be a community of teachers and learners...Speak the same language. Kids spend too much time figuring out teachers, and that detracts from the work they can do for themselves, not for us. Incorporate the school's core values into your planning, use Journey to Excellence Curriculum Guides to plan units. The way we teach and learn needs to be Bible based and oriented to Adventist schools.

2. Treat your class as a lens, not a silo. Help them to make truth obvious, not simply store it up for the future. The goal is for our kids to be well-rounded, thoughtful Christians. Not all of your students will become leaders in the church. Make sure the others know that what they are learning with you helps them to be a better person.

1. We teach students before we teach subjects. Adventist teachers need to understand and live the profound difference between the statements, "I teach math," and "I teach kids to understand math." Children should never be the implied object of their own education. A teacher is more than a distributor of knowledge. They are models for Christian life. We are guides on the Journey to Excellence and our students need to know God's grace.

And one more – Show love. Show your students, their parents, your colleagues, even your principal and superintendent, that you love them. God is love and more than anything else, you need to show your students that they are loved.

Whatever you do, Show love.

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The idea for this list came from Chris Lehmann.

Read the original list at http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2010/10/what-i-ask-of-sla-teachers.html

Why Kids Stay in Church

What is it that sets apart the kids who stay in the church?

Blogged by Jon Nielson the senior high pastor at College Church in Wheaton, Illinois.

Here are just a few observations.

“What do we do about our kids?” The group of parents sat together in my office, wiping their eyes. I’m a high school pastor, but for once, they weren’t talking about 16-year-olds drinking and partying. Each had a story to tell about a “good Christian” child, raised in their home and in our church, who had walked away from the faith during the college years. These children had come through our church’s youth program, gone on short-term mission trips, and served in several different ministries during their teenage years. Now they didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. And, somehow, these mothers’ ideas for our church to send college students “care packages” during their freshman year to help them feel connected to the church didn’t strike me as a solution with quite enough depth.

The daunting statistics about churchgoing youth keep rolling in. Panic ensues. What are we doing wrong in our churches? In our youth ministries?

It’s hard to sort through the various reports and find the real story. And there is no one easy solution for bringing all of those “lost” kids back into the church, other than continuing to pray for them and speaking the gospel into their lives. However, we can all look at the 20-somethings in our churches who areengaged and involved in ministry. What is it that sets apart the kids who stay in the church? Here are just a few observations I have made about such kids, with a few applications for those of us serving in youth ministry.

1. They are converted.

The Apostle Paul, interestingly enough, doesn’t use phrases like “nominal Christian” or “pretty good kid.” The Bible doesn’t seem to mess around with platitudes like: “Yeah, it’s a shame he did that, but he’s got a good heart.” When we listen to the witness of Scripture, particularly on the topic of conversion, we find that there is very little wiggle room. Listen to these words: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Cor. 5:17) We youth pastors need to get back to understanding salvation as what it really is: a miracle that comes from the glorious power of God through the working of the Holy Spirit.

We need to stop talking about “good kids.” We need to stop being pleased with attendance at youth group and fun retreats. We need to start getting on our knees and praying that the Holy Spirit will do miraculous saving work in the hearts of our students as the Word of God speaks to them. In short, we need to get back to a focus on conversion. How many of us are preaching to “unconverted evangelicals”? Youth pastors, we need to preach, teach, and talk—all the while praying fervently for the miraculous work of regeneration to occur in the hearts and souls of our students by the power of the Holy Spirit! When that happens—when the “old goes” and the “new comes”—it will not be iffy. We will not be dealing with a group of “nominal Christians.” We will be ready to teach, disciple, and equip a generation of future church leaders—“new creations”!—who are hungry to know and speak God’s Word. It is converted students who go on to love Jesus and serve the church.

2. They have been equipped, not entertained.

Recently, we had “man day” with some of the guys in our youth group. We began with an hour of basketball at the local park, moved to an intense game of 16” (“Chicago Style”) softball, and finished the afternoon by gorging ourselves on meaty pizzas and 2-liters of soda. I am not against fun (or gross, depending on your opinion of the afternoon I just described) things in youth ministry. But youth pastors especially need to keep repeating the words of Ephesians 4:11-12 to themselves: “[Christ] gave...the teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” Christ gives us—teachers—to the church, not for entertainment, encouragement, examples, or even friendship primarily. He gives us to the church to “equip” the saints to do gospel ministry, in order that the church of Christ may be built up.

If I have not equipped the students in my ministry to share the gospel, disciple a younger believer, and lead a Bible study, then I have not fulfilled my calling to them, no matter how good my sermons have been. We pray for conversion; that is all we can do, for it is entirely a gracious gift of God. But after conversion, it is our Christ-given duty to help fan into flame a faith that serves, leads, teaches, and grows. If our students leave high school without Bible-reading habits, Bible-study skills, and strong examples of discipleship and prayer, we have lost them. We have entertained, not equipped them...and it may indeed be time to panic!

Forget your youth programs for a second. Are we sending out from our ministries the kind of students who will show up to college in a different state, join a church, and begin doing the work of gospel ministry there without ever being asked? Are we equipping them to that end, or are we merely giving them a good time while they’re with us? We don’t need youth group junkies; we need to be growing churchmen and churchwomen who are equipped to teach, lead, and serve. Put your youth ministry strategies aside as you look at that 16-year-old young man and ask: “How can I spend four years with this kid, helping him become the best church deacon and sixth-grade Sunday school class teacher he can be, ten years down the road?”

3. Their parents preached the gospel to them.

As a youth pastor, I can’t do all this. All this equipping that I’m talking about is utterly beyond my limited capabilities. It is impossible for me to bring conversion, of course, but it is also impossible for me to have an equipping ministry that sends out vibrant churchmen and churchwomen if my ministry is not being reinforced tenfold in the students’ homes. The common thread that binds together almost every ministry-minded 20-something that I know is abundantly clear: a home where the gospel was not peripheral but absolutely central. The 20-somethings who are serving, leading, and driving the ministries at our church were kids whose parents made them go to church. They are kids whose parents punished them and held them accountable when they were rebellious. They are kids whose parents read the Bible around the dinner table every night. And they are kids whose parents were tough, but who ultimately operated from a framework of grace that held up the cross of Jesus as the basis for peace with God and forgiveness toward one another.

This is not a formula! Kids from wonderful gospel-centered homes leave the church; people from messed-up family backgrounds find eternal life in Jesus and have beautiful marriages and families. But it’s also not a crapshoot. In general, children who are led in their faith during their growing-up years by parents who love Jesus vibrantly, serve their church actively, and saturate their home with the gospel completely grow up to love Jesus and the church. The words of Proverbs 22:6 do not constitute a formula that is true 100 percent of the time, but they do provide us with a principle that comes from the gracious plan of God, the God who delights to see his gracious Word passed from generation to generation: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Youth pastors, pray with all your might for true conversion; that is God’s work. Equip the saints for the work of the ministry; that is your work. Parents, preach the gospel and live the gospel for your children; our work depends on you.

This article was copied from, www.churchleaders.com/youth/youth-leaders-articles/153948-why-youth-stay-in-the-church-when-they-grow-up.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily-Update

BLUEBERRY STORY

BLUEBERRY STORY

A Businessman Learns a Lesson
by Jamie Robert Vollmer

"If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn't be in business very long!" I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute.. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of in-service. Their initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.

I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that became famous in the middle 1980s when People Magazine chose our blueberry as the "Best Ice Cream in America." I was convinced of two things.

First, public schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging "knowledge society."

Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly.

They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! TQM! Continuous improvement! In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced equal parts ignorance and arrogance.

As soon as I finished, a woman's hand shot up. She appeared polite, pleasant - she was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload. She began quietly, "We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream."
I smugly replied, "Best ice cream in America, Ma'am."
"How nice," she said. "Is it rich and smooth?"
"Sixteen percent butterfat," I crowed.
"Premium ingredients?" she inquired.
"Super-premium! Nothing but triple A." I was on a roll.
I never saw the next line coming. "Mr. Vollmer," she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, "when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?"

In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap. I was dead meat, but I wasn't going to lie. "I send them back."
"That's right!" she barked, "and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them all: GT, ADHD, ADD, SLD, EI, MMR, OHI, TBI, DD, Autistic, junior rheumatoid arthritis,
English as their second language, etc.
We take them all! Everyone!
And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it's not a business. It's a school!"

In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides, custodians and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, "Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!"
And so began my long transformation.

Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business.
Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.

None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when and how we teach to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a post-industrial society
But educators cannot do this alone; these changes can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission and active support of the surrounding community.
For the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve, and therefore, education means more than changing our schools, it means changing America.

How Effective is Your School

What is it that makes everyone think your school is effectively meeting its mission and a school that they want their child to attend?

Read this article by Missionenablers.com and think how your school measures up.

http://www.missionenablers.com/Schools/2011/07/20/is-being-effective-having-high-achievement-scores/

I strongly advise you to sign up for the missionenablers.com newsletter.

What and Who is PET?

The book, EDUCATION tells us, “True education means more than pursuing a certain course of study. It has to do with the whole person, and with the whole period of existence possible to human beings. It is the harmonious development of the physical, the mental, and the spiritual powers.”

Education, today, must be attractive and of value to students of the twenty-first century. What worked well in the past may not be appropriate for students, now. Teachers must be able to assist learners in developing physically, mentally, and spiritually in a way that uses the technology of the times.

As an old educator, I have known the methods that worked in days of yore. However, today we must use technology, Internet, group projects, and many other ways of helping students gain knowledge.

This Panorama of Educational Thoughts will attempt to look at some of the ways we can use the technology of the twenty-first century to prepare our children with methods that best teach them to take charge of their lives.

I would love to hear from you and learn what you think of these methods.