e-Newsletter - Volume 4, Number 65
New Chalice Press Book Just Released: "Never Pray Again"
by Bill Anderton

Chalice Press just release a new book with the provocative title, "Never Pray Again: Lift Your Head, Unfold Your Hands, and Get To Work" by Aric Clark, Doug Hagler, Nick Larson.

The authors, writers of the popular “Two Friars and a Fool” blog, find the purpose of prayers not in the praying but in the doing--to Praise! Confess! Heal! Intercede! Never Pray Again follows a traditional liturgical structure, drawing upon major forms of prayer and presenting each as a practice rather than merely a prayer.

Order today! The list price is $16.99 but our online price is $13.59.

Click here to order from our online bookstore.

Endorsements

 "Never pray again? The very thought feels like a slap in the face of our faith! But through their engaging and provocative words, Aric Clark, Doug Hagler, and Nick Larson teach us how to attach legs to our laments, give teeth to our supplications, and put skin on our spiritual lives. Read Never Pray Again. But more importantly, practice it. For if we all engaged in such Christianity, our world would be transformed."

Carol Howard Merritt, pastor and author of Reframing Hope and Tribal Church

"Filled with questions and doubts many Christians have given up on prayer. Enter Aric Clark, Doug Hagler, and Nick Larson's urgent manifesto Never Pray Again. Witty, provocative, insightful, and practical. Here is a bracing and bold vision of prayer with the potential to radically transform our lives and faith communities. Read, go and do."

Richard Beck, author, blogger and professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University

"While Christians are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ and traditional Christian practices -- especially prayer -- are intended to call us toward the very real needs of others, the authors of Never Pray Again poignantly show that such practices frequently produce the opposite result: instead of drawing us toward one another, they far too often isolate us from one another. Fortunately, however, Aric, Doug and Nick don't leave us with only a critique. Instead, they draw on the trademark wit, wisdom and sensibility they've become known for as Two Friars and a Fool and describe how Christians can better appropriate the gifts of the Christian tradition in order to recapture the best of what they harbor, which is nothing other than the mending and repairing of the world and all who live in it. This book is a must read for all Christians who long for prayer to be understood less as an individualistic exchange with a supernatural being on high and more as a call to heed and respond to the very real needs of the world God longs to liberate."

Phil Snider, author of Preaching After God, editor of The Hyphenateds, and senior minister of Brentwood Christian Church, Springfield, MO

"No longer does 1 + 1 have to equal 2. No longer do we have to act as an extra in the 'Walking Dead.' Liberation from formulaic certainty is a freeing and life-giving. Yet liberation from formulaic certainty can also be a genuinely scary place. Never Pray Again is simply not just a book about prayer – it is a manifesto of liberation, illuminating outside-of-the-box avenues in which we as the creation can communicate with The Creator. Writers Aric, Doug, and Nick, in the voice of the pastor and the prophet, give us the permission to live into the resurrection. And yes, some of us do need the permission to live into the resurrection – shattering our paradigms of stagnancy, breathing new vitality into our everyday rhythms of living."

Phil Shepherd, aka The Whiskey Preacher

“Aric, Doug, and Nick are ridiculous, but Never Pray Again is exactly the kind of tom-foolery the church needs. Too many Christians speak holy sounding words, and assume their work for the good of creation is done. Never Pray Again offers us practical action words, and gets us to a place where we understand the truth spoken by Theresa of Avila: that ‘Christ has no hands and feet now but ours.’"

Landon Whitsitt, author of Open Source Church: Making Room for the Wisdom of All

"I love these guys!"

Rachel Held Evans, author of Faith Unraveled and A Year of Biblical Womanhood