Christine Havens

Murder in the Tidwell Building By James D. Nogalski and Mark E. Biddle Resource Publications, 242 pages, $25 Dean “Dino” Piper and Jack Farmer, detectives in the Waco Police department, find themselves investigating a cold case—the renovation of the Tidwell Bible Building has turned up skeletal remains hidden in a crawl space behind organ pipes.

“Down the centuries, Christians have looked for definitions of ‘vocation’ somewhere between the trivial sense of ‘just a job’ and the hard-to-believe image of a miraculous voice from heaven,” William C. Placher wrote in Callings: Twenty Centuries of Christian Wisdom on Vocation (Eerdmans, 2005). Somewhere in that breadth of definition are deacons and priests who plied other trades before their ordination in the Episcopal Church.

Before They Were Clergy: The Gospel Never Goes Away Several clerics discussed their experiences with TLC, and how those moments helped them be present when God called them away from their first, or even second, professions. Many clergy remain active within the church regardless of retirement. For them, there isn’t a distinction between before and after in their ministry or their vocation.