The Heliotrope Narratives

The Heliotrope Narratives, a trilogy, offers a thought-provocative look at Biblical hope and evangelism. Part I-Game Changers is the saga of a 105-year-old-grandmother, Ruth, and a 110-year-old grandfather, Peter, The couple is raising their 9-year-old granddaughter, Celeste, a miraculously artistic child who paints only heliotrope flowers. The story weaves back and forth between various life stages in a small family. These include a time when the grandparents lived in a repressive city-state, the ensuing years, and the family’s present life in a peaceful valley. Despite their advanced ages, the couple continues to grow spiritually under the watchful eye of a singular deity they call the Creator God. They also treasure long-time friends and neighbors who diligently care for their families, grow in faith, and teach that faith to the valley’s children. And, yes, the family has a dog, Nosey, who is sometimes comical, always useful and wants only one thing: to be with them.

Churchy Tales: Cavorting with Grace

Pick up your heels and start dancing because the subject of Deborah K. Cronin’s Churchy Tales: Cavorting with Grace may set you whirling like King David before the Ark of the Covenant  and Moses’ sister Miriam beside the Red Sea. This book makes a strong case for God having a delightful sense of humor and the power, not to curse, but to bless us. But this is no saccharine approach to humor. Cronin’s stories examine key Christian theological concepts such as sin, creation, wisdom, ad death. Some of the tales are downright funny and others, as Cronin notes in the book’s Introduction, examine life ad faith from the perspective of the sad yet winsome circus clown. But all of them affirm the God who creates us and then gives us his most profound divine joke, the dead-as-a-doornail Savior who refuses to stay dead and wants only one thing: to rise up anew into our lives every day.

Previous Works include:

The Rural Ministry Primer, New Visions for Small-Membership Churches (co-author), The Upper Room Disciplines 1992 (contributed the May 25-31, 1992 meditations,) The NOW(rm) STRATEGY Workbook, Can Your Dog Hunt?: Eleven Lectionary-based Sermons with Town and Country Themes, an article entitled “Effective Ministry in a Smaller Congregation,” which was published in the May 1995 issue of Circuit Rider, O For a Dozen Tongues to Sing: Music Ministry in the Small Church, Rural Ministry: The Shape of the Renewal to Come (co-author), and “Mobilizing Your Small Church for Ministry.” (included in the Guidelines for Local Churches 1997-2000.) She also wrote Holy Ground: Celtic Christian Spirituality, published by Upper Room Books in March 1999 and Superintending the Small Church, published by the General Board of Discipleship (UMC) in 2000. Since retiring Deborah has written a first novel, Things Unseen, and a local history, Kiantone: Chautauqua Country’s Mystical Valley.