Mennonite Brethren are among the many hands from Fresno Pacific University that contributed to A Road too Short for the Long Journey: Reflections and Resources to Support Grieving People, published in early February 2019, by Pickwick Publications, part of Wipf & Stock.
Quentin P. Kinnison, associate professor and program director of Christian ministries and chair of the Division of Biblical and Religious Studies, edited the book and wrote the introduction and one appendix.
Other FPU faculty and staff writers are Larry Dunn, professor of peacemaking and conflict studies; Connie McNeely, Advancement Office manager; Tim Neufeld, professor and director of contemporary Christian ministries; Jay Pope, associate professor of psychology; and Laura Schmidt Roberts, professor of biblical and theological studies.
Alumni contributors are James Bergen (SEM ’00), lead pastor, North Fresno MB Church; Esther Klassen-Isaak (BA ’77), a psychotherapist who formerly served as director of counseling in the Division of Student Life; Greg Lankford (BA ’13); Collin Tally (BA ’13), field project manager for Solar Negotiators; and Aaron Wiens (BA ’00), a member of the FPU Board of Trustees.
Also writing chapters are Stacy Hammons, former dean of the School of Humanities, Religion and Social Sciences (HRSS) and social work and sociology faculty, now provost, chief academic officer and professor at Indiana Wesleyan University; and Kevin Reimer, former dean of HRSS and liberal studies faculty, now teaching at the UC Merced Extension Center, who wrote the foreword.
“The inevitability of death in our broken world means that grief and mourning are a normal part of the human experience,” says the publisher. “Too often, though, this normal journey of grief is cut short by a culture intent on pretending bad things don’t really happen. In A Road Too Short for the Long Journey, readers are invited to consider how we might travel this road of mourning with those who grieve and how we might join them as partners in a reorientation of the world experienced through loss.”
For more information or to order the book, visit wipfandstock.com/a-road-too-short-for-the-long-journey.html.
Fresno Pacific University is California’s Central Valley’s only accredited Christian university, connecting every student’s untapped potential with unlimited opportunity for professional, personal and ethical growth. Nonprofit and independent, FPU offers more than 100 areas of study to about 4,000 traditional undergraduate, adult degree completion, graduate and seminary students at the main campus in Southeast Fresno and throughout the Valley at regional campuses in North Fresno, Visalia, Bakersfield and Merced as well as online.
