Customer Reviews

A Thousand Resurrections

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Maria beautifully weaves together the seasons of mothering, womanhood and community service in the complex context of urban ministry. She honestly faces the often painful realities of unrealized dreams for our families and our life work. I appreciate the way she courageously shares her journey of heartbreaks and grief along with the tremendous joy and hope that lies at the heart of all stories of transformation.

Maria's work is a page-turner, gripping the reader with the honesty in which she relates joys, sorrows, triumphs, downfalls and everything in between. With a sense of both humor and rationality, she shares her story of a life of urban ministry. Although her book presents many harsh realities, she also presents hope. While reading her book I took time to cry, laugh and dream of a brighter future for our cities.

I was a member of the congregation of Faith Christian Fellowship (the church that Maria's husband co-pastors) during my years in medical school in Baltimore. It was one of the amazing churches that I have attended in my life- and the first church that I decided that I wanted to join as a member, even though I've been a Christian for 13 years. This book was a beautiful testimony to God's faithfulness to two people who made living their lives out totally for God's glory the top priority of their lives. It is that much more special to me because I've seen it in real life. The book is both at times gut wrenching, touching, inspiring- and above all, real. It is totally worth picking up and totally worth passing along to a friend. You'll be glad that you did...

This is an inspiring, wise, and often humorous account by the wife of a pastor of the founding and growth of an inner-city multi-racial congregation over a 25 year period. The book is a must-read for anyone praying and working to make a difference in a high-poverty neighborhood within urban America. The book is also sure to be a favorite of those who like Jan Karon's Mitford series. Of course, the characters in this book are real not fictional, but they just as endearing as those in the Mitford series and the portrait of the rewards and challenges of ministry, relationships, and family is similar even though inner-city Baltimore is so different than Mitford.

Maria Garriott's A Thousand Resurrections is the story of the Garriott family's ministry work in a poverty-stricken community. Garriott's struggle to balance the interests of her family's Pen Lucy ministry, along with her marriage and children, is evident in this touching and inspiring account.

With a realistic, heartfelt, and even humorous style, Garriott draws her readers into the very heart of her trials and triumphs. As a wife, mother, college graduate, and woman who seeks to do God's work through helping those in need, Maria Garriott has written a truly unique and candid retelling of her experiences in urban Baltimore.

Maria Garriott never sugarcoats the details of her story. From dealing with a drunken lay leader to protecting her children from the harsh realities of poor urban life, or trying to, Garriott provides a wonderful resource for people considering urban ministry.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone curious about the realities of urban life and ministry, or ready for a dose of reality about the life of the urban poor. A Thousand Resurrections is a treasure written by a highly educated woman who has "been there, done that," and has now told all about it. Maria Garriott is an author worth remembering, and her church planting story not to be missed. - Meg D. R. Tepfer, Christian Book Previews.com

Maria presents an honest account of what it's like to minister in an urban setting. This book is an encouragement. It validates what so many of us feel as we try to reach out to our cities. Her story demonstrates God's faithfulness to a church, a neighborhood, a family, an individual. It shows how God uses weak people who are simply available for Him to use. Thanks, Maria, for writing your story. It will help us to pray more intelligently for neighborhoods, because now we know some of the hard truths of urban life. It will help us to pray more intelligently for urban pastors and their families too.

Maria Garriott accounts for her twenty-five years of multiethnic urban ministry in Baltimore--but she also does much more. A Thousand Resurrections reveals a kind of honest faith that is refreshingly witty and delighful. I would highly reccomend this book and can't wait to share it with my mother-in-law who works with urban Chicago ministries.

I was Blessed to meet Maria. Her words help you understand city life and it's cry for help.

Twenty five years ago, when she was just twenty two, Maria Garriott and her husband moved to the inner city. Settling in a poverty-stricken area of Baltimore, the Garriotts set about beginning a church that would reach out to the multiracial neighborhoods around them. A Thousand Resurrections tells this story. The book's subtitle, "An Urban Spiritual Journey," is instructive. While it would be easy to see this book as the story of the building of a church, I think it is more accurate to see this as a book describing the spiritual journey of the author. Of course she does tell the story of the church and also tells the story of her husband and children, but the core of the book seems to be the author's journey. And it is a fascinating journey.

This is an honest and heartfelt book. Maria deals frankly and transparently with the many mistakes they made. She deals honestly with the heartbreak they experienced time and again when people who seemed to embrace the faith walked away or took their own lives. She describes living in an area of the city that was, in so many ways, inhospitable. She deals with raising her children in a neighborhood where the family always seemed to be at risk. And throughout, she shares stories of the grace and the faith that sustained them.

There was one aspect of the book that I found a little bit disappointing. The Presbyterian Church of America is not a denomination known for reaching into the inner city, and certainly not a denomination that has seemed to embrace the type of "incarnational" mission work begun by the Garriotts. In my experience, though limited, it seems that PCA churches tend to be predominantly white and middle class. Because of this I was interested to learn what Presbyterianism might look like in an urban context. What I found was that there didn't seem to be anything obviously and distinctly Presbyterian about this story, or at least the part of the story that was recounted in this book. I know that Maria's husband Craig is working on a more scholarly book on the same subject, so perhaps his efforts will address this in greater detail. But A Thousand Resurrections did not offer much about Presbyterianism and how things may have been different had the Garriotts been part of a different Christian tradition.

A Thousand Resurrections details a fascinating journey. Or more accurately, several journeys. While the author's journey is central to the book, travelling alongside it are the interwoven stories of her husband, church and family. This is a book that is well worth reading and one that will no doubt prove interesting and edifying.