"...the truth about urban ministry." - Carl Ellis, Westminster Theological Seminary What would make a young, gifted college student well postured to achieve her place in the American dream decide to pursue another dream - one that would force her to take food stamps and move into a violent urban community? What would sustain her for over two decades while she raised five children in a context of failed educational systems, lead poisoning, and chronic theft? What would eventually compel her to move and yet still embrace the issues of city? This is one woman's story of a return to a city that many have fled. It is about the challenges, heartbreaks, lessons, and joys of a woman participating in the transformation of the city while being transformed herself. This title includes a discussion guide at the end of the book. 288 Pages Published: March 2006 About the Author: Maria Garriott's poetry, essays, and nonfiction articles have appeared in The Baltimore Sun, The New York Quarterly, The Christian Century, Urban Mission Journal, Our Sunday Visitor, and the Maryland Poetry Review. She earned a B.A. from the University of Maryland and a Master’s degree from Towson University. She is a curriculum writer for The Johns Hopkins University Talent Development Middle Grades Program. She and Craig are the parents of five children.

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"Grip your chair. This mind-boggling account of a family's naive-yet-determined move to one of America's challenging urban neighborhoods will lay its hand on you. Maria Garriott's descriptions pull you in, her characters insist you stay. The narrative pays its rent up to the last page, which arrives all too quickly. I envy those about to read this story for the first time."
- Steven Estes, co-author (with Joni Eareckson Tada) of When God Weeps

"Maria's words capture the brokenness and healing, the grief and joy that lie at the heart of every true story of personal or community transformation."
- Joni Eareckson Tada, founder of Joni and Friends

"Well worth reading. 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."
- Tim Challies, www.challies.com

"I pray I will be as faithful to my ministry calling as Maria Garriott has been to hers. With the language of a poet, Maria writes of raising kids, shaping a marriage, and serving a church and neighborhood caught 'in the crossfire of America's racial war.' Maria's words capture the brokenness and healing, the grief and joy that lie at the heart of every true story of personal or community transformation.'
- Lynne Hybels, Willow Creek Community Church

[A Thousand Resurrections] is the truth about urban ministry."
Rev. Carl F. Ellis, Lecturer in Practical Theology, Westminster Theological Seminary

"A compelling first-person narrative written with humor and pathos, beginning with a Caucasian couple, the Garriotts, who ventured out by faith with a vision for an inter-racial church in urban Baltimore. Looking back over more than twenty years, perseverance and lessons in counting the cost have resulted in a vibrant, established congregation. The Garriots do not so much offer others a precise model to imitate, as they give proof of God's faithfulness when a ministry faithfully endures in showing the fact of Christ to a community. Here is an account of God's fruit, reaped from hard soil, in God's wonderful timing."
- Dr. Michael Rogers, Pastor, Westminster Presbyterian Church; Board Member, Westminster Theological Seminary