A few of Melanie’s books

Finding Our Own Way: When the Children We Love Become Adults (Herald Press, 2023)

Coming February 21, 2023

When our children turn 18, we hope to happily launch them into the world to become the adults we've been preparing them to be. Their pathway seems clear: most will go to college, find a vocation and then a true love, and settle into a comfortable life while we parents keep in touch through occasional phone calls, family gatherings, and surprise trips home for Christmas. But now more than ever, these expectations fail to acknowledge the significant challenges faced by many young people, from a pandemic to racial unrest to a climate crisis that is setting the world on fire, figuratively and literally.

While young people are consistently told they need to discern God's calling, in Finding Our Way Forward, Melanie Springer Mock draws on her decades as a college professor and mom to four adult children to explore how finding our way means developing a more expansive understanding of calling for ourselves and for the young adults we love, one that moves beyond vocation and capitalistic enterprises to what God really calls us to: Seeking justice. Loving mercy. Walking with humility. Loving others. Loving God. As we do so, our relationships can be transformed as together we find our way forward.

Just Moms: Conveying Justice in an Unjust World (Barclay, 2011)

Conveying the principles and the practice of justice to young children is no small task. In this poignant, honest, and sometimes witty collection of stories, 27 women share their adventures and misadventures modeling social-justice principles for their children and communities. Just Moms is about moms bending their own rules and redefining success as they work to raise kids who value peace, equality, truth, simplicity, and love. This book is for you if: You teach nonviolence but your preschooler has shot you with a gun fashioned out of a stick; You try to practice contentment but have found yourself drained by the demands of raising special-needs children; or You believe in simplicity but have let your kids cajole you into increasing their collection of useless trinkets. Just Moms is about finding hope in what looks like a perfect mess.

Worthy: Finding Yourself in a world expecting someone else (herald Press, 2018)

Worthy sifts through the shape and weight of expectations that press Christians into cultural molds rather than God's image. By plumbing Scripture and critiquing the ten-billion-dollar-a-year self-improvement industry, Mock offers life-giving reminders that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Set free from the anxiety to conform to others' expectations, we are liberated to become who God has created us to be. If you're worn out from worrying that you've missed God's One Big Calling, and if you're tired of trying to fit yourself into some cookie-cutter Christian mold, step away from the expectations and toward God's heart.

If Eve Only Knew (Chalice, 2015)

If Eve Only Knew offers a fresh perspective on gender and the Bible, destroying trumped-up, captive-creating messages with the freeing proclamation grounded in Jesus' ministry and found everywhere in scripture: that we are all created in God's image, and by relying on our gifts and skills--rather than on gender-designed roles--we become all God means for us to be.