Download or read book A Field Guide to Methodist Fresh Expressions written by Michael Adam Beck and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to Fresh Expressions U.S., "a Fresh Expression is a form of church for our changing culture, established primarily for the benefit of those who are not yet part of any church." Fresh Expressions are introducing people to Jesus, expanding the kingdom, and revitalizing churches. Congregations need a practical and theological resource that can help them cultivate Fresh Expressions. As consultants who work nationwide and as innovative pastors, authors Michael Beck and Jorge Acevedo awaken congregational leaders and ministry teams to a distinctive Wesleyan approach for the Fresh Expressions movement. In Wesleyan Fresh Expressions, they show congregations how to cultivate and customize fresh expressions that fit their local context. They motivate ministry teams to take risks, experiment, and when necessary, fail well. On April 2, 1739, John Wesley went to a field just outside what was then the city limits of Bristol, England. There he tried a missional innovation called field preaching. Thousands of people showed up, many of whom who had no connection with a church. Today, most Methodists and other Wesleyans don’t know their own story. Lost in the milieu of divisive issues that threaten to tear the church apart, Wesleyans have forgotten their DNA as a renewal movement, born not from doctrinal disputes but from a missional imperative. In this sense, the Fresh Expressions movement is the most “Methodist” thing in the denomination today. This iteration of the Spirit is taking it to the fields again. Wesleyan Fresh Expressions will help guide the way.
Download or read book Fresh Expressions in a Digital Age written by Michael Adam Beck and published by . This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fresh Expressions is a canary in the coal mine, alerting congregations to reevaluate what the Church is, where and when it can happen, and who can lead it. Church as we know it is inaccessible to most people. A fundamental premise of the movement is that Church can become accessible again by emerging in every nook and cranny where life already happens. Fresh Expressions is based in simplification, returning to basic scriptural principles, and a recovery of a "priesthood of all believers"--in the three places where people live and relate to others. First Place: The home or primary place of residence. Second Place: The workplace or school place. Third Place: The public places separate from the two usual social environments of home and workplace, which host regular, voluntary, informal, and neutral spaces of communion and play. Examples are environments such as cafes, pubs, theaters, parks, and so on. During a pandemic, our two primary mission spaces were closed off; the second and third places were shut down. We couldn't have Tattoo Parlor Church; the tattoo parlor was closed. We couldn't gather in Moe's Southwest Grill for Burritos and Bibles; they were doing take-out only. The dog park was empty; no Paws of Praise. This limited us to the only spaces we have left: the first place, or the home place. The digital place, or the "space of flows." This forces us into recognizing the digital space as its own kind of third place, a new missional frontier.
Download or read book Fresh Expressions written by Kenneth H. Carter and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New forms of church that gather and network with people who typically have never been to church.
Download or read book A Field Guide to Methodist Fresh Expressions written by Michael Adam Beck and published by . This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A distinctive Wesleyan approach to the Fresh Expression movement.
Download or read book Fresh Expressions of People Over Property written by Bishop Kenneth H. Carter Jr. and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our church buildings, synagogues, and other religious places – which once stood as beacons of hope and reverence for its community – have become a burden for the organizations who seek to keep them standing. In efforts to patch leaky roofs and paint over years of wear, leaders are putting more and more money each year into property instead of people. The practices we have fallen into to keep a building running are not only demoralizing to the pastoral profession and the mission of the church, but they also run the risk of violating property tax laws and incurring more debt. What if our properties didn’t have to be a source of pain but one of purpose and profit? Can we as faith-based organizations begin to think collaboratively about how we might further our missions by creatively and intentionally rethinking how we utilize the space we inhabit? In Fresh Expressions of People Over Property the authors reflect on strategies, scriptures, and stories that help leaders faithfully re-imagine their community spaces so that they reflect that God and God’s people value people over property.
Download or read book The 21st Century Christian written by Michael Beck and published by . This book was released on 2020-09 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fresh Expressions of the Rural Church written by Michael Adam Beck and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2022-09-20 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn to cultivate the extraordinary gifts of Christian community in the countryside with Fresh Expressions of the Rural Church by Tyler Kleeberger and Michael Beck. The rural church was a community’s centerpiece. The place where people gathered to worship and hear a sermon, break bread together, and support each other through the joys and struggles of life with the land. In many ways, the rural church captured a central aspect of the church’s mission: to be the guiding hand for the life of a place. Can rural congregations flourish again? Can new Christian communities succeed in rural areas? Could healthy rural churches catalyze a better future for their declining communities? This book collects stories from the diversity of rural contexts across the US. It lays out a fresh theology for rural life and offers principles for harnessing the potential of what some consider the forgotten spaces. Each chapter includes a helpful Field Exercise—questions for discussion and suggested actions for leadership teams to work through together. Chapters conclude with a Field Story illustrating how the chapter’s main ideas can work in a real church setting. Praise for Fresh Expressions of the Rural Church Fresh Expressions of the Rural Church offers hope for the renewal that can take place in “out of the way” places. In these sacred rural places folks can experience the love of God and neighbor, undergo true healing, participate in the renewal of community, and discover a place to belong. - Daniel G. Beaudoin, Bishop, Northwestern Ohio Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Fresh Expressions of the Rural Church helps us to reconsider our Wesleyan roots and the gifts of our rural contexts, a seedbed packed with possibility for new communities of faith to form and flourish. - Heather M. Jallad, Fresh Expressions specialist, North Georgia Conference, UMC Beck and Kleeberger have taken a sample of the good soil that is faithful rural mission, identified the challenges, celebrated the riches, and offered us a powerful way to learn and be in partnership and connection with the gifts of God. - Ken Carter, Bishop, Florida and Western North Carolina Conferences of the United Methodist Church; co-author, Fresh Expressions: A New Kind of Methodist Church from Abingdon Press
Download or read book Becoming Church written by Luke Edwards and published by . This book was released on 2021-03 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love written by Raymond Carver and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-05-25 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most celebrated story collection from “one of the true American masters” (The New York Review of Books)—a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark that includes the iconic and much-referenced title story featured in the Academy Award-winning film Birdman. "Raymond Carver's America is ... clouded by pain and the loss of dreams, but it is not as fragile as it looks. It is a place of survivors and a place of stories.... [Carver] has done what many of the most gifted writers fail to do: He has invented a country of his own, like no other except that very world, as Wordsworth said, which is the world to all of us." —The New York Times Book Review
Download or read book Painting With Ashes When Your Weakness Becomes Your Superpower written by Michael Adam Beck and published by . This book was released on 2022-01-05 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This raw and powerful story is for anyone who has felt unworthy, who has hit rock bottom, who has been hurt by the church, or who has felt like an outcast. From drug dealer to pastor on a mission to bring church "to the wild," Michael Beck invites you into a journey of healing where all are met with compassion and where transformation happens as we make space for each other's wounds. Discover how God can bring forth beauty from ashes by getting down in the gray soot of our wounds to paint our lives beautiful again.
Download or read book Ordaining Women written by B. T. Roberts and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: B. T. Roberts saw the exclusion of women from ordination as analogous to racism. His ability to see the new community made possible by Christ offers Christians today a prophetic vision of the difference Christ makes. Roberts's 1891 Ordaining Women takes seriously the scriptural promise that Christ has unmasked the false distinctions and repaired the damaged social arrangements of this world. Like the abolition of slavery, the ordination of women becomes yet another obvious sign of the world made new in Christ. With careful attention to biblical interpretation, church tradition, and empirical evidence, Roberts exposes the biases that have long held captive the Christian imagination. In this new edition, Benjamin Wayman offers an updated and fully annotated version of Roberts's original work and demonstrates the breadth and depth of his analysis. Roberts's vision of the gospel challenges the traditional and still-dominant view of the global church, and invites Christians to reimagine the inclusion of women in ordained ministry. If Christians had for so long been wrong about race, might we today be wrong about gender?
Download or read book Deep Roots Wild Branches written by Michael Adam Beck and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Liberating News written by Orlando E. Costas and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2002-04-22 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book approaches the topic of contextual evangelization from the standpoint of Òthe poor, the powerless, and the opressed.Ó It is, as Orlando Costas explains, Òwritten against the backdrop of the radical evangellical tradition in dialogue with other streams of the larger ecumenical church.Ó Costas begins by exploring the biblical roots of contextual evangelization, focusing on two models. The Old Testament model is illustrated by believers like Esther, who, in her heroic liberation of her people in politically difficult circumstances, showed us how to come to the aid of those who live on the margins of society. The New Testament model is illustrated first and foremost by Christ, who showed us how to minister to the maginalized by operating from Òthe Galilean periphery.Ó On what does one base contextual evangelization? On the Trinity, which Costas defines as community, the foundation for evangelization as a Òcommunal event.Ó The substance of evangelization is Òthe apostolic message of the cross,Ó which announces God's gift of life through the suffering and death of Christ. If we believe that message, we look foreward to life in God's kingdom even as we work and pray for justice and peace. Costas accordingly views conversion not as a single event but rather as a continual transformative process that involves a passage from self-absorption to active communal commitment. Costas's creative, sound blend of evangelical commitment and enlightened social thinking recommends this book to well-informed laypeople as well as pastors, theologians, and scholars.
Download or read book Contextual Intelligence written by Leonard Sweet and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are some institutions thriving while others are closing their doors, declaring bankruptcy, and throwing in the towel? Why are some churches missionally prospering, while others are experiencing significant decline? The answer to these questions is an ancient secret, now unveiled afresh for mission on the frontlines of an emerging post-Covid world. The Tribe of Issachar possessed a distinct kind of intelligence which recognized that what worked in one season or location doesn't necessarily transfer to another. This vital skill, known as contextual intelligence, is now unearthed for this pivotal moment. In this groundbreaking book from renowned author Len Sweet and trailblazing missional pioneer Michael Beck, you will explore the phenomenon of contextual intelligence, discover a framework for its cultivation, and learn how you can apply it in your own circumstance. In these pages you will be called to a new order that the authors are calling The Issacharians, the tribe known for the ability to "read the signs of the times and know what to do."
Download or read book Models of Evangelism written by Priscilla Pope-Levison and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many sincere Christians dismiss evangelism due to enduring evangelistic caricatures. This book helps readers move beyond those caricatures to consider thoughtfully and practically how they can engage in evangelism, whether it's through one-on-one conversations, social media, social justice, or the liturgy of worship services. At once biblical, theological, historical, and practical, this book by a seasoned scholar offers an engaging, well-researched, and well-organized presentation and analysis of eight models of evangelism. Covering a breadth of approaches--from personal evangelism to media evangelism and everything in between--Priscilla Pope-Levison encourages readers to take a deeper look at evangelism and discover a model that captures their attention. Each chapter introduces and assesses a model biblically, theologically, historically, and practically, allowing for easy comparison across the board. The book also includes end-of-chapter study questions to further help readers interact with each model.
Download or read book Building Better Teams written by Robert Barner and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-05-30 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past 10 years in the field of human and organizational development, the approach to team building has moved from problem solving and conflict management to helping work groups and organizations build a foundation of trust, cooperation, and mutual support. Focusing on collaboration rather than resolving conflict, Building Better Teams: 70 Tools and Techniques for Strengthening Performance Within and Across Teams offers a fresh approach to team building. It provides proven tools for the most common needs of teams, including establishing trust, building consensus, managing change, working virtually and across boundaries, and dealing with setbacks.
Download or read book Baxter s Explore the Book written by J. Sidlow Baxter and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2010-09-21 with total page 1846 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the Book is not a commentary with verse-by-verse annotations. Neither is it just a series of analyses and outlines. Rather, it is a complete Bible survey course. No one can finish this series of studies and remain unchanged. The reader will receive lifelong benefit and be enriched by these practical and understandable studies. Exposition, commentary, and practical application of the meaning and message of the Bible will be found throughout this giant volume. Bible students without any background in Bible study will find this book of immense help as will those who have spent much time studying the Scriptures, including pastors and teachers. Explore the Book is the result and culmination of a lifetime of dedicated Bible study and exposition on the part of Dr. Baxter. It shows throughout a deep awareness and appreciation of the grand themes of the gospel, as found from the opening book of the Bible through Revelation.
