Download or read book Seeing Beyond Church Walls written by Steve Sjogren and published by Flagship Church Resources. This book was released on 2002 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Build bridges of love to your church community...with wisdom from respected Christian leaders. Respected Christian leaders share key action plans and an encouraging vision for seeing beyond church walls created by inward-focus and introversion, to how to penetrate our local communities with the love of Jesus Christ. "In the trenches" church leaders like Steve Sjogren, Dale Galloway, Sally Morgenthaler, and Leonard Sweet give challenging, and passionate, yet intensely practical insights into transforming your church to become lovingly and strategically outwardly-focused. A bridge-building body of Christ that overcomes its own inwardly focused gaze to grip the hearts of those beyond church walls.

Download or read book Faith Beyond Church Walls Finding Freedom In Christ written by Dr. Dan Montgomery and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2007-05-19 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dan Montgomery invites you to step through the first page of the book and walk with him to the top of a mountain peak. There you talk heart to heart while sharing your favorite drink. This imaginary journey begins a dialogue about the difficulties of being human and how faith in God infuses your life with guidance and companionship. Theologian Gabriel Fackre writes: "Christian teaching about the Trinity becomes up close and personal in this engaging work by a wise counselor. Here is enriching daily guidance from compass therapy for our pilgrimage with the triune God." GUIDEPOSTS Roving Editor Elizabeth Sherrill writes, “I’ve waited a long time for a book like this! Like a caring counselor in private session, Dan Montgomery writes to anyone who thinks being a Christian means conforming to someone else’s pattern. To anyone who believes his current situation is hopeless. To anyone seeking a more intimate walk with Father, Son and Holy Spirit.â€

Download or read book Beyond Church Walls written by Dr. Richard Rouse and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2016-05-19 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pastoral care has been traditionally understood as pastoral acts administered to individuals or small groups by an ordained or lay religious practitioner. As congregations in the twenty-first century begin to reclaim the missional nature of church, this view must be broadened to include care and concern for the needs of the larger community. A missional perspective of pastoral care embraces the notion that all of Gods peoplenot just trained professionalsare called to partner in the healing and redemption of the world. In Beyond Church Walls, Rick Rouse sets out to articulate precisely what such an approach to pastoral care looks likeand the substantial impact it can have on congregations and communities. A skilled teacher and pastor with deep experience in real communities, Rouse leads readers through the changing realities of the twenty-first century and to new ways for missional churches to succeed in offering pastoral care for the whole community.

Download or read book Church Without Walls written by Jim Petersen and published by . This book was released on 2018-07-18 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Church Without Walls, prominent author Jim Petersen offers an exciting definition of the church that pushes beyond the too-small boundaries we've inherited from the past. This book explores why some church forms impede the gospel in today's postmodern world.

Download or read book Beyond Four Walls written by Michael D. O'Neil and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2020-08-12 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The church today is in many places “on the nose.” For many people, it stinks. It has passed its “use-by” date and should be relegated to the dustbins of history, and the sooner, the better. Nevertheless, the contributors to this volume believe that the church, in spite of its somewhat checkered history and its many present failures, remains an integral part of God’s redemptive purposes being worked out in the world, and that God’s call to the church is now what it has always been: to be the faithful people of God, bearing joy-filled witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ in word, worship, and work, in its corporate life, and in the lives of each of its members. Each chapter in this book explores an aspect of what it means to be the church, both with respect to its own life, and with an eye to its presence and mission in the world.

Download or read book This Is God s Table written by Anna Woofenden and published by MennoMedia, Inc.. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can a barren city lot become a church? This is the story of an audacious journey. It’s the story of what happens when people garden, worship, and eat together—and invite anyone and everyone to join them. In This Is God’s Table, writer and pastor Anna Woofenden describes the way that the wealthy and the poor, the aged and the young, the housed and unhoused become a community in this once-empty lot. Together they plant and sustain a thriving urban farm, worship God, and share a weekly meal. Together they craft a shared life and a place of authenticity where all are welcome. Readers of Nadia Bolz-Weber, Sara Miles, and Diana Butler Bass will find here a kindred vision for a church without walls. As churches across the Western world wither, what would it take to find a raw, honest, gritty way of doing church—one rooted in place, nurtured by grace, and grounded in God’s expansive love? What would it take to carry the liturgy outside the gates? What if we were to discover that in feeding others, we are fed? This is God’s table. Come and eat.

Download or read book Beyond Time Space written by Chuck Missler and published by Koinonia House. This book was released on 2023-01-19 with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are there more than four dimensions to physical reality?Is it possible to traverse time as well as space?Is there a reality beyond our traditional concepts of time and space? The startling discovery of modern science is that our physical universe is actually finite. Scientists now acknowledge that the universe had a beginning. They call the singularity from which it all began the "Big Bang." While the detail among the many variants of these theories remain quite controversial, the fact that there was a definite beginning has gained widespread agreement. This is, of course, what the Bible has maintained throughout its 66 books.

Download or read book Making Sense of God written by Timothy Keller and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-09-20 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.

Download or read book A Church Beyond Belief written by William L. Sachs and published by Church Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addresses “belonging before believing” and other new patterns for remaking congregations As we move beyond the “emergent” or “missional” church paradigm, pastors and other church leaders are discovering a new reality: people (especially younger generations) are coming to church not as believers, but to find a place to belong—with or without faith. This book describes the dilemma and the distractions that currently prevent congregations from being the place where that sense of belonging can unfold and guide newcomers in the discovery of faith. The authors argue that despite elaborate talk of change, spirituality, transformation, and conflict resolution, congregations are still mired in old patterns of belonging. Using broad-based career experiences, surveys of religious life, historical precedent, and insights from social psychology about what it means to belong today, the book suggests new and effective approaches to help churches make vital connections.

Download or read book Used to Go to Church written by Nick Vleisides and published by . This book was released on 2020-06-29 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life can often be brutal, unjust, and fraught with emotional trauma. As a first responder chaplain for over 23 years, Nick Vleisides has experienced countless scenes of unbearable grief and pain. When asking the brokenhearted, "Do you have a faith to help you through?" the response in some form is almost always, "Well, we used to go to church." Blending first-hand accounts of tragedy with opportunity for raw self-examination and reflection, Vleisides delves into the realm of spirituality and belief amid loss and despair. For the "spiritual but not religious," who want to pursue God outside the walls of organized religion, Used to Go to Church is an invitation to rethink faith and open up to a life centered on grace, mercy, and love.

Download or read book Beyond Worship written by James Admans and published by Riverdale Avenue Books LLC. This book was released on 2022-10-20 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond Worship started as a digital zine published Fort Washington Collegiate Church’s website with only a few contributors. Under the direction of Minister James Admans (they/them) and funded by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, the zine Beyond Worship sought to collect any written material by LGBTQIA+ authors that could be shared in a worship space. The goal was to not only demonstrate that LGBTQIA+ members of the church are accepted, but part of the community and have something to contribute. When Publisher Lori Perkins, a member of Fort Washington, read the zine, she was immediately inspired to expand upon the idea of belonging in a community not just to LGBTQIA+ members of Fort Washington, but any LGBTQIA+ person struggling to find a sense of belonging in a community that they can call home and wanting, but struggling, to find their relationship with a higher purpose. Beyond Worship seeks to show LGBTQIA+ people that they are divine, here for a reason, and have so much to contribute to their communities. Whether a poem, a short story, a psalm, a meditative guide, or an academic paper, each LGBTQIA+ author in this anthology explores what it means to find community and love in a society that tells them they are undeserving of both. From all over the world and from a variety of faith traditions, each author’s piece shows readers different ways of being in a world worth experiencing.

Download or read book Church Beyond Walls written by Martin Poole and published by Canterbury Press. This book was released on 2023-06-30 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Church Beyond Walls tells inspiring, informative and occasionally funny stories of how a group of people took Christian spirituality outside of church buildings to engage a world increasingly uninterested in religion, God and faith. From imaginative and wide-ranging experiments, it draws out principles to inspire local churches to express their faith in their communities, and it shares liturgical and other resources developed for these occasions. Based in Brighton and known as BEYOND, for over ten years this group of dreamers, artists and provocateurs have experimented with public art, created light shows and walking meditations, partnered with retailers to create spiritual shop window trails, celebrated the festivals of the church in secular spaces, used folk traditions and more to introduce people to the Christian faith. Their goal and the aim of this book is to help local churches create opportunities for epiphanies: moments when the divine can break into human experience.

Download or read book Sacramental Life Volume 30 1 written by Jonathan Hehn and published by OSL Publications. This book was released on 2018-04-01 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sacramental Life Vol 30.1 (Lent-Easter 2018) "Issues Around the Lord's Supper" Founded in 1988, Sacramental Life is one of two journals published by the Order of Saint Luke (OSL Publications). Print distribution is to the members of the Order globally, as well as to a number of theology departments and seminary libraries in the United States.

Download or read book Faces Beyond Sacred Walls written by B. R. Mims and published by First Edition Design Pub.. This book was released on 2012-02-22 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faces Beyond Sacred Walls is not a how-to book as much as it is one for individual and church-corporate self-reflections about their social advocacy role to the community of the poor and oppressed. The author takes the reader on a self-examining journey through the difficult and often painful introspective process for addressing the Church's social advocacy role in response to God's original mandate for the poor found throughout the Bible. Using Luke 4:18-19, 21 as his foundational biblical principle for writing, the author stresses the Church, by divine design, has a dual role: evangelism (salvation) and mission (benevolence or poverty relief). In any given context, they may and should complement each other. However, there should be no conflict between ones' commitment as disciples to evangelism and poverty relief. They are hand-in-hand. Through biblical narratives, the author brings the reader to focus on inner conviction about the advocacy's role of the local church. He begins with the premise that the fundamental starting point for transformation and social engagement is our recognition of the integral value in humanity, the beauty of God so often hidden by sin and failure and pain and brokenness. As you read, you will discover the artful dialogue the author implores in highlighting the importance of self-examination towards transformation and social engagement for the purpose of calling the body of Christ in local churches to committed service and ministry to the community of the poor and oppressed. The author makes it plain that if it is our goal to know Christ and make Him known, then Christ will reveal Himself to us as we come face-to-face with "the least of these" in ways we will never meet Him in a Bible study, prayer meeting, or sermon. The author painstakingly argues and engages the reader through such subject matters as God's Mandate for Social Advocacy, The Early Church Concerns for the Poor, Theological Claims for Social Engagement, The Church's Answer to Poverty, Leadership Paradigm Shift, Social Advocacy Challenges, and Rethinking Programs of the Church. Each subject is designed to present a forum for relevant conversation for anyone concerned about the plight of the poor, poverty, lack of relief or means of navigating the bureaucratic system to access such relief, and the role of the church in such a situation. Using the idea of walls, the reader is drawn into an opportunity for serious reflection and dialogue about church-community relationships. Important, because as the author explains, beyond our "specific" sacred walls you will find the many obscure faces of a socially-hurting society: faces that tell stories. Too often, they are specific faces reduced to nothing more than statistics and, at deeper level, testimonies against churches in their community of influence. They are the poor, deemed marginalize by way of costs spent on their behalf and needs that remain unfulfilled. Seldom are they seen as individuals with personalities and considered as deserving of respect. They are nothing more than obscure faces...waiting to be acknowledged. The conclusion of the author is the church has an obligation to engage the entire membership in a journey of discovery about what God is calling them to be, to know, and to do in their lives, and how they can exercise that calling through the church. It is the journey to understand oneself as living in the presence of God and actively engaging in the disenfranchised poor and oppressed community for relief from injustice, brokenness, and suffering. The world is watching to see who truly loves others enough to take action. God is watching to see who is like Him and will love a poor and needy world. One thing for sure, when the church (collectively and individually) makes social advocacy a priority in its life and ministry, it can never expect to be the same.

Download or read book Religion and Politics Beyond the Culture Wars written by Darren Dochuk and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2021-10-15 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume reframes the narrative that has too often dominated the field of historical study of religion and politics: the culture wars. Influenced by culture war theories first introduced in the 1990s, much of the recent history of modern American religion and politics is written in a mode that takes for granted the enduring partisan divides that can blind us to the complex and dynamic intersections of faith and politics. The contributors to Religion and Politics Beyond the Culture Wars argue that such narratives do not tell the whole story of religion and politics in the modern age. This collection of essays, authored by leading scholars in American religious and political history, challenges readers to look past familiar clashes over social issues to appreciate the ways in which faith has fueled twentieth-century U.S. politics beyond predictable partisan divides and across a spectrum of debates ranging from environment to labor, immigration to civil rights, domestic legislation to foreign policy. Offering fresh illustrations drawn from a range of innovative primary sources, theories, and methods, these essays emphasize that our rendering of religion and politics in the twentieth century must appreciate the intersectionality of identities, interests, and motivations that transpire and exist outside an unbending dualistic paradigm. Contributors: Darren Dochuk, Janine Giordano Drake, Joseph Kip Kosek, Josef Sorett, Patrick Q. Mason, Wendy L. Wall, Mark Brilliant, Andrew Preston, Matthew Avery Sutton, Kathleen Sprows Cummings, Benjamin Francis-Fallon, Michelle Nickerson, Keith Makoto Woodhouse, Kate Bowler, and James T. Kloppenberg.

Download or read book Icon of the Kingdom of God written by Radu Bordeianu and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the Church? Some would answer this question by studying the Scriptures, the history of the Church, and contemporary theologians, thus addressing the theological nature of the Church. Others would answer based on statistics, interviews, and personal observation, thus focusing on the experience of the Church. These theological and experiential perspectives are in tension, or at times even opposed. Whereas the first might speak about the local church as the diocese gathered in the Liturgy presided over by its bishop, the latter would describe the local church as the parish community celebrating the Liturgy together with the parish priest, never experiencing a sole liturgy that gathers an entire diocese around its bishop. Whereas a theologian might abstractly describe the Church as a reflection of the Trinity, a regular church-member might concretely experience the Church as a community that manifests the Kingdom of God in its outreach ministries. Radu Bordeianu attempts to bring these two perspectives together, starting from the concrete experience of the Church, engaging this experience with the theological tradition of the Church, extracting ecclesiological principles from this combined approach, and then highlighting concrete situations that reflect those standards or proposing correctives, when necessary. Without pretending to be a complete Orthodox ecclesiology, Icon of the Kingdom of God addresses the most important topics related to the Church. It progresses according to one's experience of the Church from baptism, to the family, parish, Liturgy, and priesthood, followed by analyses of synodality and nationality. Arguing that the Church is an icon of the Kingdom of God, this volume brings together the past theological heritage and the present experience of the Church while having three methodological characteristics: experiential, Kingdom-centered, and ecumenical.

Download or read book Christianity Beyond Belief written by Todd D. Hunter and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2010-05-04 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Todd Hunter presents a new paradigm for Christian discipleship that shows how salvation is not just a question of whether we are saved but also a call to progressively grow more like Christ. Hunter's biblical perspective might just change the way you look at life forever.