Download or read book Christians in the Age of Outrage written by Ed Stetzer and published by NavPress. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are you tired of reading another news story about Christians supposedly acting at their worst? Today there are too many examples of those claiming to follow Christ being caustic, divisive, and irrational, contributing to dismissals of the Christian faith as hypocritical, self-interested, and politically co-opted. What has happened in our society? One short outrageous video, whether it is true or not, can trigger an avalanche of comments on social media. Welcome to the new age of outrage. In this groundbreaking book featuring new survey research of evangelicals and their relationship to the age of outrage, Ed Stetzer offers a constructive way forward. You won’t want to miss Ed’s insightful analysis of our chaotic age, his commonsensical understanding of the cultural currents, and his compelling challenge to Christians to live in a refreshingly different way.
Download or read book Christians at Our Best written by Ed Stetzer and published by NavPress. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are you tired of reading yet another news story about Christians acting their worst? Today there are too many examples of those claiming to follow Christ being caustic, divisive, and irrational, contributing to dismissals of the Christian faith as hypocritical, self-interested, and politically co-opted. What has happened in our society? It seems one short outrageous video or pithy post can trigger an avalanche of comments on social media. Welcome to the new age of outrage. In this guide, Ed Stetzer—respected columnist and popular Bible teacher—leads small groups through a deep conversation of what it would look like if Christians were at their best. How might our world and our communities be different? Spend the next six weeks discussing what it means to represent the love of Jesus Christ in this new polarized age. This discussion guide for small groups is designed to be used with the teaching videos featuring Ed Stetzer (available for purchase at edstetzer.com).
Download or read book The Darkening Age written by Catherine Nixey and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book, winner of the Jerwood Award from the Royal Society of Literature, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and named a Book of the Year by the Telegraph, Spectator, Observer, and BBC History Magazine, this bold new history of the rise of Christianity shows how its radical followers helped to annihilate Greek and Roman civilizations. The Darkening Age is the largely unknown story of how a militant religion deliberately attacked and suppressed the teachings of the Classical world, ushering in centuries of unquestioning adherence to "one true faith." Despite the long-held notion that the early Christians were meek and mild, going to their martyrs' deaths singing hymns of love and praise, the truth, as Catherine Nixey reveals, is very different. Far from being meek and mild, they were violent, ruthless, and fundamentally intolerant. Unlike the polytheistic world, in which the addition of one new religion made no fundamental difference to the old ones, this new ideology stated not only that it was the way, the truth, and the light but that, by extension, every single other way was wrong and had to be destroyed. From the first century to the sixth, those who didn't fall into step with its beliefs were pursued in every possible way: social, legal, financial, and physical. Their altars were upturned and their temples demolished, their statues hacked to pieces, and their priests killed. It was an annihilation. Authoritative, vividly written, and utterly compelling, this is a remarkable debut from a brilliant young historian.
Download or read book Lost and Found written by Ed Stetzer and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 2009-02-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who are the young unchurched, and how can they be reached with the good news of Jesus Christ? In a poll result highlighted by CNN Headline News and USA Today, nearly half of nonchurchgoers between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine agreed with the statement, "Christians get on my nerves." Now, researchers behind the larger study present Lost and Found, a blend of dynamic hard data and modern day parable that tells the real story of an unchurched generation that is actually quite spiritual and yet circumspect, open to Jesus but not the church. As such, Lost and Found is written to the church, using often-surprising results from the copious research here to strike another nerve and break some long established assumptions about how to effectively engage the lost. Leading missiologist Ed Stetzer and his associates first offer a detailed investigation of the four younger unchurched types. With a better understanding of their unique experiences, they next clarify the importance each type places on community, depth of content, social responsibility, and making cross-generational connections in relation to spiritual matters. Most valuably, Lost and Found finds the churches that have learned to reach unchurched young adults by paying close attention to those key markers vetted by the research. Their exciting stories will make it clear how your church can bring searching souls from this culture to authentic faith in Christ. Those who are lost can indeed be found. Come take a closer look.
Download or read book Christian Beginnings written by Geza Vermes and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-26 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIV The creation of the Christian Church is one of the most important stories in the development of the world's history, but also one of the most enigmatic and little understood, shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding. Through a forensic, brilliant reexamination of all the key surviving texts of early Christianity, Geza Vermes illuminates the origins of a faith and traces the evolution of the figure of Jesus from the man he was—a prophet recognizable as the successor to other Jewish holy men of the Old Testament—to what he came to represent: a mysterious, otherworldly being at the heart of a major new religion. As Jesus's teachings spread across the eastern Mediterranean, hammered into place by Paul, John, and their successors, they were transformed in the space of three centuries into a centralized, state-backed creed worlds away from its humble origins. Christian Beginnings tells the captivating story of how a man came to be hailed as the Son consubstantial with God, and of how a revolutionary, anticonformist Jewish subsect became the official state religion of the Roman Empire. /div
Download or read book Competing Spectacles written by Tony Reinke and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2019-04-17 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a world full of shiny distractions, faced with an onslaught of viral media constantly competing for our attention and demanding our affections. These ever-present visual “spectacles” can quickly erode our hearts, making it more difficult than ever to walk through life actively treasuring that which is most important and yet invisible: Jesus Christ. In a journalistic style, Tony Reinke shows us just how distracting these spectacles in our lives have become and calls us to ask critical questions about what we’re focusing on. The book offers us practical steps to redirect our gaze away from the addictive eye candy of the world and onto the Ultimate Spectacle—leading to the joy and rest our souls crave.
Download or read book Washed and Waiting written by Wesley Hill and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-11-29 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yet many who sit next to us in the pew at church fit that description, says author Wesley Hill. As a celibate gay Christian, Hill gives us a glimpse of what it looks like to wrestle firsthand with God's ''No'' to same-sex relationships. What does it mean for gay Christians to live faithful to God while struggling with the challenge of their homosexuality? What is God's will for believers who experience same-sex desires? Those who choose celibacy are often left to deal with loneliness and the hunger for relationships. How can gay Christians experience God's favor and blessing in the midst of a struggle that for many brings a crippling sense of shame and guilt? Weaving together reflections from his own life and the lives of other Christians, such as Henri Nouwen and Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hill offers a fresh perspective on these questions. He advocates neither unqualified ''healing'' for those who struggle, nor their accommodation to temptation, but rather faithfulness in the midst of brokenness. ''I hope this book may encourage other homosexual Christians to take the risky step of opening up their lives to others in the body of Christ,'' Hill writes. ''In so doing, they may find, as I have, by grace, that being known is spiritually healthier than remaining behind closed doors, that the light is better than the darkness.
Download or read book The Myth of Persecution written by Candida Moss and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An expert on early Christianity reveals how the early church invented stories of Christian martyrs—and how this persecution myth persists today. According to church tradition and popular belief, early Christians were systematically persecuted by a brutal Roman Empire intent on their destruction. As the story goes, vast numbers of believers were thrown to the lions, tortured, or burned alive because they refused to renounce Christ. But as Candida Moss reveals in The Myth of Persecution, the “Age of Martyrs” is a fiction. There was no sustained 300-year-long effort by the Romans to persecute Christians. Instead, these stories were pious exaggerations; highly stylized rewritings of Jewish, Greek, and Roman noble death traditions; and even forgeries designed to marginalize heretics, inspire the faithful, and fund churches. The traditional story of persecution is still invoked by church leaders, politicians, and media pundits who insist that Christians were—and always will be—persecuted by a hostile, secular world. While violence against Christians does occur in select parts of the world today, the rhetoric of persecution is both misleading and rooted in an inaccurate history of the early church. By shedding light on the historical record, Moss urges modern Christians to abandon the conspiratorial assumption that the world is out to get them.
Download or read book Sacred Violence written by Brent D. Shaw and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-09 with total page 931 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Employs the sectarian battles which divided African Christians in late antiquity to explore the nature of violence in religious conflicts.
Download or read book Early Christian Martyr Stories written by Bryan M. Litfin and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Personal narratives are powerful instruments for teaching, both for conveying information and for forming character. The martyrdom accounts preserved in the literature of early Christianity are especially intense and dramatic. However, these narratives are not readily available and are often written in intimidating prose, making them largely inaccessible for the average reader. This introductory text brings together key early Christian martyrdom stories in a single volume, offering new, easy-to-read translations and expert commentary. An introduction and explanatory notes accompany each translation. The book not only provides a vivid window into the world of early Christianity but also offers spiritual encouragement and inspiration for Christian life today.
Download or read book Jesus Outside the Lines written by Scott Sauls and published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2015-03-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether the issue of the day on Twitter, Facebook, or cable news is our sexuality, political divides, or the perceived conflict between faith and science, today’s media pushes each one of us into a frustrating clash between two opposing sides. Polarizing, us-against-them discussions divide us and distract us from thinking clearly and communicating lovingly with others. Scott Sauls, like many of us, is weary of the bickering and is seeking a way of truth and beauty through the conflicts. Jesus Outside the Lines presents Jesus as this way. Scott shows us how the words and actions of Jesus reveal a response that does not perpetuate the destructive fray. Jesus offers us a way forward—away from harshness, caricatures, and stereotypes. In Jesus Outside the Lines, you will experience a fresh perspective of Jesus, who will not (and should not) fit into the sides.
Download or read book The Age of Secrecy written by Daniel Jütte and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries were truly an Age of Secrecy in Europe, when arcane knowledge was widely believed to be positive knowledge which extended into all areas of daily life. So asserts Daniel Jütte in this engrossing, vivid, and award-winning work. He maintains that the widespread acceptance and even reverence for this “economy of secrets” in premodern Europe created a highly complex and sometimes perilous space for mutual contact between Jews and Christians. Surveying the interactions between the two religious groups in a wide array of secret sciences and practices, the author relates true stories of colorful “professors of secrets” and clandestine encounters. In the process Jütte examines how our current notion of secrecy is radically different in this era of WikiLeaks, Snowden, etc., as opposed to centuries earlier when the truest, most important knowledge was generally considered to be secret by definition.
Download or read book A Gentle Answer written by Scott Sauls and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2020-06-02 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remarkable vision for how Christians can live with countercultural gentleness in a perpetually angry, attacking, outraged time. Wow! What a great book!" -- Max Lucado In a defensive and divided era, how can followers of Jesus reveal a better way of living, one that loves others as God loves us? How can Christians be the kind of people who are known, as Proverbs puts it, to "turn away wrath?" Scott Sauls's compelling new book shows Christians how to become people of "a gentle answer" in a politically, relationally, and culturally fractured world by helping readers: grow in affection for Christ, who answers our hostility with gentleness; nurture a renewed, softened heart in light of Christ's gentleness toward us; and catch a vision to forsake us-against-them mentalities, put down our swords, and "infect" a hostile world with gentleness. For those who long for a more civil way of being, A Gentle Answer reveals why answering hostility with gentleness is essential, how we can nurture our hearts to do so, and what a gentle answer looks like, both in the church and in the world. "A great, highly practical volume that points us to the tenderness of Jesus: 'a bruised reed he will not break'." -- Tim Keller, Pastor Emeritus, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City "Wow! What a great book…. We will be better humans because of it." -- Max Lucado, bestselling author and pastor of Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas "Scott Sauls is the preeminent voice for fractured, polarized times…. Scott’s every word is read under our roof." -- Ann Voskamp, bestselling author of One Thousand Gifts and The Broken Way "This book could not have come at a better time, as we navigate a culture of polarization….This is a heart changing book!" -- Rebekah Lyons, bestselling author, Rhythms of Renewal and You are Free
Download or read book A Way with Words written by Daniel Darling and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social media was made to bring us together. But few things have driven us further apart. Sadly, many Christians are fueling online incivility. Others, exhausted by perpetual outrage and shame-filled from constant comparison, are leaving social media altogether. So, how should Christians behave in this digital age? Is there a better way? Daniel Darling believes we need an approach that applies biblical wisdom to our engagement with social media, an approach that neither retreats from modern technology nor ignores the harmful ways in which Christians often engage publicly. In short, he believes that we can and should use our online conversations for good.
Download or read book Unbelievers written by Alec Ryrie and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “How has unbelief come to dominate so many Western societies? The usual account invokes the advance of science and rational knowledge. Ryrie’s alternative, in which emotions are the driving force, offers new and interesting insights into our past and present.” —Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age Why have societies that were once overwhelmingly Christian become so secular? We think we know the answer, pointing to science and reason as the twin culprits, but in this lively, startlingly original reconsideration, Alec Ryrie argues that people embraced unbelief much as they have always chosen their worldviews: through the heart more than the mind. Looking back to the crisis of the Reformation and beyond, he shows how, long before philosophers started to make the case for atheism, powerful cultural currents were challenging traditional faith. As Protestant radicals eroded time-honored certainties and ushered in an age of anger and anxiety, some defended their faith by redefining it in terms of ethics, setting in motion secularizing forces that soon became transformational. Unbelievers tells a powerful emotional history of doubt with potent lessons for our own angry and anxious times. “Well-researched and thought-provoking...Ryrie is definitely on to something right and important.” —Christianity Today “A beautifully crafted history of early doubt...Unbelievers covers much ground in a short space with deep erudition and considerable wit.” —The Spectator “Ryrie traces the root of religious skepticism to the anger, the anxiety, and the ‘desperate search for certainty’ that drove thinkers like...John Donne to grapple with church dogma.” —New Yorker
Download or read book Against Jovinianus written by St. Jerome and published by Dalcassian Publishing Company. This book was released on 2019-12-07 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jovinianus, about whom little more is known than what is to be found in Jerome's treatise, published a Latin treatise outlining several opinions: That a virgin is no better, as such, than a wife in the sight of God. Abstinence from food is no better than a thankful partaking of food. A person baptized with the Spirit as well as with water cannot sin. All sins are equal. There is but one grade of punishment and one of reward in the future state. In addition to this, he held the birth of Jesus Christ to have been by a "true parturition," and was thus refuting the orthodoxy of the time, according to which, the infant Jesus passed through the walls of the womb as his Resurrection body afterwards did, out of the tomb or through closed doors.
Download or read book Our Good Crisis written by Jonathan K. Dodson and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Behind every crisis we read about in the news lurks a moral crisis—a crisis of goodness. To properly address these issues, Pastor Jonathan Dodson thinks we must be formed as people of moral goodness. In this wise and practical book, Dodson takes us back to the Beatitudes, examining each teaching in the context of the new morality in our society today and presenting a compelling portrait of the truly good life.
