Download or read book Reimagining The End Time Church written by Wayne Manning Bass and published by WestBow Press. This book was released on 2023-07-19 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The pastor-author of Reimagining The End-Time Church boldly speaks biblical truth to power with the intention of maximizing the authenticity, effectiveness, and spiritual authority of the institutional church. His primary objective is to mobilize servant-leaders to prayerfully and creatively reimagine, reconfigure, and reenergize church corporate cultures, practices, ethics, and structures to manifest greater grace for all. Christ’s end-time disciples are commissioned as salt-and-light ambassadors with a sacred mandate to courageously address any social or organizational norms that impact our kingdom vision, mission, and message. Unbridled ambition, greed, influence peddling, politics, nepotism, classism, and other patently carnal agendas are becoming the acceptable order in various branches of the institutional church. Christ returns soon, but will He find the true faith that was once established and delivered unto the saints? We hold the spiritual keys.
Download or read book Reimagining Church written by Frank Viola and published by David C Cook. This book was released on 2012-12-10 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author Frank Viola gives readers language for all they knew was missing in their modern church experience. He believes that many of today's congregations have shifted from God's original intent for the church. As a prominent leader of the house church movement, Frank is at the forefront of a revolution sweeping through the body of Christ. A change that is challenging the spiritual status quo and redefining the very nature of church. A movement inspired by the divine design for authenticity community. A fresh concept rooted in ancient history and in God Himself. Join Frank as he shares God's original intent for the church, where the body of Christ is an organic, living, breathing organism. A church that is free of convention, formed by spiritual intimacy, and unbound by four walls.
Download or read book Reimagining Spiritual Formation written by Doug Pagitt and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2003 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While there are many books that tell the "stories" about churches and church life, this work takes the rarely traveled path of looking directly into the lives of church members, focusing on the process of spiritual formation in each.
Download or read book With written by Skye Jethani and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2011-08-22 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With explores the narrative of the Bible to show that we were created to be with God, and that restoring this connection is his mission. Instead of life over, under, from, or even for God, what leads us into freedom and restoration is life with God. Why are American Christians, who have more access to biblical teaching than any other people in history, failing to experience the freedom of the Christian life? Why are pastors, those closest to the work and ministry, burning out at an alarming rate? Why do many church members, who give large amounts of their time and wealth to Christ and his kingdom, secretly question the legitimacy of their efforts? And why are spiritual seekers dismissing the validity of the Christian message? Is it possible we’ve misunderstood the call of the Christian life? A life lived in rich communion with God cultivates faith, hope, and love in a way that transforms both us and the broken world we inhabit. In With, you’ll find: illustrations of concepts in the book to aid understanding; recommendations for how to practice communion with God, including three helpful practices; and a discussion guide for use when continuing the conversation with others in small groups. Endorsements: If we've grown weary of Christianity, if we find most any local church uninspiring, maybe the problem lies not in the Christian faith or these faithful bodies, but in our own disgruntled hearts. In With, Skye Jethani tenderly unmasks the clichéd posturing that too often masquerades as genuine communion with Christ. More importantly, he takes readers to the humble place they must occupy--in prayer, studying Scripture, with the Church--if faith, hope, and love are to truly mark our lives. -James H. Gilmore, author, The Experience Economy It doesn’t matter, as old theologians were rumored to argue, how many angels can dance on a pinhead. But it does matter which preposition governs your faith--over, after, against, for, from, under, with. Who knew what huge worlds turn on such tiny words? Who knew what theological riches were laced into the bones of grammar? Skye has done a great service to the church. In prose elegant and clear, with insights keen and deep, he shows how everything changes with just one word: With. It’s a book I want my whole church to read. -Mark Buchanan, author of Spiritual Rhythm Who knew that a preposition had so much influence? Skye's book will challenge the way that you think about God and faith, digging deep into our motivations and heart issues. You can't read this book and not see yourself and others differently! -Margaret Feinberg, author of Scouting the Divine and Hungry for God
Download or read book The Late Great Planet Earth written by Hal Lindsey and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The impact of The Late Great Planet Earth cannot be overstated. The New York Times called it the "no. 1 non-fiction bestseller of the decade." For Christians and non-Christians of the 1970s, Hal Lindsey's blockbuster served as a wake-up call on events soon to come and events already unfolding -- all leading up to the greatest event of all: the return of Jesus Christ. The years since have confirmed Lindsey's insights into what biblical prophecy says about the times we live in. Whether you're a church-going believer or someone who wouldn't darken the door of a Christian institution, the Bible has much to tell you about the imminent future of this planet. In the midst of an out-of-control generation, it reveals a grand design that's unfolding exactly according to plan. The rebirth of Israel. The threat of war in the Middle East. An increase in natural catastrophes. The revival of Satanism and witchcraft. These and other signs, foreseen by prophets from Moses to Jesus, portend the coming of an antichrist . . . of a war which will bring humanity to the brink of destruction . . . and of incredible deliverance for a desperate, dying planet.
Download or read book Liturgies from Below written by Claudio Carvalhaes and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It’s been said that prayer is the vocabulary of faith. This book offers a wealth of resources from forgotten places to help us create a new vocabulary for worship and prayer, one that is located amidst the poor and the major issues of violence and destruction around the world today. It is a collection of prayers, songs, rituals, rites of healing, Eucharistic and baptismal prayers, meditations and art from four continents: Asia-Pacific Islands, Africa, Americas, and Europe. Liturgies from Below is the culmination of a project organized by the Council for World Mission (CWM) during 2018-2019. Approximately 100 people from four continents worked with CWM, collaborating to create indigenous prayers and liturgies expressing their own contexts, for sharing with their communities and the rest of the world. The project was called “Re-Imagining Worship as Acts of Defiance and Alternatives in the Context of Empire”. The author and others spent weeks living in each of four communities for several weeks/months, getting to know the people, and then facilitating the people’s own creation of prayers and liturgies. The author, other scholars, pastors, artists, activists and students all came from radically different ethnicities, races, sexualities, churches and Christian theologies. The people in each location were poor, living in very challenging communities, living in oppressive and seemingly hopeless situations. After some time, they wrote prayers and stories of their experience trying to live the Christian faith in utterly abandoned places. What we have here is an immensely rich and varied collection of liturgical sources from various communities dealing with issues of violence, immigration/refugees, drugs, land grabbing, war on the poor, attack on women, militarization, climate change, and so on.
Download or read book Paul Among the People written by Sarah Ruden and published by Image. This book was released on 2010-02-16 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a common—and fundamental—misconception that Paul told people how to live. Apart from forbidding certain abusive practices, he never gives any precise instructions for living. It would have violated his two main social principles: human freedom and dignity, and the need for people to love one another. Paul was a Hellenistic Jew, originally named Saul, from the tribe of Benjamin, who made a living from tent making or leatherworking. He called himself the “Apostle to the Gentiles” and was the most important of the early Christian evangelists. Paul is not easy to understand. The Greeks and Romans themselves probably misunderstood him or skimmed the surface of his arguments when he used terms such as “law” (referring to the complex system of Jewish religious law in which he himself was trained). But they did share a language—Greek—and a cosmopolitan urban culture, that of the Roman Empire. Paul considered evangelizing the Greeks and Romans to be his special mission. “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” The idea of love as the only rule was current among Jewish thinkers of his time, but the idea of freedom being available to anyone was revolutionary. Paul, regarded by Christians as the greatest interpreter of Jesus’ mission, was the first person to explain how Christ’s life and death fit into the larger scheme of salvation, from the creation of Adam to the end of time. Preaching spiritual equality and God’s infinite love, he crusaded for the Jewish Messiah to be accepted as the friend and deliverer of all humankind. In Paul Among the People, Sarah Ruden explores the meanings of his words and shows how they might have affected readers in his own time and culture. She describes as well how his writings represented the new church as an alternative to old ways of thinking, feeling, and living. Ruden translates passages from ancient Greek and Roman literature, from Aristophanes to Seneca, setting them beside famous and controversial passages of Paul and their key modern interpretations. She writes about Augustine; about George Bernard Shaw’s misguided notion of Paul as “the eternal enemy of Women”; and about the misuse of Paul in the English Puritan Richard Baxter’s strictures against “flesh-pleasing.” Ruden makes clear that Paul’s ethics, in contrast to later distortions, were humane, open, and responsible. Paul Among the People is a remarkable work of scholarship, synthesis, and understanding; a revelation of the founder of Christianity.
Download or read book Discerning Our Time written by Richard Bettez and published by Page Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discerning Our Time: A Layman’s Guide to End-Time Events in America is a compelling look at historic and political trends that push the reader to look upon biblical facts as to where America fits in concerning future events. This book is an easy read for people of all backgrounds and education levels. It is a breakdown of exactly what scripture means from original language to historical settings that all connect to American society as we know it today. Though this book gives greater enlightenment to the Christian community and is a solid resource for pastors to draw from, it will truly be an eye-opening experience for the open-minded unbelievers or those who do not consider Christianity of any consequence within their lives. The changes within American society and our culture as well as our political choices are highlighted within the word of God. In this book they are accurately brought out. Church denominations are put to the test as historical truths are revealed and many falsehoods about Christianity are dispelled. Truth about American education, business, and government are documented with the light of scripture shining right next to the facts so the reader can judge for themselves. Many teachers, pastors, and theologians don’t believe America plays a significant role in the end times. Some teach that it will be wiped off the map. No one truly knows exact dates or for that matter what the antichrist will look like, but there is a definite template laid out within the Bible; America fits comfortably in that template. This book is a must-read if you are interested in what direction America is heading and who will rise to power in the near future.
Download or read book Who is Your Covering written by Frank A Viola and published by . This book was released on 2002-08-01 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Heaven on Earth written by Martin Spence and published by James Clarke & Company. This book was released on 2015-10-29 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In nineteenth-century Britain, a large number of prominent Anglican and Presbyterian Evangelicals rejected the idea that salvation meant 'going to heaven when you die'. Instead, they proposed that God would establish his kingdom on earth, renewing the creation and reanimating embodied humans to live in a world of science and progress. This book introduces the writings and activities of these women and men, among whom were counted the ardent social reformer Lord Shaftesbury, the highly respectedclergyman Edward Bickersteth, the popular author Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna, and the General Secretary of the Evangelical Alliance, Thomas Rawson Birks. The book shows that the catalyst for such theological revisionism was the end-times doctrine known as 'premillennialism'. While commonly characterised as a gloomy and sectarian belief, the book argues that remillennialism in Victorian Britain was actually an optimistic and often liberalising creed. It dissolved older Evangelical assumptions about the dissimilarities between time and eternity, body and soul, heaven and earth. The book demonstrates that, far from being eccentric pessimists, premillennialists were actually pioneers of trends in nineteenth-century Christian theology that stressed the importance of the incarnation, prioritized social justice, and even entertained the idea of universal salvation.
Download or read book Future of Everything written by William Boekestein and published by Reformation Heritage Books. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All of us think about the end times. When we reflect on what will happen not only when we die but when this present age ends, some combination of ideas, images, hopes, and fears floods our minds. In The Future of Everything, William Boekestein encourages us to allow our thoughts on the end times to be guided by God’s Word. While combing the Scriptures to find direction related to subjects like death, the millennial kingdom, the return of Christ, the resurrection, judgment, heaven, and hell, Boekestein helps us cultivate a vision for the future that impacts our walk before God’s face today. Table of Contents: Part 1: Introducing Eschatology 1. Why Should I Study the End Times? 2. How Can I Understand Prophecy? Part 2: Personal Eschatology 3. We’re All Going to Die 4. Between Death and the End Part 3: General Eschatology 5. He’s Coming Again 6. A Thousand Years? 7. The Dead Will Rise 8. The Final Judgment 9. Hell 10. The New Heavens and Earth Part 4: Applied Eschatology 11. The End Times and the Kingdom of God 12. The End Time and the Mission of the Church
Download or read book Reorganized Religion written by Bob Smietana and published by Worthy Books. This book was released on 2023-08-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A superb examination of the future of Christian institutions.... A must-read for anyone invested in the fate of the American church." -Publishers Weekly (starred review) Uncover the ways the Christian church has changed in recent years--from the decline of the mainline denominations to the mega-churchification of American culture to the rise of the Nones and Exvaneglicals--and a hopeful reimagining of what the church might look like going forward. The United States is in the middle of an unprecedented spiritual, technological, demographic, political and social transformation-- moving from an older, mostly white, mostly Protestant, religion-friendly society to a younger diverse, multiethnic, pluralistic culture, where no one faith group will have the advantage. At the same time, millions of Americans are abandoning organized religion altogether in favor of disorganized disbelief. Reorganized Religion is an in-depth and critical look at why people are leaving American churches and what we lose as a society as it continues. But it also accepts the dismantling of what has come before and try to help readers reinvent the path forward. This book looks at the future of organized religion in America and outline the options facing churches and other faith groups. Will they retreat? Will they become irrelevant? Or will they find a new path forward? Written by veteran religion reporter Bob Smietana, Reorganized Religion is a journalistic look at the state of the American church and its future. It draws on polling data, interviews with experts, and reporting on how faith communities old and new are coping with the changing religious landscape, along with personal stories about how faith is lived in everyday life. It also profiles faith communities and leaders who are finding interesting ways to reimagine what church might look like in the future and discuss various ways we can reinvent this organization so it survives and thrives. The book also reflects the hope that perhaps people of faith can learn to become, if not friends with the larger culture, then at least better neighbors.
Download or read book Are We Living in the End Times written by Tim LaHaye and published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the updated and expanded edition of this classic title, noted scholar Dr. Tim LaHaye gives reasons for believing that the Rapture and the Tribulation could occur during our generation. Ours is the first generation that has the technology and opportunity to fulfill many of the prophecies of Revelation. Understanding prophecy can be difficult and confusing. This book takes away all of the mystery—and the intimidation. It is user-friendly for the layperson, yet remarkably complete for the scholar.
Download or read book Futureville written by Skye Jethani and published by HarperChristian + ORM. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Want to see the future? It is brighter than you think. What we believe about tomorrow determines how we live today. As Christians debate how to faithfully engage with our rapidly changing world, our vision of the future has never been more important. But rather than providing a clear sense of purpose for our lives, popular Christian ideas about the future steal it from us by saying our work in the world, apart from ministry, has no eternal value. Is it any wonder why young adults are less interested in church, or why a culture desperate for meaning and hope dismisses our message? In Futureville, Skye Jethani offers us a vision-shifting glimpse of the world of tomorrow described in Scripture. He reveals how a biblical vision of the future can transform every person’s work with a sense of purpose and dignity today. Futureville is a smart, inspiring call to cultivate the order, beauty, and abundance that reflects the heart and vision of God for our world.
Download or read book The Church in End Time Prophecy written by Curtis Schulze and published by Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2021-04-12 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Church in Prophecy Today, the rapture of the church is one of the most disputed end-time topics in all the scriptures. No other end-time doctrine has divided the church more than this subject of the rapture. We have made this all about timing, rather than his return. Many are preoccupied with and distracted by their own particular prediction. The purpose of this book is not to refute one position in favor of another, but to come against the church's obsession and preoccupation with timing. Our focus should be directed toward his return, and not fixed on timing. This is the testimony of the scriptures! Whether he comes early, or whether he tarries, this does not matter to me. What matters to me is the readiness of the church! We need to be ready now and always if he comes early, but if delayed: we will need to be ready to go through the dark and difficult days ahead. We need to prepare our hearts now for what is coming lest it catch us off guard! We need to build our faith to stand under pressure, and we need to build our trust and confidence in Him now to keep us while in tribulation. We will need to settle the matter in our hearts concerning all those things coming on the earth, to lay our lives down at all cost! We will need to prepare our children and loved ones for the day ahead if the Lord tarry. If the Lord did return today, most would not be ready to evacuate! If he were to delay his coming, most are unprepared for the dark and difficult days ahead. I am afraid for the church! I am afraid many will fall away if the rapture does not occur as expected. I am afraid many are taking this too lightly, thinking they are guaranteed a seat on the rapture express but will be left behind because of complacency and indifference toward Christ and the gospel. Either way you look at it, the church is neither ready to leave, nor ready to go through!
Download or read book Revelation of the Magi written by Brent Landau and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2010-11-02 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each Christmas, adults and children alike delight at the story of the kings from the East who followed the star to Bethlehem to offer gifts to the newborn Christ. While this familiar tale is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, another little-known version later emerged that claimed to be the eyewitness account of the wise men. This ancient manuscript has lain hidden for centuries in the vaults of the Vatican Library, but through the determined persistence of a young scholar, Brent Landau, this astonishing discovery has been translated into English for the very first time as the Revelation of the Magi. Everything we know about the wise men is based on only a few verses from the Bible. With the Revelation of the Magi, we can now read the story from the Magi's perspective. Readers will learn of the Magi's prophecies of God's incarnation from the beginning of time, their startling visitation in the form of a star, the teachings they receive from the baby Jesus, and the wise men's joyous return to their homeland to spread the good news. This ancient version of the Christmas story is guaranteed to astonish and delight. It will also raise larger questions of the significance and meaning of Christ's birth, and the mission to spread the good news to every corner of the globe. All the drama and intrigue of the brief description of Jesus's birth in the Bible is filled out in greater, more colorful detail, offering for the first time the complete story of these beloved characters.
Download or read book Reimagining Evangelism written by Rick Richardson and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-06 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sometimes talking about Jesus with your friends can feel like trying to close a deal on a sales call, pushing something on people they may not really want. But what if you thought of it more like inviting them on a spiritual journey? Imagine being free to be yourself and free for the Spirit to work in you. Imagine that it doesn't depend on you a...
