Download or read book Sideline Church written by Thomas G. Bandy and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I Got Empathy? Tom Bandy reveals the cultural wedges and apathies that separate denominations, congregations, and neighbors from each other and from collective social agency. Bandy describes the church in America as “sidelined”—observing cultural change but not participating in the game. He suggests proven provocative ways the church can re-engage and empathize with the people within their reach. By mining the lifestyle data revealed by the nation’s economic engines and social trends, this frank and ground-breaking sociological analysis is a must read for every church leader who embraces hope for a fragmented, diverse, and polarized world. “For years Tom Bandy has been attempting to get the once-mainline-oldline-now-sideline church back in the game. In this fast-paced, energetic book, Tom shows us how churches can be in missions to the diverse cultures that seem to respond to our stolid mainline moderation with a yawn.” —William Willimon, Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry, Duke Divinity School, Durham, NC "Sideline Church represents fresh perspectives in an often tired conversation. If the church hopes to speak compellingly to people today, it must learn first to listen again. Brandy’s insights will likely provoke the complacent, but it may also inspire church leaders to hear culture with new ears. This book is a worthy successor to Tex Samples’ work on US Lifestyles and Mainline Christians.” —Michael Jinkins, President of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and author of The Church Faces Death and The Church Transforming. "Bandy’s language of chasm aptly describes the current relationship of church and culture. Bridging that gap involves empathetic immersion with and love for the multiple cultures among us. For those willing to enter this challenging engagement, Bandy offers essential knowledge about how diverse cultural cohorts think about God and meaning in differing ways." --Lovett H. Weems, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Church Leadership, Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, DC

Download or read book One Blood written by John Perkins and published by Moody Publishers. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. Perkins’ final manifesto on race, faith, and reconciliation We are living in historic times. Not since the civil rights movement of the 60s has our country been this vigorously engaged in the reconciliation conversation. There is a great opportunity right now for culture to change, to be a more perfect union. However, it cannot be done without the church, because the faith of the people is more powerful than any law government can enact. The church is the heart and moral compass of a nation. To turn a country away from God, you must sideline the church. To turn a nation to God, the church must turn first. Racism won't end in America until the church is reconciled first. Then—and only then—can it spiritually and morally lead the way. Dr. John M. Perkins is a leading civil rights activist today. He grew up in a Mississippi sharecropping family, was an early pioneer of the civil rights movement, and has dedicated his life to the cause of racial equality. In this, his crowning work, Dr. Perkins speaks honestly to the church about reconciliation, discipleship, and justice... and what it really takes to live out biblical reconciliation. He offers a call to repentance to both the white church and the black church. He explains how band-aid approaches of the past won't do. And while applauding these starter efforts, he holds that true reconciliation won't happen until we get more intentional and relational. True friendships must happen, and on every level. This will take the whole church, not just the pastors and staff. The racial reconciliation of our churches and nation won't be done with big campaigns or through mass media. It will come one loving, sacrificial relationship at a time. The gospel and all that it encompasses has always traveled best relationally. We have much to learn from each other and each have unique poverties that can only be filled by one another. The way forward is to become "wounded healers" who bandage each other up as we discover what the family of God really looks like. Real relationships, sacrificial love between actual people, is the way forward. Nothing less will do.

Download or read book Fresh written by David Goodhew and published by SCM Press. This book was released on 2013-01-26 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fresh ! offers a strong rationale for fresh expressions and pioneer ministries rooted in scripture and in the breath of the Christian tradition. This is tested against the realities of contemporary British culture and critiques of the notion of Fresh Expressions. It offers practical guidance for starting and sustaining such ministries in the long term. It provides a survey of best practice within Fresh Expressions and pioneer ministry.Fresh ! comes out of the mature reflection of church leaders and theologians who have been active in such ministries over a number of years, showing how such ministries are integral to the work of the church both now and over the long term.This is combined with valuable practical advice - the best kind of practical theology.

Download or read book Church as Network written by Jeffrey H. Mahan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-12-15 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just as the emergence of print and literacy created conditions for vast religious change at the time of the Reformation, the emergence of a digital culture shaped by computers and the internet has led to radically different assumptions about religious identity, how people connect and maintain transformative relationships, and how people follow and give authority to leaders. The central issues concerning this digital culture are not technological but theological and anthropological. Old models of stable religious identity and community seem irrelevant in a culture in which everyone is in motion. The book identifies three profound changes produced by digital culture which challenge existing understandings of church: 1) a shift to seeing Christian identity as an ongoing constructive project, 2) the development of fluid networked forms of community, and 3) the emergence of less hierarchical more conversational forms of leadership.

Download or read book Moving Beyond Church Growth written by Mark A. Olson and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2001-12-01 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Character development for communities of faith Mark Olson believes that trying to meet unrealistic expectations for church growth, along with expectations that pastors be all things to all people, has resulted in low morale, even burnout, among clergy and dissension within congregations.Olson's book argues that church-growth models exemplify and exacerbate the tendencies of the modern age and Constantinian Christianity, holding the church hostage to technique and marketing. These assumptions set up pastors and churches for disappointment and failure. But they also, in his opinion, miss an opportunity to envision a faithful alternative to the consumeristic church.Olson's valuable book calls church leaders to faithful, bold, and courageous rethinking of congregational life and witness in substance, purpose, and style. His own 20 years of ministry in rural, suburban, and urban congregations inform an alternative rooted deeply in the past and anchored in strong leadership and worship, but also profoundly compassionate and engaged in the surrounding community. In this model, pastors' primary responsibilities are not to fix everything and everybody but to enable people to be present to each other and to provide hope.

Download or read book A Faith of Our Own written by Jonathan Merritt and published by FaithWords. This book was released on 2012-05-08 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every day, major headlines tell the story of how Christianity is attempting to influence American culture and politics. But statistics show that young Americans are disenchanted with a faith that has become culturally antagonistic and too closely aligned with partisan politics. In this personal yet practical work, Jonathan Merritt uncovers the changing face of American Christianity by uniquely examining the coming of age of a new generation of Christians. Jonathan Merritt illuminates the spiritual ethos of this new generation of believers who engage the world with Christ-centered faith but an un-polarized political perspective. Through personal stories and biblically rooted commentary this scion of a leading evangelical family takes a close, thoughtful look at the changing religious and political environment, addressing such divisive issues as abortion, gay marriage, environmental use and care, race, war, poverty, and the imbalance of world wealth. Through Scripture, the examples of Jesus, and personal defining faith experiences, he distills the essential truths at the core of a Christian faith that is now just coming of age.

Download or read book After Christendom written by William Myers and published by Ethics International Press. This book was released on 2023-11-25 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historically affirming certain post-WWII constructive theologians and social theorists, After Christendom unpacks theological anomalies negatively denying the science underlying global warming, wedge issues supporting systemic racism, and certain erroneous decisions made by mainline churches and the evangelical movement. Anomalies occur when something taken for granted no longer fits current situations. The so-called mainline church and the evangelical movement have not addressed or reconstructed their theological anomalies. Caught inside cultural accommodation, the more liberal mainline church often does not recognize its historical tie to a pre-modern God, a transactional definition of the crucifixion, and Jesus’ consignment to the cross. A companion argument suggests that the evangelical movement’s inability to respond to the pre-modern depiction of God as an omnipotent, theocratic King helped provide sufficient votes for Trump’s successful presidential run. Both groups inability to face such theological anomalies rests within a belief in conservative originalism, an unwillingness to move beyond European Christendom’s earliest theological constructions. After Christendom will be of particular interest to seminary, divinity school, university, and college libraries, as well as seminary students and professors, members of college and university departments of religion, history, and political science, and ministers and church leaders.

Download or read book God s Armor Bearer for the Next Generation written by Terry Nance and published by Destiny Image Publishers. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The devil is afraid of unified individuals, united generations, and Kingdom advancement. In the last days, Scripture reveals that there will be a great generational synergy: fathers and sons, mothers and daughters–multiple generations coming together to see the Kingdom of God advanced and the powers of darkness destroyed! For this...

Download or read book The Church written by Gabriel J. Fackre and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The latest volume in Gabriel Fackre's "Christian Story" finds the dedicated ecumenist attempting to examine the connections, or lack thereof, between worldwide ecumenical progress and the character of local churches as he observes them in twenty-first-century America. Drawing from his own fifty-year experience in the church as pastor, teacher, and parishioner, Fackre breaks open the myth of the church experience and exposes the reality of modern worship on a local level. "The Church" is rich in insight and fertile in its range of suggestions, most of them aimed at pastors and aspiring pastors -- the men and women who will carry the teachings of the church, its "kerygma," into the next generation and the ones that follow.

Download or read book The History of the Organ in the United States written by Orpha Ochse and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1988-08-22 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Immigration, wars, industrial growth, the availability of electricity, the popularity of orchestral music, and the invention of the phonograph and of the player piano all had a part in determining the course of American organ history.

Download or read book What We Shall Become written by Winnie Varghese and published by Church Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: • Edited by a well-known Episcopal leader • Designed to facilitate the church’s dialogue on structure • Presents viewpoints representative of the diversity of the church Structure—throughout the denomination and within local parishes—is the hot-topic conversation of the day. How do we order ourselves for mission? What structure is helpful and what hinders our work? Who holds power and how do they wield it? From the triennial budget based on the Five Marks of Mission, to the decision to relocate the Episcopal Church Center away from its current headquarters in New York City, how the denomination will be structured for the 21st century remains the critically defining question. This edited volume will provide thoughtful resources from a wide range of perspectives, as well as foundational materials on theology, history, and ecclesiology to facilitate the dialogue.

Download or read book Acts and Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts written by Massachusetts and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 1400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A New Conversation written by Robert Boak Slocum and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these twenty-nine essays, Episcopalians consider the tradition and the future of their church—its theology, its polity, its missiology. These “new conversations” come from ministers of every order (bishop, priest, deacon, laity) and from practiced hands at many ministries (education, theology, music, chaplaincy, and spiritual direction). Several essayists write urgently that the Episcopal Church must change if it is to survive. Others contend—with equal fervor—that American Anglicanism can work if Episcopalians will reclaim and reaffirm their liturgical, spiritual, and theological heritage. Between these views are other writers who suggest that points of supposed opposition might indeed coexist in the church of the future—taking vibrant, and perhaps paradoxical, new forms.

Download or read book Balancing Life s Demands written by Dr. J. Grant Howard and published by Multnomah. This book was released on 2011-08-10 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everywhere we turn there are choices to be made. Like many people, you may set your priorities by making a mental list: God first; family second; church third. But, according to Dr. J. Grant Howard, "Lists of priorities don't make sense. They can't be lived out."

Download or read book Preaching Prophetic Care written by Phillis Isabella Sheppard and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2018-06-25 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preachers often think of prophetic preaching in the caricature of the prophet as the lonely outsider confronting the congregation, often angrily, with the congregation’s complicity in social injustice and with a bracing call for repentance. The twenty-seven essays and sermons in this book offer a different perspective by viewing prophetic preaching specifically—and ministry, practical theology, and theological education more broadly—as pastoral care for the community in prophetic perspective. Such preaching does indeed bring a critical theological analysis of justice concerns to the center of the sermon, but in such a way as to invite the congregation to consider how the move toward justice is a pastoral move— that is, a move that seeks to build up community. Rather than contributing to the polarization so rampant in today’s social world, the preacher seeks to help the congregation build bridges along which concern for justice can travel. The contributions honor the work of the late Dale Andrews, a scholar of preaching and practical theology at the Divinity School, Vanderbilt University, whose seminal work inspires the notions of prophetic care and building bridges to justice. With contributions from: Donna Allen L. Susan Bond Teresa Fry Brown Gennifer Brooks Teresa Eisenlohr Anna Carter Florence Kenyatta Gilbert R. Mark Giuliano David Schnasa Jacobsen John McClure Mary Elizabeth Moore Mary Alice Mulligan Debra Mumford Peter Paris Luke Powery Shelly Rambo Lee Ramsey Robert London Smith Amy Steele Frank A. Thomas Lisa Thompson Scott Williamson Sunggu Yang Ted A. Smith William B. McClain

Download or read book Thinking in Story written by Richard A. Jensen and published by CSS Publishing. This book was released on 1993 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are living on the boundary between the print and electronic era. Richard A. Jensen says that as we move into the electronic world, we must seriously rethink most of what we do. This book calls us to reinvestigate preaching in our time. Well-grounded in an understanding of communication cultures, this book is a rare gift. In theory and practice, Jensen helps preachers rethink what they are doing and offers a strategy for effective communication in an electronic era. Richard L. Thulin, Th.D. Dean and Professor of Preaching Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Jensen's "thinking in story" thesis provides a scholarly, logical rationale for why it both "feels" and "is" so right; Jensen applies his "thinking in story" concept to biblical material as well. His approach helps us to see individual texts/stories in light of the larger biblical story, which opens up many new avenues for preaching. Thomas Rogers Assistant Professor of Homiletics Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary Berkeley, California These are solid prescriptions for our media-saturated times, calling for a shift in our very approach to proclamation. Jensen is quite right in this goal, that preaching needs to compel participation in the narratives of scripture, not merely an understanding of them. James Nieman Assistant Professor of Homiletics Wartburg Theological Seminary Dubuque, Iowa Richard A. Jensen is a trained systematic theologian, having taught these subjects at Wartburg Theological Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa, from 1971-1981. He is author of Telling The Story. Since 1982 he has served in the communication department of the American Lutheran Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He produces the weekly radio program "Lutheran Vespers," and several series of television programs.

Download or read book The Empty Church written by Thomas Reeves and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1998-01-07 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when Americans are searching for spiritual and moral renewal, millions of parishioners are abandoning the churches that once embodied the very values they seek. "The Empty Church" offers the first cogent explanation of why his has occurred--and tells what can be done about it.