Download or read book Holding Up Your Corner written by F. Willis Johnson and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Holding Up Your Corner: Talking About Race in Your Community, equips pastors to respond with confidence when crises occur, lower their own inhibitions about addressing this topic, and reclaim their authority as prophetic witnesses and leaders in order to transform their communities Pastors and other church leaders see, to varying degrees, racially rooted injustice in their communities. Most of them understand an imperative, as part of their calling from God, to lead their congregations to address and reverse this injustice. For instance, preachers want to be preaching prophetically on this topic. But the problems seem irreversible, intractable, overwhelming, and pastors often feel their individual efforts will be futile. Additionally, they realize that there is a lot of risk involved, including the possibility that their actions may offend and even push some members away from the church. They do not know what to do or how to begin. And so, even during times of crisis, pastors and other church leaders typically do less than they know they could and should. This book provides practical, foundational guidance, showing pastors how to live into their calling to address injustice, and how to lead others to do the same. Holding Up Your Corner prompts readers to observe, identify and name the complex causes of violence and hatred in the reader’s particular community, including racial prejudice, entrenched poverty and exploitation, segregation, the loss of local education and employment, the ravages of addiction, and so on. The book walks the church leader through a self-directed process of determining what role to play in the leader’s particular location. Readers will learn to use testimony and other narrative devices, proclamation, guided group conversations, and other tactics in order to achieve the following: Open eyes to the realities in the reader’s community—where God’s reign/kingdom is not yet overcoming selfishness, injustice, inequality, or the forces of evil. Own the calling and responsibility we have as Christians, and learn how to advocate hope for God’s kingdom in the reader’s community. Organize interventions and activate mission teams to address the specific injustices in the reader’s community. What Does ‘Holding Up Your Corner’ Mean? The phrase ‘holding up your corner’ is derived from a biblical story (Mark 2: 1 – 5) about four people who take action in order to help another person—literally delivering that person to Christ. For us, ‘holding up your corner’ has meaning in two aspects of our lives today: First, it refers to our physical and social locations, the places where we live and work, and the communities of which we’re a part. These are the places where our assumptions, attitudes, and beliefs have influence on the people around us. When we feel empowered to speak out about the injustice or inequity in our community, we are holding up our corner. Second, the phrase refers to our actions, the ways we step up to meet a particular problem of injustice or inequity, and proactively do something about it. When we put ourselves—literally—next to persons who are suffering, and enter into their situation in order to bring hope and healing to the person and the situation, we are holding up our corner, just like the four people who held up the corner of the hurting man’s mat.
Download or read book An Unhurried Life written by Alan Fadling and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we find balance between our sense of calling and the call to rest? Spiritual director and "recovering speed addict" Alan Fadling leads readers in a meditation on the unhurried life. Following Jesus' earthly life, this revised edition from Fadling shows how the work of "unhurrying" ourselves is central to our spiritual development.
Download or read book The Corner That Held Them written by Sylvia Townsend Warner and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique novel about life in a 14th-century convent by one of England's most original authors. Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner That Held Them is a historical novel like no other, one that immerses the reader in the dailiness of history, rather than history as the given sequence of events that, in time, it comes to seem. Time ebbs and flows and characters come and go in this novel, set in the era of the Black Death, about a Benedictine convent of no great note. The nuns do their chores, and seek to maintain and improve the fabric of their house and chapel, and struggle with each other and with themselves. The book that emerges is a picture of a world run by women but also a story—stirring, disturbing, witty, utterly entrancing—of a community. What is the life of a community and how does it support, or constrain, a real humanity? How do we live through it and it through us? These are among the deep questions that lie behind this rare triumph of the novelist’s art.
Download or read book The Church on the Corner written by George Vaizey and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Universal Christ written by Richard Rohr and published by Convergent Books. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From one of the world’s most influential spiritual thinkers, a long-awaited book exploring what it means that Jesus was called “Christ,” and how this forgotten truth can restore hope and meaning to our lives. “Anyone who strives to put their faith into action will find encouragement and inspiration in the pages of this book.”—Melinda Gates In his decades as a globally recognized teacher, Richard Rohr has helped millions realize what is at stake in matters of faith and spirituality. Yet Rohr has never written on the most perennially talked about topic in Christianity: Jesus. Most know who Jesus was, but who was Christ? Is the word simply Jesus’s last name? Too often, Rohr writes, our understandings have been limited by culture, religious debate, and the human tendency to put ourselves at the center. Drawing on scripture, history, and spiritual practice, Rohr articulates a transformative view of Jesus Christ as a portrait of God’s constant, unfolding work in the world. “God loves things by becoming them,” he writes, and Jesus’s life was meant to declare that humanity has never been separate from God—except by its own negative choice. When we recover this fundamental truth, faith becomes less about proving Jesus was God, and more about learning to recognize the Creator’s presence all around us, and in everyone we meet. Thought-provoking, practical, and full of deep hope and vision, The Universal Christ is a landmark book from one of our most beloved spiritual writers, and an invitation to contemplate how God liberates and loves all that is.
Download or read book When a Nation Forgets God written by Erwin W. Lutzer and published by Moody Publishers. This book was released on 2015-12-18 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This excellent book is so important. It clearly and powerfully explains what the parallels are between Germany's fall from grace and the beginning of our own fall. - Eric Metaxas, author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy In When A Nation Forgets God, Erwin Lutzer studies seven similarities between Nazi Germany and America today—some of them chilling—and cautions us to respond accordingly. Engaging, well-researched, and easy to understand, Lutzer’s writing is that of a realist, one alarmed but unafraid. Amidst describing the messes of our nation’s government, economy, legal pitfalls, propaganda, and more, Lutzer points to the God who always has a plan. At the beginning of the twentieth Century, Nazi Germany didn’t look like a country on the brink of world-shaking terrors. It looked like America today. When a Nation Forgets God uses history to warn us of a future that none of us wants to see. It urges us to be ordinary heroes who speak up and take action.
Download or read book The Church Around the Corner written by T. W. Fessenden and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 1 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Caf Theology Exploring Love the Universe and Everything written by Michael Lloyd and published by Alpha International. This book was released on 2008-08 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Cafe Theology, Mike invites us to grab a cappuccino and travel with him on a mind-stretching journey from Creation to New Creation, offering a rich and human view of life and the Life-Giver. Whether you have been on the Christian Journey your whole life, you are just starting out or haven't even bought a ticket, this extraordinary book is applicable to our ordinary lives, longings and in Mike's words 'our feeble and frustrated fumblings after an understanding of who we are and what we are here for.
Download or read book Claiming the Corner written by Mark Schoenhals and published by WestBow Press. This book was released on 2021-04-29 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have you ever wondered what Jesus wants your church to do? It can be disorienting to sort through the many ministry models available today, as well as the ever-present cultural expectation to grow. Claiming the Corner looks to Jesus' own teaching for how to make impact for the Kingdom of God. Each chapter focuses on one of the six Kingdom parables of Jesus in Matthew 13, interpreting them as instructions on serving and working Jesus' way. Discussion questions are included, as well as examples of diverse congregations that are fulfilling each parable in unique and creative ways. Join the Kingdom Impact Jesus' Way community at www.claimingthecorner.net and on Facebook. If your call is to grow the Kingdom of God, serve sacrificially, and push the boundaries for discipleship in Jesus Christ, you need to read this book - cover to cover - with your entire leadership team. Pastor Mark dares to re-examine the Kingdom parables of Jesus as recorded in Matthew 13 through the missional lens of leaving your church walls. You will be challenged. You will be stretched. And you will be blessed as the Holy Spirit moves through your ministry to the dark corners in your community. Fasten your seatbelt for real Kingdom Impact! --Pastor Brian Goke, Faith Lutheran Church, Bloomington, Illinois
Download or read book A Church Called Tov written by Scot McKnight and published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Scot and Laura do an amazing job of teaching us what a good church looks like.” —Beth Moore What is the way forward for the church? Tragically, in recent years, Christians have gotten used to revelations of abuses of many kinds in our most respected churches—from Willow Creek to Harvest, from Southern Baptist pastors to Sovereign Grace churches. Respected author and theologian Scot McKnight and former Willow Creek member Laura Barringer wrote this book to paint a pathway forward for the church. We need a better way. The sad truth is that churches of all shapes and sizes are susceptible to abuses of power, sexual abuse, and spiritual abuse. Abuses occur most frequently when Christians neglect to create a culture that resists abuse and promotes healing, safety, and spiritual growth. How do we keep these devastating events from repeating themselves? We need a map to get us from where we are today to where we ought to be as the body of Christ. That map is in a mysterious and beautiful little Hebrew word in Scripture that we translate “good,” the word tov. In this book, McKnight and Barringer explore the concept of tov—unpacking its richness and how it can help Christians and churches rise up to fulfill their true calling as imitators of Jesus.
Download or read book The Beloved Community written by Charles Marsh and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-07-31 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A noted theologian explains how the radical idea of Christian love animated the African American civil rights movement and how it can power today's social justice struggles Speaking to his supporters at the end of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, Martin Luther King, Jr., declared that their common goal was not simply the end of segregation as an institution. Rather, "the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved community." King's words reflect the strong religious convictions that motivated the African American civil rights movement. As King and his allies saw it, "Jesus had founded the most revolutionary movement in human history: a movement built on the unconditional love of God for the world and the mandate to live in that love." Through a commitment to this idea of love and to the practice of nonviolence, civil rights leaders sought to transform the social and political realities of twentieth-century America. In The Beloved Community, theologian and award-winning author Charles Marsh traces the history of the spiritual vision that animated the civil rights movement and shows how it remains a vital source of moral energy today. The Beloved Community lays out an exuberant new vision for progressive Christianity and reclaims the centrality of faith in the quest for social justice and authentic community.
Download or read book Worlds Apart written by Marilyn R Gardner and published by . This book was released on 2018-02-26 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This sequel to Between Worlds: Essays on Culture and Belonging, Marilyn Gardner¿s first exploration of the Third Culture Kid (TCK) experience, probes more deeply into the journey that forms a TCK¿s identity. Memories of joy and pain, close friendships and loneliness interweave in this compelling portrait of an international childhood. In Growing Up Between Worlds, Marilyn Gardner traces a journey of growing faith and emerging identity in a small missionary community. From the close quarters of boarding school, to the strangeness of furloughs in her parents¿ native Massachusetts, this honest portrayal of a young girl¿s struggles with faith, friendship, and belonging will resonate deeply with anyone who has lived between worlds.
Download or read book First and Second Things written by Clive Staples Lewis and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Church Around the Corner written by Margaret Cundiff and published by . This book was released on 1987-01-01 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Church of Saint Thomas Paine written by Leigh Eric Schmidt and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The forgotten story of the nineteenth-century freethinkers and twentieth-century humanists who tried to build their own secular religion In The Church of Saint Thomas Paine, Leigh Eric Schmidt tells the surprising story of how freethinking liberals in nineteenth-century America promoted a secular religion of humanity centered on the deistic revolutionary Thomas Paine (1737–1809) and how their descendants eventually became embroiled in the culture wars of the late twentieth century. After Paine’s remains were stolen from his grave in New Rochelle, New York, and shipped to England in 1819, the reverence of his American disciples took a material turn in a long search for his relics. Paine’s birthday was always a red-letter day for these believers in democratic cosmopolitanism and philanthropic benevolence, but they expanded their program to include a broader array of rites and ceremonies, particularly funerals free of Christian supervision. They also worked to establish their own churches and congregations in which to practice their religion of secularism. All of these activities raised serious questions about the very definition of religion and whether it included nontheistic fellowships and humanistic associations—a dispute that erupted again in the second half of the twentieth century. As right-wing Christians came to see secular humanism as the most dangerous religion imaginable, small communities of religious humanists, the heirs of Paine’s followers, were swept up in new battles about religion’s public contours and secularism’s moral perils. An engrossing account of an important but little-known chapter in American history, The Church of Saint Thomas Paine reveals why the lines between religion and secularism are often much blurrier than we imagine.
Download or read book Various Sermons written by Bernard of Clairvaux and published by Liturgical Press. This book was released on 2020-04-15 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This last small group of Bernard's sermons to be published in translation by Cistercian Publications rightly goes by the title De varii in the critical edition. While most of them treat feasts on the church calendar, they do so in a somewhat hit-or-miss fashion. Three sermons also deal with God's will, God's mercies, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Two sermons for the feast of Saint Victor are a response to a request to Bernard from the monks of Montiéramey; the Bollandist Life of Saint Victor appears here as a complement to those sermons. Besides the nine sermons normally assigned to the De varii, this volume also includes a sermon on the feast of Saint Benedict that was recently added to the collection in Sources Chrétiennes. The survival of this loose assemblage of sermons outside of the organized collections of Bernard's sermons provides a reminder of Bernard as preacher and writer, able despite all his other activities to turn his hand to preaching when called upon. While they treat of disparate themes, they allow us to encounter the quintessential Bernard-speaking of the life of desire, the true meaning of holiness, and the awakening of the spiritual senses in the search for God.
Download or read book St Mary Magdalene Belmont Parish Church written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
