Download or read book Worlds Within a Congregation written by William Paul Jones and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jones examines the existence and character of theological diversity within congregations and shows how such diversity can be a positive factor. "Worlds Within a Congregation" can help readers understand how this diversity shapes the preferred ways of doing a number of things in the ministry of a congregation, such as worship, mission, service and interaction.
Download or read book Theological Worlds written by W. Paul Jones and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By exploring five common Christian perspectives ("theological worlds"), this volume helps readers understand the basis of their own Christian attitudes, identify the sources of their confusions about life and the church, and come to a deeper appreciation of the assumptions and motivations of others. Author W. Paul Jones demonstrates that each of the five "theological worlds" has a legitimate basis in both Scripture and tradition. He explores why the "citizens" of each world have great difficulty understanding and accepting the legitimacy of other worlds, and why people of goodwill often misconstrue the words and intentions of others. Theological Worlds offers thoughtful insight to all Christians who want to understand and deal effectively with other human beings. Christian educators will appreciate the references to literature--books, plays, songs, poetry--which illustrate the characteristics of residents of the five worlds and point toward ways to achieve nurturing experiences for students and congregations. Preachers will find the volume helpful as a means of crafting sermons that speak to the diversity of experience among their church members.
Download or read book Creating a Missional Culture written by JR Woodward and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2013-09-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Missiologist and church planter JR Woodward offers a blueprint for the missional church--not small adjustments around the periphery of the infrastructure but a radical revisioning of how a church ought to look that entails changing how we think about leadership and what we expect out of discipleship.
Download or read book Worlds Within Worlds written by Steve Rappaport and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-04-04 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of urban life in early modern Britian which combines sophisticated quantitative analysis with vivid empirical detail.
Download or read book Remnant Christianity in a Post Christian World written by W. Paul Jones and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2021-11-03 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contemporary Christian church is in critical decline, both in membership and finances. All attempts at reversal are failing, primarily because of the consuming socioeconomic-secular dynamic in which society is immersed in its self-destructive course. Consequently, Christian imagery is losing its conceivability and credibility, and past motivations that once encouraged belief have lost their appeal. Without these as points of contact, the demise of the institutional church will be relentless, despite all efforts to halt it. Yet, as at other crisis points in history, the divine promise has been to raise a “faithful remnant” with sufficient promise to outlast whatever the societal demise. After carefully analyzing the ingredients of our societal crisis, the author develops the contours of a “Remnant Church” to be set in place now within the present institutional churches. This necessitates distilling a vital spirituality and discerning the heart of a preservable tradition, sufficient to claim both personal and communal commitment. Thereby prepared for the long haul, the Remnant Church can emerge as a prophetic alternative.
Download or read book Worlds Within Worlds written by Stella Benson and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Color Your World with Natural Church Development written by Christian A. Schwarz and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book When Missions Shapes the Mission written by David A. Horner and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 2011-05-02 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Why are more churches not engaged in practical, substantial ways of taking the gospel to the nations?" When Missions Shape the Mission unpacks a statistical study of traditionally evangelical churches that reveals their anemic level of commitment to the biblical mandate of making Christ known around the world. Veteran pastor David Horner makes the data easy to understand, challenging other pastors to radically assign their best leadership and resources to missions as he looks at where the church is today, how it got there, and where we must go from here: "Let's dream a godly dream. What if you committed to step up and lead your church in the pursuit of becoming a mission-focused church? Then, what if you invited ten of your pastor friends to join you in the effort—and each of them did the same? What would happen to the available missions force beginning right here in the West?"
Download or read book Third Worlds Within written by Daniel Widener and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-08 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Third Worlds Within, Daniel Widener expands conceptions of the struggle for racial justice by reframing antiracist movements in the United States in a broader internationalist context. For Widener, antiracist struggles at home are connected to and profoundly shaped by similar struggles abroad. Drawing from an expansive historical archive and his own activist and family history, Widener explores the links between local and global struggles throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He uncovers what connects seemingly disparate groups like Japanese American and Black communities in Southern California or American folk musicians and revolutionary movements in Asia. He also centers the expansive vision of global Indigenous movements, the challenges of Black/Brown solidarity, and the influence of East Asian organizing on the US Third World Left. In the process, Widener reveals how the fight against racism unfolds both locally and globally and creates new forms of solidarity. Highlighting the key strategic role played by US communities of color in efforts to defeat the conjoined forces of capitalism, racism, and imperialism, Widener produces a new understanding of history that informs contemporary social struggle.
Download or read book The Innovative Church written by Scott Cormode and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The church as we know it is calibrated for a world that no longer exists. It needs to recalibrate in order to address the questions that animate today's congregants. Leading congregational researcher Scott Cormode explores the role of Christian practices in recalibrating the church for the twenty-first century, offering church leaders innovative ways to express the never-changing gospel to their ever-changing congregations. The book has been road-tested with over one hundred churches through the Fuller Youth Institute and includes five questions that guide Christian leaders who wish to innovate.
Download or read book The Beautiful Community written by Irwyn L. Ince and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The church is at its best when it pursues the biblical value of unity in diversity. Pastor and theologian Irwyn Ince boldly unpacks the reasons for our divisions while gently guiding us toward our true hope for wholeness and reconciliation. To heal our fractured humanity, we must cultivate spiritual practices that help us pursue beautiful community.
Download or read book Pastor written by William H. Willimon and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ordained ministry, says Willimon, is a gift of God to the church--but that doesn't mean that it is easy. Always a difficult vocation, changes in society and the church in recent years have made the ordained life all the more complex and challenging. Is the pastor primarily a preacher, a professional caregiver, an administrator? Given the call of all Christians to be ministers to the world, what is the distinctive ministry of the ordained? When does one's ministry take on the character of prophet, and when does it become that of priest? What are the special ethical obligations and disciplines of the ordained? In this book, Willimon explores these and other central questions about the vocation of ordained ministry. He begins with a discussion of who pastors are, asking about the theological underpinnings of ordained ministry, and then moves on to what pastors do, looking at the distinctive roles the pastor must fulfill. The book also draws on great teachers of the Christian tradition to demonstrate that, while much about Christian ministry has changed, its core concerns--preaching the word, the care of souls, the sacramental life of congregations--remains the same. Ordained ministry is a vocation to which we are called, not a profession that we choose. To answer that call is to open oneself to heartache and sometimes hardship; yet, given the one who calls, it is to make oneself available to deep and profound joy as well.
Download or read book The Formative Power of Your Congregation written by Christina Jones Davis and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-09-16 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The formative power of a congregation serves as a primary catalyst for human development. A congregation also forms a person’s life. Congregations are often well-versed in matters of Christian formation and spiritual maturation. But what about how human beings develop as people? Insights from human development, also known as developmental psychology, provide an additional lens through which one can understand how humans are formed throughout life. Working with 30 congregations, the authors developed learning experiences, presented here as case studies, so that participants designed experiences that support human development at the intersection of congregational practices and various aspects of life (parenting, social justice, vocation, the arts, and more). Participating congregations extended beyond the volunteer-based organization to be one of the primary places where people learned to be more human using the simple yet multi-dimensioned phrase. The Formative Power of Your Congregation is written for clergy and laity who long for a congregation that supports human flourishing as much or more than the growth or existence of the church. We will introduce you to a framework of how congregations participate in the development of human beings. Furthermore, you will be introduced to particular congregations that, applying the framework, support participant growth in eight markers that support the flourishing of a person’s life. Moving churches from a loose volunteer association, you will learn how your congregation can form people in lives of meaning and purpose.
Download or read book Faith Rooted Organizing written by Rev. Alexia Salvatierra and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2013-12-06 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1930s, organizing movements for social justice in the U.S. have largely been built on secular assumptions. But what if Christians were to shape their organizing around the implications of the truth that God is real and Jesus is risen? Reverend Alexia Salvatierra and theologian Peter Heltzel propose a model of organizing that arises from their Christian convictions, with implications for all faiths.
Download or read book Wide Welcome written by Jessicah Krey Duckworth and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2013-06-01 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While most churches offer 'new member classes' and genuinely seek to welcome visitors, too often the end result is a rush to assimilate the newcomer into formal membership and all of the invitations to participation in committees, choirs, or fellowship groups that go along with it. In Wide Welcome, Jessicah Krey Duckworth presents the stark differences between the established congregation, which cares for current members and congregational identity, and the disestablished one, intentionally equipped to facilitate the encounter between new and established members. The disestablished congregations, she says, gains purpose and identity in the task of relating to the newcomer, and by doing so engages the world in powerful new ways. By intentionally extending the time of newcomer inquiry and allowing their questions, insights, and experiences to reverberate through the entire congregation both they and the church are changed.
Download or read book Globalizing Theology written by Craig Ott and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2006-10 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Internationally recognized scholars offer a groundbreaking look at the powerful force of globalization and what it means for the church.
Download or read book The Captors Narrative written by William Henry Foster and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author reconstructs the lived experience of both captors and captives to show that captivity was always intertwined with gender struggles, providing a novel perspective on the struggles over female authority pervasive in colonial America.
