Download or read book From the Ground Up written by John Scott Horrell and published by Kregel Academic. This book was released on with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Veteran pastor, professor, and church planter Horrell suggests that the customs, patterns, and structures of churches may actually be barriers to what God 's purposes for the church really are.

Download or read book Biblical Foundations for the Cell Based Church written by Joel Comiskey and published by Joel Comiskey. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why cell church? Is it because David Cho's church, the largest church in the history of Christianity, is a cell church? Is it because someone said the number twelve will bring blessings and growth? Is it because cell church is the strategy that many "great" churches are using? Ralph Neighbour repeatedly says, "Theology must breed methodology." This book sets forth the biblical theology for cell based ministry. Without biblical truth, we don't have a firm under-pinning upon which we can hang our ministry and philosophy. On the other hand, we can plod through most anything when we know that God is stirring us to behave biblically. Cell church is not the latest, greatest church growth strategy. If it were, it would simply be a passing fad until the next hotter, more relevant strategy comes along. In fact, in many places around the world, cell church transforms the church through a purification process. Church growth is slow but cell church helps Christ's church go deeper. Joel Comiskey has been studying the cell church movement since 1991 and has discovered that the cell church strategy doesn't produce rapid growth in itself. God reserves growth for himself. He wants to receive the glory for all church growth. The first section of this book covers the Trinity, the model for all small group community. The good news is that the Trinity works within believers to mold and shape them into his image. This section explores God's emphasis on the family, starting from Genesis, Christ's formation of a new family, and then the early church's focus on family. Comiskey believes that family is the principal image of the church in Scripture. The last chapter in this section explains Jesus and his kingdom and more specifically how Jesus trained his disciples to evangelism through home-based outreach. Section two reveals how the early church met in homes. It explores what they did in those home meetings, the size of the house churches, and how home evangelism took place through ancient oikos relationships. Comiskey looks at how New Testament leadership developed naturally through the house church structure and how the early church connected the house churches into celebration gatherings (large group meetings). The last section applies all eight chapters to the church today. This last section draws out the New Testament insights that are applicable to the 21st century church.

Download or read book Christianity s Surprise written by C. Kavin Rowe and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2020-10-20 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At its beginning Christianity was surprising, powerful, creative, world-shaking. Today in the West it is many times familiar, common, and expected, losing its power to surprise and transform. We have developed societal amnesia and ignorance of what Christianity originally was – and what it still can be. We need to recover the surprise of Christianity. We need to ask the same fundamental questions as the early Christians, which will help us rediscover the surprising power of Christianity in our midst. Focusing on the surprise of the gospel message takes us into the heart of what it is to understand Christianity at all, and thus what it is to remember and relearn the life-giving power and witness that went with being Christian at the beginning. This remembering and relearning can, in turn, surprise us all over again and chart a course for our witness today.

Download or read book Ministry by the Book written by Derek Tidball and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2009-05-29 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on pastoral leadership within local churches or groups of churches, Derek Tidball provides a comprehensive survey of the variety of ministry models and patterns found in the New Testament with applications for today's ministry.

Download or read book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind written by Mark A. Noll and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Christianity Today Book of the Year Award (1995) “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” So begins this award-winning intellectual history and critique of the evangelical movement by one of evangelicalism’s most respected historians. Unsparing in his indictment, Mark Noll asks why the largest single group of religious Americans—who enjoy increasing wealth, status, and political influence—have contributed so little to rigorous intellectual scholarship. While nourishing believers in the simple truths of the gospel, why have so many evangelicals failed to sustain a serious intellectual life and abandoned the universities, the arts, and other realms of “high” culture? Over twenty-five years since its original publication, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind has turned out to be prescient and perennially relevant. In a new preface, Noll lays out his ongoing personal frustrations with this situation, and in a new afterword he assesses the state of the scandal—showing how white evangelicals’ embrace of Trumpism, their deepening distrust of science, and their frequent forays into conspiratorial thinking have coexisted with surprisingly robust scholarship from many with strong evangelical connections.

Download or read book Church Zero written by Peyton Jones and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1st Century Expansion for 21st Century PunksChrist didn t give us a plan B. You ve probably seen what the apostles did with plan A. Impressive stuff. Why then is the 21st century church with all its size and gadgets so inept at reaching people? In a bold no-holds-barred approach, "Church Zero" challenges next-gen leaders to return to a New Testament model of church. "

Download or read book God For The 21St Century written by Russell Stannard and published by Templeton Foundation Press. This book was released on 2000-05 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just as modern science has revolutionized our understanding of the natural world, so can it expand our understanding of the Divine. In topics as varied as astronomy and cosmology, evolution, genetic engineering, extraterrestrial life, psychology and religious experience, spirituality and medicine, and artificial intelligence, fifty key thinkers discuss the interrelationship between science and religion. Contributors include Robert Jastrow, first chairman of NASA's Lunar Exploration Committee and currently director of the Mount Wilson Institute; Rod Davies, former director of the Jodrell Bank Radio Astronomy Laboratories, U.K.; Owen Gingerich, senior astronomer, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory; Paul Davies, recipient of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion; Sir John Haughton, former director general of the United Kingdom Meteorological Office; Lord Habgood, former archbishop of York; and science writers Kitty Ferguson and Gregg Easterbrook. The writers are drawn from eight countries and represent the Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and Hindu traditions. Most are scientists by profession, but also included are philosophers, theologians, and psychologists. Each chapter of this innovative, accessible book helps to expand our thinking in light of what is known at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Taken as a whole, this book presents a challenging understanding of God and of God's interaction with the world and with ourselves. Topics covered include: •Creation and evolution •Life on other planets •Genetic engineering •Faith and medicine •The mind and the soul •Quantum physics

Download or read book Christianity in the Twenty first Century written by Robert Wuthnow and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1995 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Wuthnow contributes to those reflections on religion that are cropping up at the end of the millennium by offering a sobering, realistic, and hopeful assessment of where the church is now, and where the church is heading.

Download or read book Church Order in the New Testament written by Eduard Schweizer and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2006-07-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Schweizer listens carefully to the testimony of the various New Testament writers in order to understand the theological problem of how the New Testament church understood itself, and how it expressed that understanding in its order. The purely historical question about the form of the church at different times is seen by Schweizer as necessary, but need only be asked insofar as the actual shaping of the church is always evidence of the concept of its own nature to which it testifies. Thus, Schweizer arranges the New Testament writings primarily by the theological kinship of their idea of the church, providing a comprehensive examination of the church in the New Testament and Apostolic Fathers. He treats both the diversity of views and the unity found in these writings. He also discusses issues relating to church office, ministry, and ordination.

Download or read book New Bible Commentary written by D. A. Carson and published by Apollos. This book was released on 1994 with total page 1455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern critical essays discuss each book of the Old and New Testament.

Download or read book The New Testament in Its World Workbook written by N. T. Wright and published by Zondervan Academic. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This workbook accompanies The New Testament in Its World by N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird. Following the textbook's structure, it offers assessment questions, exercises, and activities designed to support the students' learning experience. Reinforcing the teaching in the textbook, this workbook will not only help to enhance their understanding of the New Testament books as historical, literary, and social phenomena located in the world of early Christianity, but also guide them to think like a first-century believer while reading the text responsibly for today.

Download or read book The One written by J. Gill and published by 21st Century Reformation Publishing. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From atheism and agnosticism to Trinitarian Christianity which itself is not rooted in the simple faith of the one true God of the Bible - J. Dan Gill meets all of these candidly and head on. He asks, "Why do most Christians not even know the Shema - the amazing biblical creed about God which was given by Moses, affirmed by Jesus and is spoken in synagogues to this day?" J. Dan challenges Christians to by-pass centuries of their own religious traditions and discover anew the God of Jesus.

Download or read book Revelation written by and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.

Download or read book Why Religion written by Elaine Pagels and published by HarperLuxe. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is religion still around in the twenty-first century? Why do so many still believe? And how do various traditions still shape the way people experience everything from sexuality to politics, whether they are religious or not? In Why Religion? Elaine Pagels looks to her own life to help address these questions. These questions took on a new urgency for Pagels when dealing with unimaginable loss—the death of her young son, followed a year later by the shocking loss of her husband. Here she interweaves a personal story with the work that she loves, illuminating how, for better and worse, religious traditions have shaped how we understand ourselves; how we relate to one another; and, most importantly, how to get through the most difficult challenges we face. Drawing upon the perspectives of neurologists, anthropologists, and historians, as well as her own research, Pagels opens unexpected ways of understanding persistent religious aspects of our culture. A provocative and deeply moving account from one of the most compelling religious thinkers at work today, Why Religion? explores the spiritual dimension of human experience.

Download or read book Irresistible written by Andy Stanley and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh look at the earliest Christian movement reveals what made the new faith so compelling...and what we need to change today to make it so again. Once upon a time there was a version of the Christian faith that was practically irresistible. After all, what could be more so than the gospel that Jesus ushered in? Why, then, isn't it the same with Christianity today? Author and pastor Andy Stanley is deeply concerned with the present-day church and its future. He believes that many of the solutions to our issues can be found by investigating our roots. In Irresistible, Andy chronicles what made the early Jesus Movement so compelling, resilient, and irresistible by answering these questions: What did first-century Christians know that we don't—about God's Word, about their lives, about love? What did they do that we're not doing? What makes Christianity so resistible in today's culture? What needs to change in order to repeat the growth our faith had at its beginning? Many people who leave or disparage the faith cite reasons that have less to do with Jesus than with the conduct of his followers. It's time to hit pause and consider the faith modeled by our first-century brothers and sisters who had no official Bible, no status, and little chance of survival. It's time to embrace the version of faith that initiated—against all human odds—a chain of events resulting in the most significant and extensive cultural transformation the world has ever seen. This is a version of Christianity we must remember and re-embrace if we want to be salt and light in an increasingly savorless and dark world.

Download or read book The Acts of the Apostles written by P.D. James and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acts is the sequel to Luke's gospel and tells the story of Jesus's followers during the 30 years after his death. It describes how the 12 apostles, formerly Jesus's disciples, spread the message of Christianity throughout the Mediterranean against a background of persecution. With an introduction by P.D. James

Download or read book New Testament I and II written by Saint Augustine and published by Works of Saint Augustine. This book was released on 2014-08 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present volume contains the translations of four works, all of which are exegetical treatises of one sort or another: The Lord's Sermon on the Mount, Agreement among the Evangelists, Questions on the Gospels and Seventeen Questions on Matthew.