Download or read book Messy Incarnation written by Bruce G. Epperly and published by Energion Publications. This book was released on 2022-09-07 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The incarnation is a central Christian doctrine. Many books have been dedicated to attempting to understand its mystery and how it fits with the rest of Christian theology. But what about the way this doctrine can and should impact the way we live? Process theologian and pastor Bruce Epperly addresses this topic in this easy-to-read but challenging book. Starting with a look forward in Advent and moving through the seasons of the Christian year and indeed of life, he examines different elements of both the story and the doctrine. From expectation we move through the various “messy” ways in which God acts, Christmas, Epiphany, Pentecost, and the emerging kingdom of Christ. This book is theology where it meets practice, reflection put into practical action, and ethics drawn from the deepest wells of the Christ story. It will drive you deeper into scripture and spiritual growth from a variety of perspectives and sources, reflecting the chasms crossed in the one very messy incarnation.
Download or read book Process Theology and the Revival We Need written by Bruce G. Epperly and published by Energion Publications. This book was released on 2023-03-29 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Revival" has not been a popular word in mainline and progressive circles, but as more and more progressive and open & relational theologians have become open to spiritual and mystical possibilities, interest has grown. Bruce Epperly, who has previously tackled such controversial issues as angels, miracles, healing, and prayer, now takes on this challenging topic. With renewed discussion as the result of the Asbury Awakening and the release of the movie "Jesus Revolution," his response to revival movements in the church is especially welcome. Bruce has long been a prominent proponent of process theology for every church member, explaining some of the more difficult concepts in relatable terms for the people in the pews. In this book, he recognizes the need for revival, and asks what this should look like. Too often "moves of the Spirit" die out as people find it difficult to see a way to live out the divine encounter they have experienced. This book is addressed both to those hungry for more and to those who have felt the presence of the Divine in various ways and are asking how they can understand and live in the light of that they have experienced.
Download or read book Incarnation written by Skya Abbate and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-08-21 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world--it is a place of mystery; religion a matter of faith. Yet all around us in the matrix of creation, animals, people, and personal experience the immanence of the Creator is present. More than that so is the Spirit who shapes the world, and Jesus the Incarnate, the Word of God and Redeemer of shattered relationships between God and all creation. We do not always have the clarity of experiencing God in the beauty or disorder of life, yet God is there, waiting to be praised, encountered, thanked, and experienced. Every moment is an opportunity to grasp that presence. Simple words of no great import in the world of literature can sometimes capture that experience in a phrase or an image. While that perception is individual we share common experiences and an imagination to envision rapture or difficulty. While my poems may not be memorable, like a key, they can open the realm of possible relationship that is available to everyone as God's invitation to his friendship, a relationship we can call grace as Incarnation.
Download or read book Body and Blood written by Andrew R. Hardy and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2019-06-07 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The largest missional challenge facing the church of Christ in the West is to equip every member to engage in missionary endeavor in third places. Third places are those social zones in society like coffee shops, gyms, shopping malls, pubs, etc., that everyone and anyone can meet in as commonly owned spaces. The authors argue that for too long the church has not equipped and trained its members to engage in mission in the public square. The mobilization of every member to become the hands and feet of the missional sacramental body of Christ to carry the message of God's generous love to not-yet-Christians is vital, if we want to witness the kingdom reign of God extend into their lives. Places are important to the sovereign Lord of mission and this book challenges the churches of Christ to become what they properly need to be, equipping agencies for every member mission and ministry.
Download or read book Out of the Ashes written by Kenneth W. Arthur and published by Energion Publications. This book was released on 2017-08-10 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to help those who doubt or can no longer believe what they've been taught about Christianity that they don't have to abandon their faith. Kenneth Arthur challenges traditional thinking and helps the reader move beyond fundamentalism by thoughtfully reflecting on theological alternatives. His life has truly been a pilgrimage, a search for meaning and purpose that includes belief and behavior as well as belonging, so he proposes a constructive theology based on his own experiences and education in conjunction with the Bible, well known theologians, and other sources of revelation. Discussion questions at the end of each chapter invite conversation and provide a helpful resource for small groups.
Download or read book Process Theology and Mysticism written by Bruce G. Epperly and published by Energion Publications. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can mysticism and process theology work together in a way that is a valuable and practical part of one’s spiritual life? In this booklet, the first of three that integrate process theology with contemporary spiritual life and activity, Bruce Epperly brings process thought into our spiritual lives and physical well-being in a call to Shalom in cooperation with the Divine. Epperly is a specialist in bringing difficult concepts to life for everyone. He combines that skill with the short format of the Topical Line Drives series to reach spiritual seekers embedded in a busy and challenging world. Mysticism is not something just for people in ancient times or who live in monasteries. It can be a vital part of your life. These may be the words you’re looking for to understand and express what you feel.
Download or read book Shame Baseball written by Jeff Newburg and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2020-07-29 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For years, John has served as a pastor to a socially progressive church of artists in Los Angeles. Cloistered in this bubble, he was floored by the outcome of the 2016 election, a shock that continues to compound. Waking to how entwined American Christianity has become with anti-Christ ideologies, seeing that even his own “inclusive” community propagates shame while preaching love, John resigns from the church. He flees—LA, his wife, his entire web of relationships, all of which were glued to the church. As he sets out on this wandering road trip, John seeks to fathom the depths of his own complicity in systems of abuse, his own shame, by writing to his father, the conservative evangelical. In journaling, John hopes to discover what relationship could exist between this unbendingly legalistic man and the first authentic self he’s ever shown. On this walkabout, John logs new and old friendships, adventures, and traumas that push him to sublime joy and his faith to the brink. In his writing, John begins to make sense of his swirling present and complicated past to see if he might reconcile to all those relationships he fled. He sketches what of his faith might remain after the deconstruction—a Heavenly Father untangled from his earthly one, what of God is left after shame is gone.
Download or read book Process Theology and Healing written by Bruce G. Epperly and published by Energion Publications. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious and spiritual healing practices are often seen as a show in which a healer claims to physically cure someone through actions or words. These healings mostly fail. In this booklet, the third of three that integrate process theology with contemporary spiritual life and activity, Bruce Epperly presents a very different view of healing. He calls for a healing ministry, but one that finds God in all things and uses scientific medicine, healing ritual practices, and prayer in concert, sometimes for spiritual healing but also for a way to live out the challenge of illness, to face death with dignity, and yes, sometimes for a cure that appears miraculous. He applies these healing practices not just to human beings, but to all life and to the planet we live on. Healing is not the province of a few, calling on supernatural forces. Rather, it is a cooperation with the energies God has placed in the universe. Rather than supernatural it is more natural than anything. Epperly is a specialist in bringing difficult concepts to life for everyone. He combines that skill with the short format of the Topical Line Drives series to present a call for all of us to be healed and to become healers as part of God’s call to life and light. This book may well be the call you need to hear to find wholeness, Shalom, in your life and your relationships to others and this world.
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 Theology in Global Context written by Amos Yong and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Cummings Neville has been a consistent advocate for the necessity of global theology. Early in his career, he realized that the philosophical framework of the West alone was inadequate for a truly global theology. Since then, he has sought to develop theology creatively and responsibly within the world context. The original essays in this volume, written in his honour by fellow theologians, participate in and model the kind of dialogical, global theology embodied in Neville's work.
Download or read book Nuclear Superiority written by David S. McDonough and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2002 the Bush administration completed a Nuclear Posture Review that introduced a ‘new triad’ based on offensive-strike systems, defences and a revitalized defence infrastructure. The new triad is designed for a new strategic threat environment, characterized not by a long-standing nuclear rivalry with another superpower, but by unstable relationships with rogue-state proliferators, alongside more ambiguous relations with nuclear-weapon powers. Providing a historical context to these modifications to US nuclear strategy, Nuclear Superiority details how the new triad, which strongly emphasizes the need to bolster the credibility of the nuclear deterrent and to prepare for nuclear use when deterrence fails, is founded on previous efforts to secure nuclear superiority against the Soviet Union and counter-proliferation capabilities against WMD-proliferant adversaries. It illustrates how the evolution of American nuclear strategy towards more effective counter-force capabilities, regardless of the current threat environment, has led to a host of counter-force developments. David S. McDonough explores how this strategy is based on the long-standing American desire to control conflict escalation and how it may invite crisis instability with regional adversaries and disquiet among established nuclear powers.
Download or read book We are God Incarnate written by Alex Vary and published by Page Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2022-02-03 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Alex Vary sets the stage for understanding our world and why we are in it. He agrees with Sir James Jeans and Professor John A. Wheeler that the cosmos originated as a thought that became material and tangible and that we participated in bringing into being not only the near and here but the far away and long ago. Vary gives examples of how we may traverse the entire cosmos and visit its worlds in spiritual chariots of thought. This implies that extraterrestrials from distant parts of the cosmos may also travel in spiritual chariots of thought to visit and inhabit Earth. Even institutionally accepted physics is often based on theoretical imaginings involving what Sir Roger Penrose termed fashion, faith, and fantasy. Vary argues the existence of adjacent realities - the mesostratum reality and the phyiostratum reality - which when taken together may form the basis of a new physics that can explain the interplay of the transcendent, the spiritual and the material. Vary introduces the idea of the mesostratum - by means of which we may realize and crystalize unique DNA structures, exotic mathematical objects and innovative ideas. According to Vary we are spiritual beings occupying bio-physical machines that are designed to survive the uncertain, often hostile and volatile, conditions of Earth. Our survival machines are essentially hedonistic while our spirits are essentially altruistic. This results in a conflict in which the machine may prevail if the spirit is weak or concedes control. World history testifies to this ongoing conflict which persists despite human and societal evolution. Vary claims that our transcendent consciousness combines our minds in a primordial consciousness. Our transcendent consciousness is in this sense unbounded and extraterrestrial. This may not be experimentally provable. It needs to be experienced. Examples of such experiences are abundant in the cited literature. We genuinely share oneness in God and in a primordial consciousness. This oneness allows us to materialize our spirits in a vast variety of living entities. There appears to be a basic spiritual awareness in intelligent, purposeful cells and the trillions of differentiated cells that form our bodies. Indeed, we are embodied spirits living in imperfect worlds and we attempt to evolve and to perfect our species and to improve our worlds.
Download or read book After Method written by Hanna Reichel and published by Presbyterian Publishing Corp. This book was released on 2023-10-17 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Method assumes the impossibility of doing theology right–and moves beyond it. Organized as a conversation in two voices—with systematic-theological commitments represented by Karl Barth and constructive-theological commitments represented by Marcella Althaus-Reid—this book calls the redemptive potential of any methodological program into question. Indeed, the search for a full and complete theological account of reality has only further fragmented theological discourse. Thus, Hanna Reichel argues that method cannot “save” us—but that does not mean that we cannot do better. After Method harnesses the best insights systematic and constructive theologies have to offer in their mutual critique and gestures toward a “better” theology. Utilizing architectural metaphor, Reichel pulls from systematic and constructive approaches to develop an understanding of theological work as conceptual design, responsibly ordering and structuring given materials for a purpose. This necessitates a more realistic adaptation to reality for theology, expanding its standards to encompass the experiences and perceptions of people and speaking the truth available to it. The honesty, humility, and solidarity generated through the failure of method liberates theology to a more playful and tentative cruising of different approaches and redirects its attention to “misfits” and outsiders. Equally demanding and self-relativizing, the resultant ethos is better able to do justice to the reality of the world and the reality of God than doctrinal orthodoxy or methodological orthopraxy.
Download or read book Embracing Evolution written by Matthew Nelson Hill and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it possible that adopting an evolutionary view of human origins can actually help us cultivate a relationship with God and a holy life? Bringing clarity to an often fraught conversation, Matthew Nelson Hill provides an accessible overview of evolutionary concepts and takes on common concerns about tensions with Christian theology.
Download or read book Immeasurably More written by Cris Rogers and published by Monarch Books. This book was released on 2015-03-20 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We box Jesus in. We say, 'This is how he works.' In answer to all the ways we aim to control, define and understand him, Jesus reminds us that he has immeasurably more to offer. How often do we feel like we are at the end of our energy? Not only physically and emotionally, but also spiritually? Some of us have been running this race for so long that we feel dangerously dehydrated. Jesus is calling all of us into a radical empowered life that we couldn't ever achieve in our own strength. Jesus tells his church that there is immeasurably more on offer than just a religious life, a good life or a moral life. There is more to offer our families and friends, more to offer our neighbourhoods. Jesus offers us an immeasurably more powerful and beautiful life. To a dehydrated church, Jesus announces... there is always more.
Download or read book The Geography of God s Incarnation written by Ann Pederson and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-07-25 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does geography have to do with the incarnation of God and with our spiritual lives as Christians? We will embark on a theological road trip that explores how geographies are at the heart of understanding of God's incarnation in the world. It is no surprise to Christians that the center of the incarnation is the person of Jesus Christ--God in flesh made manifest. However, it might be a stretch for some Christians to imagine that the promise that God has become flesh is not only in a person but also in a place: in the creation. Christians need to expand what incarnation means and what it means to be created in the image of God so that the scope of God's creative and redemptive action and work indeed reaches to the scope of all things: from the outer reaches of space to the inner reaches of our hearts. To be the creatures of God that God calls us to be requires a kind of dual citizenship: within the details of our daily life, attending to the needs of our neighbors, simultaneously knowing we are part of a greater cosmos whose future is still unfolding.
Download or read book William Wordsworth and the Hermeneutics of Incarnation written by David P. Haney and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
