Download or read book Deep Church written by Jim Belcher and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2009-09-25 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you feel caught between the traditional church and the emerging church, read Jim Belcher. He paints a picture of an alternate, "deep" church--a missional church committed to both tradition and contemporary culture, valuing innovation in worship, arts and community but also adhering to creeds and confessions.
Download or read book Deep Discipleship written by J.T. English and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone is being discipled. The question is: what is discipling us? The majority of Christians today are being discipled by popular media, flashy events, and folk theology because churches have neglected their responsibility to make disciples. But the church is not a secondary platform in the mission of God; it is the primary platform God uses to grow people into the image of Jesus. Therefore, as church leaders, it is our primary responsibility to establish environments and relationships where people can be trained, grow, and be sent as disciples. There are three indispensable elements of discipleship: Learning to participate in the biblical story (the Bible) Growing in our confession of who God is and who we are (theology) Regularly participating in private and corporate intentional action (spiritual disciplines) Deep Discipleship equips churches to reclaim the responsibility of discipling people at any point on their journey.
Download or read book Deep Church Rising written by Andrew G. Walker and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The major cultural changes in Western societies since the Reformation have created a serious challenge for the church. Modernity in particular has been inhospitable to Christian orthodoxy and many have been tempted to reject classical versions of the faith. This has led to a division within churches that Walker and Parry name the third schism, a divide between those who believe and practice the central tenets of Christian tradition and those who do not. The authors have adopted and adapted C. S. Lewis' phrase deep church to highlight the necessity of remembering our past in order to recover historic Christian orthodoxy. This book is a call to deep church, to remember our future, to make a half-turn back to premodernity; not in order to repeat or relive the past, but in order to draw on its rich yet often-forgotten resources for the here and now.
Download or read book In Search of Deep Faith written by Jim Belcher and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Follow pastor Jim Belcher and his family as they take a pilgrimage through Europe, seeking substance for their faith in Christianity's historic, civilizational home. What they find, in places like Lewis's Oxford and Bonhoeffer's Germany, are glimpses of another kind of faith—one with power to cut through centuries and pierce our hearts today.
Download or read book Evangelical Catholicism written by George Weigel and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-04-22 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Catholic Church is on the threshold of a bold new era in its two-thousand year history. As the curtain comes down on the Church defined by the 16th-century Counter-Reformation, the curtain is rising on the Evangelical Catholicism of the third millennium: a way of being Catholic that comes from over a century of Catholic reform; a mission-centered renewal honed by the Second Vatican Council and given compelling expression by Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. The Gospel-centered Evangelical Catholicism of the future will send all the people of the Church into mission territory every day -- a territory increasingly defined in the West by spiritual boredom and aggressive secularism. Confronting both these cultural challenges and the shadows cast by recent Catholic history, Evangelical Catholicism unapologetically proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the truth of the world. It also molds disciples who witness to faith, hope, and love by the quality of their lives and the nobility of their aspirations. Thus the Catholicism of the 21st century and beyond will be a culture-forming counterculture, offering all men and women of good will a deeply humane alternative to the soul-stifling self-absorption of postmodernity. Drawing on thirty years of experience throughout the Catholic world, from its humblest parishes to its highest levels of authority, George Weigel proposes a deepening of faith-based and mission-driven Catholic reform that touches every facet of Catholic life -- from the episcopate and the papacy to the priesthood and the consecrated life; from the renewal of the lay vocation in the world to the redefinition of the Church's engagement with public life; from the liturgy to the Church's intellectual life. Lay Catholics and clergy alike should welcome the challenge of this unique moment in the Church's history, Weigel urges. Mediocrity is not an option, and all Catholics, no matter what their station in life, are called to live the evangelical vocation into which they were baptized: without compromise, but with the joy, courage, and confidence that comes from living this side of the Resurrection.
Download or read book To Change the Church written by Ross Douthat and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times columnist and one of America’s leading conservative thinkers considers Pope Francis’s efforts to change the church he governs in a book that is “must reading for every Christian who cares about the fate of the West and the future of global Christianity” (Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option). Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1936, today Pope Francis is the 266th pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis’s stewardship of the Church, while perceived as a revelation by many, has provoked division throughout the world. “If a conclave were to be held today,” one Roman source told The New Yorker, “Francis would be lucky to get ten votes.” In his “concise, rhetorically agile…adroit, perceptive, gripping account (The New York Times Book Review), Ross Douthat explains why the particular debate Francis has opened—over communion for the divorced and the remarried—is so dangerous: How it cuts to the heart of the larger argument over how Christianity should respond to the sexual revolution and modernity itself, how it promises or threatens to separate the church from its own deep past, and how it divides Catholicism along geographical and cultural lines. Douthat argues that the Francis era is a crucial experiment for all of Western civilization, which is facing resurgent external enemies (from ISIS to Putin) even as it struggles with its own internal divisions, its decadence, and self-doubt. Whether Francis or his critics are right won’t just determine whether he ends up as a hero or a tragic figure for Catholics. It will determine whether he’s a hero, or a gambler who’s betraying both his church and his civilization into the hands of its enemies. “A balanced look at the struggle for the future of Catholicism…To Change the Church is a fascinating look at the church under Pope Francis” (Kirkus Reviews). Engaging and provocative, this is “a pot-boiler of a history that examines a growing ecclesial crisis” (Washington Independent Review of Books).
Download or read book Church of the Wild written by Victoria Loorz and published by Broadleaf Books . This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2024 Nautilus Book Awards Silver Winner in "Religion / Spirituality of Western Thought" CategoryWinner of the Living Now Book Award, Church of the Wild reminds us that once upon a time, humans lived in an intimate relationship with nature. Whether disillusioned by the dominant church or unfulfilled by traditional expressions of faith, many of us long for a deeper spirituality. Victoria Loorz certainly did. Coping with an unraveling vocation, identity, and planet, Loorz turned to the wanderings of spiritual leaders and the sanctuary of the natural world, eventually cofounding the Wild Church Network and Seminary of the Wild. With an ecospiritual lens on biblical narratives and a fresh look at a community larger than our own species, Church of the Wild uncovers the wild roots of faith and helps us deepen our commitment to a suffering earth by falling in love with it--and calling it church. Through mystical encounters with wild deer, whispers from a scrubby oak tree, wordless conversation with a cougar, and more, Loorz helps us connect to a love that literally holds the world together--a love that calls us into communion with all creatures.
Download or read book All In written by Pat Gohn and published by Ave Maria Press. This book was released on 2017-03-03 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What’s the one thing that defines your life and brings you the most good, the most love? Pat Gohn knows what her one thing is: “More than any single factor in my life, belonging to Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church has had the greatest impact on me. Faith gives meaning to everything in my life.” In this passionate and unapologetic account of why her faith in Christ and the Catholic Church are the source of meaning and joy in her life, Gohn—popular speaker, retreat leader, catechist, and author of Blessed, Beautiful, and Bodacious—invites you to become more confident in the power of the Catholic faith to transform your life as well. Being a cradle Catholic, cancer survivor, wife, and mother are all a part of Gohn’s story. But in this appealing, personal book, she shares why her relationship with Jesus and her confidence in his Church are so much bigger than her medical diagnosis, more powerful than her family history, and more significant than her career path. Gohn ardently shares why belonging to the Church will strengthen and nurture your relationship with God. It will keep you connected with Jesus and the sacraments—conduits of grace, forgiveness, healing, wisdom, and renewal. Belonging to the Church connects you to millions of others around the world, to the saints, and to your loved ones in heaven. These relationships are at the heart of Catholicism. In this time when life and society are so fragmented, the joy of belonging to a community—as imperfect as it can be—easily outweighs the agony of separation or isolation. Gohn’s confidence in her faith emerged despite and even out of a struggle with disillusionment. Working in a parish when news of the sex abuse scandals broke in Boston, she confronted heartbreak and anger within herself and her fellow parishioners. Yet she never left the Church and relates how she found a way to dig deeper and discover reasons to stay faithful. Each of the nine chapters identifies a dimension of the Catholic faith that is a source of Gohn’s confidence, including the Incarnation, God’s plan, the Fatherhood of God, the friendship of the Holy Spirit, and the love of neighbor. Each chapter also features reflection questions to challenge you.
Download or read book Going Deep and Wide written by Andy Stanley and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every Sunday people walk onto your church campus and decide if they will return the following week before the preacher even opens his mouth. Many of those people don't know what to make of Jesus. They're hesitant to be in a church. They're not sure they belong. But over and over in the pages of the gospels, we see something extraordinary. People who were nothing like Jesus liked Jesus. Shouldn't that be true of his church as well? In Going Deep & Wide, Andy Stanley lays out a blueprint for becoming that kind of church. Going Deep & Wide offers practical steps to help church leaders create irresistible environments, define ministry goals, and communicate more effectively with unbelievers. Each section includes discussion materials that walk you more deeply into the content of Deep & Wide and invites conversations about how to apply what you've learned.
Download or read book How God Hauled Me Kicking and Screaming Into the Catholic Church written by Kevin Lowry and published by Our Sunday Visitor. This book was released on 2016-05-11 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A preacher kid’s at a Catholic university, Kevin Lowry settled into a “double major in beer and billiards” soon followed by uncomfortable run-ins with pious students, failing grades, increasing anxiety, a missing night—and the startling realization that some fellow students actually attended Mass the morning after a party instead of sleeping it off. After getting kicked out, Kevin got his act together, got the MBA, and also got the girl. Meanwhile God was working, drawing him to the inevitable conclusion that Catholicism was all true despite his objections. Kevin Lowry’s journey to Catholicism is fascinating, often funny, and demonstrates God’s unfailing, patient love for all of us.
Download or read book Dear Church written by Lenny Duncan and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lenny Duncan is the unlikeliest of pastors. Formerly incarcerated, he is now a black preacher in the whitest denomination in the United States: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Shifting demographics and shrinking congregations make all the headlines, but Duncan sees something else at work--drawing a direct line between the church's lack of diversity and the church's lack of vitality. The problems the ELCA faces are theological, not sociological. But so are the answers. Part manifesto, part confession, and all love letter, Dear Church offers a bold new vision for the future of Duncan's denomination and the broader mainline Christian community of faith. Dear Church rejects the narrative of church decline and calls everyone--leaders and laity alike--to the front lines of the church's renewal through racial equality and justice. It is time for the church to rise up, dust itself off, and take on forces of this world that act against God: whiteness, misogyny, nationalism, homophobia, and economic injustice. Duncan gives a blueprint for the way forward and urges us to follow in the revolutionary path of Jesus. Dear Church also features a discussion guide at the back--perfect for church groups, book clubs, and other group discussion.
Download or read book The Divided Mind of the Black Church written by Raphael G. Warnock and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revealing look at the identity and mission of the Black church What is the true nature and mission of the church? Is its proper Christian purpose to save souls, or to transform the social order? This question is especially fraught when the church is one built by an enslaved people and formed, from its beginning, at the center of an oppressed community’s fight for personhood and freedom. Such is the central tension in the identity and mission of the Black church in the United States. For decades the Black church and Black theology have held each other at arm’s length. Black theology has emphasized the role of Christian faith in addressing racism and other forms of oppression, arguing that Jesus urged his disciples to seek the freedom of all peoples. Meanwhile, the Black church, even when focused on social concerns, has often emphasized personal piety rather than social protest. With the rising influence of white evangelicalism, biblical fundamentalism, and the prosperity gospel, the divide has become even more pronounced. In The Divided Mind of the Black Church, Raphael G. Warnock, Senior Pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual home of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., traces the historical significance of the rise and development of Black theology as an important conversation partner for the Black church. Calling for honest dialogue between Black and womanist theologians and Black pastors, this fresh theological treatment demands a new look at the church’s essential mission.
Download or read book A Church for All written by Gayle E. Pitman and published by Weigl Publishers. This book was released on 2018-08-01 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This simple, lyrical story celebrates a Sunday morning at an inclusive church that embraces all people regardless of age, class, race, gender identity, and sexual orientation. All are welcome at the church for all!
Download or read book The Black Church written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series. “Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.” —Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again “Engaging. . . . In Gates’s telling, the Black church shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth—as it is in heaven.” —Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and The Black Box, and one of our most important voices on the African American experience, comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community’s most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.
Download or read book The Church and Its Vocation written by Michael W. Goheen and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lesslie Newbigin, one of the twentieth century's most important church leaders, offered insights on the church in a pluralistic world that are arguably more relevant now than when first written. This volume presents his ecclesiology to a new generation. Michael Goheen clearly articulates Newbigin's missionary understanding of the church and places it in the context of Newbigin's core theological convictions. Suitable for students as well as church leaders, this book offers readers a better understanding of the mission of the church in the world today. Foreword by N. T. Wright.
Download or read book Hurting in the Church written by Fr. Thomas Berg and published by Our Sunday Visitor. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Hurting in the Church provides a psychologically wise and spiritually profound path forward for Catholics who have been abused, traumatized, or wounded by other Catholics — especially those in leadership. Chapter 10 on how to recover one’s belief in and love for the Church is worth the price of the book alone!” -- Sherry Weddell, Best-selling author of Forming Intentional Disciples “An honest and much-needed book that addresses ... the many Catholics who feel marginalized, ignored, hurt, insulted and even abused by the Church.”—Fr. James Martin, SJ, author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage “It took courage for Father Berg to write with such honesty and transparency, and his courage will give you courage—not only to confront sin and weakness within the Church, but also to give God another chance to help you rediscover him within the embrace of the Church despite the failings of her members.”—Fr. Jonathan Morris, author of New York Times Bestseller, The Way of Serenity “Here is an unflinching examination of the Church’s brokenness ... along with practical advice and the promise of hope for the challenging path forward. Fearless in his assessment, Father Berg is equally confident that in Jesus and with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can move toward healing and wholeness.”—Cardinal Timothy Dolan ABOUT THE AUTHOR Father Berg is professor of moral theology and vice-rector at St Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, NY. He earned his doctorate in philosophy at Rome’s Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum. In addition to scholarly work in bioethics, he has also been published or quoted in Homiletic & Pastoral Review, Crisis Magazine, First Things, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. An avid runner, hiker, and cigar aficionado, he escapes as often as he can to Cape May, New Jersey.
Download or read book From the Depths of Our Hearts written by Pope Benedict XVI and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2020-03-12 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The priesthood is going through a dark time", according to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Robert Cardinal Sarah. "Wounded by the revelation of so many scandals, disconcerted by the constant questioning of their consecrated celibacy, many priests are tempted by the thought of giving up and abandoning everything." In this book, the pope emeritus and the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments give their brother priests, and the whole Church, a message of hope. They honestly address the spiritual challenges faced by priests today, while pointing to deeper conversion to Jesus Christ as the key to faithful and fruitful priestly ministry and genuine reform. Benedict XVI and Cardinal Sarah "fraternally offer these reflections to the people of God and, of course, in a spirit of filial obedience, to Pope Francis", who has said, "I think that celibacy is a gift for the Church. . . . I don't agree with allowing optional celibacy, no." Responding to calls for refashioning the priesthood, including proposals from participants in the Amazonian Synod, two wise, spiritually astute pastors explain the importance of priestly celibacy for the good of the whole Church. Drawing on Vatican II, they present celibacy as not just "a mere precept of ecclesiastical law", but as a sharing in Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross and his identity as Bridegroom of the Church. of his collaboration with Benedict XVI in writing From the Depths of Our Hearts.
