A Sharp Compassion

A Sharp Compassion PDF Author: Chase Replogle
Publisher: A Desk and A Dog
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
According to Google, the phrase “I’m offended” has increased in usage by more than 5,600% in just the past century. Humans have always taken offense, but never have we been so obsessed with it. Offense stunts our conversations and divides our relationships. It infects our families, politics, entertainment, and churches. Yet few seem to be asking why or what it might be costing us. If you trace the offense deep enough, you’ll find a culture and our individual lives drowning in insecurity. For all our self-help, self-affirming, and self-esteem rhetoric, we can’t seem to overcome it. Just beneath our awareness, our insecurities distort our desires, poison our relationships, and leave us increasingly sensitive to offense. But there is a worse consequence. Offense makes it harder to hear the truth. It can even prevent you from hearing Jesus’s good, but sometimes hard, words. A Sharp Compassion offers readers a closer look at some of Jesus’ most challenging words. Through a careful study of the conversations in which Jesus offended, you will discover a savior willing to risk offending you to heal you from your deepest insecurities. Because his love is great, his truths are often hard, and his compassion sharp. But perhaps it’s Jesus’ hard words we need most right now.

A Sharp Compassion

A Sharp Compassion PDF Author: Chase Replogle
Publisher: A Desk and A Dog
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 171

Get Book Here

Book Description
According to Google, the phrase “I’m offended” has increased in usage by more than 5,600% in just the past century. Humans have always taken offense, but never have we been so obsessed with it. Offense stunts our conversations and divides our relationships. It infects our families, politics, entertainment, and churches. Yet few seem to be asking why or what it might be costing us. If you trace the offense deep enough, you’ll find a culture and our individual lives drowning in insecurity. For all our self-help, self-affirming, and self-esteem rhetoric, we can’t seem to overcome it. Just beneath our awareness, our insecurities distort our desires, poison our relationships, and leave us increasingly sensitive to offense. But there is a worse consequence. Offense makes it harder to hear the truth. It can even prevent you from hearing Jesus’s good, but sometimes hard, words. A Sharp Compassion offers readers a closer look at some of Jesus’ most challenging words. Through a careful study of the conversations in which Jesus offended, you will discover a savior willing to risk offending you to heal you from your deepest insecurities. Because his love is great, his truths are often hard, and his compassion sharp. But perhaps it’s Jesus’ hard words we need most right now.

Flyover Church

Flyover Church PDF Author: Brad Roth
Publisher: MennoMedia, Inc.
ISBN: 1513813749
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
Christ is present and at work in rural communities. How do we lead from that reality? The temptation to operate from a scarcity mindset is stronger than ever. The tensions unleashed over the past few years—which led to skepticism, breakdowns of trust, declining church attendance, and uncertainty around community ministry—continue to linger in and among our rural churches. Yet God’s loving, redemptive work is happening in all places, no matter how small or far-flung. In Flyover Church, Brad Roth, the author of God’s Country, describes how rural ministry shares soul-deep commonalities with the church in every place. And he speaks a hopeful message into the distinct challenges—and promises—faced by rural communities. Tracing Jesus’ ministry and bountiful work among the small-town people and places in the gospel of Mark, this book offers a vision for ministry tailored to rural settings. Pastors and leaders everywhere will be encouraged to approach ministry from the reality of God’s abundance.

Small Church Essentials

Small Church Essentials PDF Author: Karl Vaters
Publisher: Moody Publishers
ISBN: 0802496369
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Do you lead a small church? Big churches get all the love. Articles, books, conferences—they mostly feature leaders of large congregations. Yet big churches are a small part of the ecclesial landscape. In fact, more than 90 percent of churches have fewer than 200 people. That means small churches play a big part in what God is doing. Small Church Essentials is for leaders of these smaller congregations. It encourages them to steward their role well, debunking myths about small churches while offering principles for leading a dynamic, healthy small church. Based on the popular six-hour lecture that Karl Vaters delivers to church leaders across the country, Small Church Essentials will affirm small church leaders and show them how to identify what they do well, and how to do it even better. Readers will: Be assured that leading a small congregation does not make them ministry failures Come away inspired to lead with passion, regardless the size of their church Have field-tested principles for leading a church in their context Possess new metrics for biblically measuring vitality in small churches Have a toolkit of resources to use in their everyday ministry Karl Vaters has been a small church pastor for 30 years, is the author of The Grasshopper Myth: Big Churches, Small Churches, and the Small Thinking that Divides Us (2013), and travels extensively to churches and conferences to speak about leading a small church well. If you are pastoring a small church, this book will be a breath of fresh air. It will affirm your calling while giving you fresh tools to help you lead. It will help you: Stop believing lies about small churches Lead your church to fulfill the role only small churches can Understand your congregation’s strengths and weaknesses Turn around a dying or unhealthy church Identify good trends and bad in church and culture

The Grasshopper Myth

The Grasshopper Myth PDF Author: Karl Vaters
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780988443907
Category : Small churches
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
90% of the churches in the world have less than 200 people. What if that's not a bad thing? What if smallness is an advantage God wants us to use, not a problem to fix?

Dissertation Abstracts International

Dissertation Abstracts International PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dissertations, Academic
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description


The Church at Home and Abroad

The Church at Home and Abroad PDF Author: Henry Addison Nelson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Presbyterian Church
Languages : en
Pages : 588

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Book Description


Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms

Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms PDF Author: Donald K. McKim
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 9780664255114
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Defines 6,000 terms on such topics as the Bible, worship, theology, ministry, ethics, church history, and spirituality

Politics in the Parish

Politics in the Parish PDF Author: Gregory Allen Smith
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1589013891
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
For well over a century the Catholic Church has articulated clear positions on many issues of public concern, particularly economics, capital punishment, foreign affairs, sexual morality, and abortion. Yet the fact that some of the Church's positions do not mesh well with the platforms of either of the two major political parties in the U.S. may make it difficult for Americans to look to Catholic doctrine for political guidance. Scholars of religion and politics have long recognized the potential for clergy to play an important role in shaping the voting decisions and political attitudes of their congregations, yet these assumptions of political influence have gone largely untested and undemonstrated. Politics in the Parish is the first empirical examination of the role Catholic clergy play in shaping the political views of their congregations. Gregory Allen Smith draws from recent scholarship on political communication, and the comprehensive Notre Dame Study of Parish Life, as well as case studies he conducted in nine parishes in the mid-Atlantic region, to investigate the extent to which and the circumstances under which Catholic priests are influential in shaping the politics of their parishioners. Smith is able to verify that clergy do exercise political influence, but he makes clear that such influence is likely to be nuanced, limited in magnitude, and exercised indirectly by shaping parishioner religious attitudes that in turn affect political behavior. He shows that the messages that priests deliver vary widely, even radically, from parish to parish and priest to priest. Consequently, he warns that scholars should exercise caution when making any global assumptions about the political influence that Catholic clergy affect upon their congregations.

100 Days to a Healthier Church

100 Days to a Healthier Church PDF Author: Karl Vaters
Publisher: Moody Publishers
ISBN: 0802497853
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
A 100-Day Plan That’s Practical, Realistic, and Actually Works You see the problems in your church, and you truly believe it could be better. Not perfect, but healthier. If you want more for your church but aren’t quite sure how to get there, 100 Days to a Healthier Church was written for you. It teaches you how to: Identify your church’s current level of health using the "Church Health Continuum" Make big changes through small nudges rather than giant leaps Grow your strengths and tackle your weaknesses one at a time After years of trial and error, pastor and author Karl Vaters developed a tested and proven 15-week process that’s manageable, adaptable, and effective. It won’t fix everything overnight, but it will help you figure out what to do next. Great for individual pastors, perfect for church leadership teams!

The Puritan Literary Tradition

The Puritan Literary Tradition PDF Author: Johanna Harris
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192575589
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
What is meant by the Puritan literary tradition, and when did the idea of Puritan literature, as distinct from Puritan beliefs and practices, come into being? The answer is not straightforward. This volume addresses these questions by bringing together new research on a wide range of established and emerging literary subjects that help to articulate the Puritan literary tradition, including: political polemic and the performing arts; conversion and New-World narratives; individual and corporate life-writings; histories of exile and womens history; book history and the translation and circulation of Puritan literature abroad; Puritan epistolary networks; discourses of Puritan friendship; the historiography of Puritanism defined through editing and publishing; doctrinal controversy; and the history of emotions. This essay collection proposes that a Puritan literary tradition existed that was distinct from broader conceptions of early modern English and Protestant traditions and offers a nuanced account of the distinct and variegated contribution that Puritanism has made to the construction of literature as a concept in English. It ranges from the late sixteenth through to the nineteenth century, and spans British, European, and American Puritan cultures. It offers new analyses of well-known Puritan writers such as Anne Bradstreet, John Bunyan, Richard Baxter, and John Milton, as well as less familiar figures, such as Mary Rowlandson and Joseph Hussey, and writers less often associated with Puritanism, such as Andrew Marvell and Aphra Behn.