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Author: Michael K. Girlinghouse
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506458890
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 294
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Book Description
Many congregations today are dealing with changes that have led to decline and significant loss. In Embracing God's Future without Forgetting the Past, Michael K. Girlinghouse argues that until a congregation comes to terms with its perceived losses through a healthy process of grief, it will be paralyzed in the present and unable to think creatively about the future. Acknowledging and expressing grief will give the congregation the courage to redefine its relationship with the past and draw strength and encouragement from its memories as it steps into the future. Drawing on more than thirty years of ministry experience in varied settings and concurrent study and teaching about loss, grief, and nostalgia, Girlinghouse shows clergy, church staff, and lay leaders how they can work through the experience of loss and grief, both personally and in their congregation. Part 1 discusses loss and grief using a contemporary, task-based model for the grief process. It also introduces recent research on the value of nostalgia. In part 2, Girlinghouse helps leaders tell their congregation's story, including its losses, examine how that story fits in our current social context, and explore ways to accept the reality of its losses and express grief over them. Part 3 considers ways congregations can think more adaptively and creatively about the future without forgetting or devaluing the past. Girlinghouse presents appreciative inquiry as a tool to discover and build on a congregation's strengths while coming to terms with its losses. Part 4 is about embracing God's future for the congregation, "remembering forward," and making the changes necessary to move from the sadness of loss to the joy of taking up life again. Each chapter includes a Bible study and questions for reflection and discussion.
Author: Michael K. Girlinghouse
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506458890
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 294
Get Book Here
Book Description
Many congregations today are dealing with changes that have led to decline and significant loss. In Embracing God's Future without Forgetting the Past, Michael K. Girlinghouse argues that until a congregation comes to terms with its perceived losses through a healthy process of grief, it will be paralyzed in the present and unable to think creatively about the future. Acknowledging and expressing grief will give the congregation the courage to redefine its relationship with the past and draw strength and encouragement from its memories as it steps into the future. Drawing on more than thirty years of ministry experience in varied settings and concurrent study and teaching about loss, grief, and nostalgia, Girlinghouse shows clergy, church staff, and lay leaders how they can work through the experience of loss and grief, both personally and in their congregation. Part 1 discusses loss and grief using a contemporary, task-based model for the grief process. It also introduces recent research on the value of nostalgia. In part 2, Girlinghouse helps leaders tell their congregation's story, including its losses, examine how that story fits in our current social context, and explore ways to accept the reality of its losses and express grief over them. Part 3 considers ways congregations can think more adaptively and creatively about the future without forgetting or devaluing the past. Girlinghouse presents appreciative inquiry as a tool to discover and build on a congregation's strengths while coming to terms with its losses. Part 4 is about embracing God's future for the congregation, "remembering forward," and making the changes necessary to move from the sadness of loss to the joy of taking up life again. Each chapter includes a Bible study and questions for reflection and discussion.
Author: Todd W. Ferguson
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers
ISBN: 1506480837
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 214
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Book Description
This book lets pastors who feel stuck know that they're not alone or crazy, and it's not their fault. It helps congregations better support their clergy. And it joins in the conversation about reshaping seminary training and professional development.
Author: Chad Fothergill
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress
ISBN: 1506469566
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 128
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Book Description
Sing with all the People of God by Chad Fothergill will be especially valuable for church musicians as well as pastors and other rostered leaders. It addresses topics such as skillful preparation, planning, and leadership of assembly song, working with volunteer musicians and staff, navigating questions of musical style, and more.
Author: Larry E. Thomas
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666713325
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 137
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Book Description
At the end of February 2020, Larry and Ann Thomas left their home in Issaquah, Washington, for a three-week vacation visiting family in Colorado and Texas. News of the coronavirus pandemic was slowly spreading. By the middle of March 2020 the world had changed and the global pandemic was in full swing. The Thomases decided to shelter in place in Flower Mound, Texas, for the next six weeks. On March 17, 2020, when Larry returned to his work as the interim pastor at Sammamish Hills Lutheran Church in Sammamish, Washington, it was from a makeshift office in Texas, not his office in Sammamish. Working remotely, Pastor Thomas began organizing weekly virtual prayer gatherings and Bible studies. In order to connect with the congregation, he started writing pastoral letters as a way of reflecting on the intersection of faith, hope, and love while living through the pandemic. Lily Packed a Facemask is a chronicle of one pastor's commitment to engage with a congregation during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Grounded in biblical texts, Thomas takes the threads of a variety of writers and contemporary resources and weaves a tapestry of living life faithfully in the midst of a year of constant changes and challenges.
Author: Pastor Ross L. Worch
Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 1098092422
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 785
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Book Description
Love and Serve is composed of 377 devotions to give daily guidance in our servant ministry to reflect God's love to all around us. There are 366 devotions for every day of the year, plus eleven additional devotions for the Church year celebrations that move around the calendar because they are controlled by the changing date of Easter each year. That makes this devotional book useable year after year. By ecclesiastical rules, Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring. There are thirty-five possible dates for Easter, from March 22 to April 25. The devotions for Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter, and Pentecost can be plugged in each year on the specific date that applies for that year. Love and Serve is really a group of 377 mini-sermons to help us turn God's Word into daily action. Each devotion is headed by words from the Bible, and the devotion answers the question, "What does this mean for us in the twenty-first century?" And each devotion ends with a short prayer that is intended to help us put our words into action. This love (agape) is the kind of unconditional love that God has for each of us and the way God wants us to love each other. Agape, when done as God intended, is a verb, an action word. God calls on us to be his ambassadors here on earth. We are to represent God to our neighbors. Love and Serve, used daily, can greatly assist in this endeavor. We are called upon to love God and neighbor and to do God's work with our hands. We are called to love and serve.
Author: Deborah Smith Pegues
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers
ISBN: 0736962220
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 226
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Book Description
Why is forgiveness so hard? People who refuse to forgive often sabotage their future and create an emotional cancer that spreads into every other aspect of their lives. Even those who genuinely desire to forgive often struggle to get beyond their wounded emotions. In Forgive, Let Go, and Live, Deborah Pegues provides specific guidelines to help us better understand what forgiveness is and what it's not how to overcome seemingly unforgivable hurts when to restore, redefine, or release a hurtful relationship how it's possible to forgive without forgetting why learning how to forgive is a process Pegues showcases the triumphs of famous and everyday people as well as biblical characters who decided to pursue forgiveness and also the tragedies of those who chose to wallow in anger and revenge. If you've been wounded by another, this book will empower you to find joy, freedom, and peace as you let go of your desire to avenge the wrong and make a commitment to release the offender from his debt.
Author: Robert D. Cornwall
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 172526868X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 122
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Book Description
What does your spiritual DNA look like? In terms of your spiritual identity, where do you come from and where are you going? We live in an age when many Christians have experienced several denominational and religious communities. Many wonder what to do with these experiences. At the same time many congregations are made up of people who come from different traditions, and the question is how to bring these diverse experiences into the life of the congregation in an enriching way. If we take as our starting point, the call of Abraham and Sarah to take a journey to an unknown land with the promise that their descendants would be a blessing to the nations, what might this look like in terms of our spiritual lives? Join with the author as he draws on his spiritual journey that has taken him into several denominational traditions, as well as his experiences as a pastor and historical theologian, to discern values and concepts that can help congregations and individuals make sense of their diverse spiritual experiences, so that together we might fulfill the Abrahamic calling, reaffirmed in Christ, to be a blessing to the nations.
Author:
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress
ISBN: 150647439X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 100
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Book Description
Christ in Our Home is a quarterly Christian devotional that brings you a daily message of God's amazing grace. Reflections and prayers are based on scripture readings from Revised Common Lectionary Daily Readings. Each day offers a Bible verse, a personal commentary or meditation, a suggested prayer concern, and a unique prayer. Enjoyed by readers for more than 60 years, Christ in Our Home is now available electronically.
Author:
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress
ISBN: 1506491235
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 100
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Book Description
Christ in Our Home is a quarterly Christian devotional that brings you a daily message of God's amazing grace. Reflections and prayers are based on scripture readings from Revised Common Lectionary Daily Readings. Each day offers a Bible verse, a personal commentary or meditation, a suggested prayer concern, and a unique prayer. Enjoyed by readers for more than 60 years, Christ in Our Home is now available electronically.
Author: Miroslav Volf
Publisher: Abingdon Press
ISBN: 1426712332
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 453
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Book Description
Life at the end of the twentieth century presents us with a disturbing reality. Otherness, the simple fact of being different in some way, has come to be defined as in and of itself evil. Miroslav Volf contends that if the healing word of the gospel is to be heard today, Christian theology must find ways of speaking that address the hatred of the other. Reaching back to the New Testament metaphor of salvation as reconciliation, Volf proposes the idea of embrace as a theological response to the problem of exclusion. Increasingly we see that exclusion has become the primary sin, skewing our perceptions of reality and causing us to react out of fear and anger to all those who are not within our (ever-narrowing) circle. In light of this, Christians must learn that salvation comes, not only as we are reconciled to God, and not only as we "learn to live with one another", but as we take the dangerous and costly step of opening ourselves to the other, of enfolding him or her in the same embrace with which we have been enfolded by God.
