Author: Steve Sjogren
Publisher: Flagship Church Resources
ISBN: 9780764423437
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 210
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Book Description
Build bridges of love to your church community...with wisdom from respected Christian leaders. Respected Christian leaders share key action plans and an encouraging vision for seeing beyond church walls created by inward-focus and introversion, to how to penetrate our local communities with the love of Jesus Christ. "In the trenches" church leaders like Steve Sjogren, Dale Galloway, Sally Morgenthaler, and Leonard Sweet give challenging, and passionate, yet intensely practical insights into transforming your church to become lovingly and strategically outwardly-focused. A bridge-building body of Christ that overcomes its own inwardly focused gaze to grip the hearts of those beyond church walls.
Author: Dr. Dan Montgomery
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 143032418X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 150
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Book Description
Dan Montgomery invites you to step through the first page of the book and walk with him to the top of a mountain peak. There you talk heart to heart while sharing your favorite drink. This imaginary journey begins a dialogue about the difficulties of being human and how faith in God infuses your life with guidance and companionship. Theologian Gabriel Fackre writes: "Christian teaching about the Trinity becomes up close and personal in this engaging work by a wise counselor. Here is enriching daily guidance from compass therapy for our pilgrimage with the triune God." GUIDEPOSTS Roving Editor Elizabeth Sherrill writes, “I’ve waited a long time for a book like this! Like a caring counselor in private session, Dan Montgomery writes to anyone who thinks being a Christian means conforming to someone else’s pattern. To anyone who believes his current situation is hopeless. To anyone seeking a more intimate walk with Father, Son and Holy Spirit.â€
Author: Jim Petersen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780997021387
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 302
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Book Description
In Church Without Walls, prominent author Jim Petersen offers an exciting definition of the church that pushes beyond the too-small boundaries we've inherited from the past. This book explores why some church forms impede the gospel in today's postmodern world.
Author: Michael D. O'Neil
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725278901
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 261
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Book Description
The church today is in many places “on the nose.” For many people, it stinks. It has passed its “use-by” date and should be relegated to the dustbins of history, and the sooner, the better. Nevertheless, the contributors to this volume believe that the church, in spite of its somewhat checkered history and its many present failures, remains an integral part of God’s redemptive purposes being worked out in the world, and that God’s call to the church is now what it has always been: to be the faithful people of God, bearing joy-filled witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ in word, worship, and work, in its corporate life, and in the lives of each of its members. Each chapter in this book explores an aspect of what it means to be the church, both with respect to its own life, and with an eye to its presence and mission in the world.
Author: Anna Woofenden
Publisher: MennoMedia, Inc.
ISBN: 1513804855
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 226
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Book Description
Can a barren city lot become a church? This is the story of an audacious journey. It’s the story of what happens when people garden, worship, and eat together—and invite anyone and everyone to join them. In This Is God’s Table, writer and pastor Anna Woofenden describes the way that the wealthy and the poor, the aged and the young, the housed and unhoused become a community in this once-empty lot. Together they plant and sustain a thriving urban farm, worship God, and share a weekly meal. Together they craft a shared life and a place of authenticity where all are welcome. Readers of Nadia Bolz-Weber, Sara Miles, and Diana Butler Bass will find here a kindred vision for a church without walls. As churches across the Western world wither, what would it take to find a raw, honest, gritty way of doing church—one rooted in place, nurtured by grace, and grounded in God’s expansive love? What would it take to carry the liturgy outside the gates? What if we were to discover that in feeding others, we are fed? This is God’s table. Come and eat.
Author: David N Elkins
Publisher: Quest Books
ISBN: 0835630587
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 325
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Book Description
Let David Elkins, psychologist and former minister, show you how to find authentic, soul-nurturing spirituality outside church or temple walls. Discover your personal path to the sacred and explore new ways to bring nonreligious spirituality into your life.
Author: Martin Poole
Publisher: Canterbury Press
ISBN: 1786224844
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 125
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Book Description
Church Beyond Walls tells inspiring, informative and occasionally funny stories of how a group of people took Christian spirituality outside of church buildings to engage a world increasingly uninterested in religion, God and faith. From imaginative and wide-ranging experiments, it draws out principles to inspire local churches to express their faith in their communities, and it shares liturgical and other resources developed for these occasions. Based in Brighton and known as BEYOND, for over ten years this group of dreamers, artists and provocateurs have experimented with public art, created light shows and walking meditations, partnered with retailers to create spiritual shop window trails, celebrated the festivals of the church in secular spaces, used folk traditions and more to introduce people to the Christian faith. Their goal and the aim of this book is to help local churches create opportunities for epiphanies: moments when the divine can break into human experience.
Author: Robert E. Logan
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 1441236716
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
Based on God's vision for churches in Matthew 28:18-20, this book presents sound methods for making disciples, winning the lost for Christ, and planting new churches.
Author: James S. Currie
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532652232
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 86
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Book Description
From 1949 to 1989, Germany was divided into West and East Germany. While West Germany became an ally of Western democracies, East Germany was allied with the Soviet Union and was governed by Marxist Communism. What was it like to be the church in East Germany? Hanfried Muller was a professor of theology and a committed Marxist. Johannes Hamel was a pastor who tried to minister in this environment. How did the two differ? This book examines the contrast between the two men and the struggle many pastors and Christians endured as they lived and worked in a hostile environment. Furthermore, it raises the question of how Christians everywhere deal with the issue of the relationship between church and state and what the Christian's responsibility is in that relationship.
Author: B. R. Mims
Publisher: First Edition Design Pub.
ISBN: 1937520609
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 90
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Book Description
Faces Beyond Sacred Walls is not a how-to book as much as it is one for individual and church-corporate self-reflections about their social advocacy role to the community of the poor and oppressed. The author takes the reader on a self-examining journey through the difficult and often painful introspective process for addressing the Church's social advocacy role in response to God's original mandate for the poor found throughout the Bible. Using Luke 4:18-19, 21 as his foundational biblical principle for writing, the author stresses the Church, by divine design, has a dual role: evangelism (salvation) and mission (benevolence or poverty relief). In any given context, they may and should complement each other. However, there should be no conflict between ones' commitment as disciples to evangelism and poverty relief. They are hand-in-hand. Through biblical narratives, the author brings the reader to focus on inner conviction about the advocacy's role of the local church. He begins with the premise that the fundamental starting point for transformation and social engagement is our recognition of the integral value in humanity, the beauty of God so often hidden by sin and failure and pain and brokenness. As you read, you will discover the artful dialogue the author implores in highlighting the importance of self-examination towards transformation and social engagement for the purpose of calling the body of Christ in local churches to committed service and ministry to the community of the poor and oppressed. The author makes it plain that if it is our goal to know Christ and make Him known, then Christ will reveal Himself to us as we come face-to-face with "the least of these" in ways we will never meet Him in a Bible study, prayer meeting, or sermon. The author painstakingly argues and engages the reader through such subject matters as God's Mandate for Social Advocacy, The Early Church Concerns for the Poor, Theological Claims for Social Engagement, The Church's Answer to Poverty, Leadership Paradigm Shift, Social Advocacy Challenges, and Rethinking Programs of the Church. Each subject is designed to present a forum for relevant conversation for anyone concerned about the plight of the poor, poverty, lack of relief or means of navigating the bureaucratic system to access such relief, and the role of the church in such a situation. Using the idea of walls, the reader is drawn into an opportunity for serious reflection and dialogue about church-community relationships. Important, because as the author explains, beyond our "specific" sacred walls you will find the many obscure faces of a socially-hurting society: faces that tell stories. Too often, they are specific faces reduced to nothing more than statistics and, at deeper level, testimonies against churches in their community of influence. They are the poor, deemed marginalize by way of costs spent on their behalf and needs that remain unfulfilled. Seldom are they seen as individuals with personalities and considered as deserving of respect. They are nothing more than obscure faces...waiting to be acknowledged. The conclusion of the author is the church has an obligation to engage the entire membership in a journey of discovery about what God is calling them to be, to know, and to do in their lives, and how they can exercise that calling through the church. It is the journey to understand oneself as living in the presence of God and actively engaging in the disenfranchised poor and oppressed community for relief from injustice, brokenness, and suffering. The world is watching to see who truly loves others enough to take action. God is watching to see who is like Him and will love a poor and needy world. One thing for sure, when the church (collectively and individually) makes social advocacy a priority in its life and ministry, it can never expect to be the same.
