Inspiring Faith Communities

Inspiring Faith Communities PDF Author: Michael Hurley
Publisher: Messenger Publications
ISBN: 1788122747
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
The great value of this book is that it helps people to explore together how they can live life more fully and with authentic freedom. It has all the more relevance today in an impact of Covid 19 is to push us to a new depth of interiority and to seek new answers that give meaning and vitality. This book has three distinct parts: Part one outlines three convictions that guide its direction and the program it describes. Firstly, God desires what is best for all people and invites each one personally to know him and to live with responsible freedom, self-determination and confidence in his wisdom and mercy. Secondly, every baptized Christian is called to evangelize, namely, to reach out beyond themselves in a way that proclaims and expresses the goodness of God, through action and words and thus enriches those whom they meet Thirdly, the parish is an important entity in the renewal of God’s people as a dwelling place of God among them. Here people meet in communion with one another to worship God, to encounter him, and to be send forth. The author admits that these three convictions are deeply held by him, and have provided compass points for his ministry. Part two is the central core of the book. It outlines a program that gives flesh and reality to its three underpinning convictions. It provides a practical step- by step outline for people to plan, launch and direct the program in a way that helps participants come to know God’s providence and love amid the contradictions and joys of daily living, and live as his beloved children. It then forms and inspires them to live their relationships in a spirit of joyful service and with love towards all whom they meet, and in a way that enhances renewal and community connections within their parish. Each week presents an important facet of Christian living in a style that is easy to follow, while at the same time inspirational. It all means that hosting this program is within the capacity of anyone who knows a genuine encounter with God, and a desire to share his love with others. Part three consists of a scripture passage and a brief reflection for each day for the duration of the program. It supports the theme of each week. It seeks to help people to pray with the help of the scriptures; to inspire a new or more personal relationship with Christ; and to yield to the mystery of God’s loving. Then what may have proved to be elusive in the past becomes part of one’s own personal story. Part three can equally be looked upon as a booklet, which stands on its own, and which can be used with profound effect as a personal support in recognizing God who is continually searching for them. In an easy to read style, this book will provide possibilities and sightlines for individuals, communities and parishes, in their search for authentic freedom, renewal, and community.

Inspiring Faith Communities

Inspiring Faith Communities PDF Author: Michael Hurley
Publisher: Messenger Publications
ISBN: 1788122747
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Get Book Here

Book Description
The great value of this book is that it helps people to explore together how they can live life more fully and with authentic freedom. It has all the more relevance today in an impact of Covid 19 is to push us to a new depth of interiority and to seek new answers that give meaning and vitality. This book has three distinct parts: Part one outlines three convictions that guide its direction and the program it describes. Firstly, God desires what is best for all people and invites each one personally to know him and to live with responsible freedom, self-determination and confidence in his wisdom and mercy. Secondly, every baptized Christian is called to evangelize, namely, to reach out beyond themselves in a way that proclaims and expresses the goodness of God, through action and words and thus enriches those whom they meet Thirdly, the parish is an important entity in the renewal of God’s people as a dwelling place of God among them. Here people meet in communion with one another to worship God, to encounter him, and to be send forth. The author admits that these three convictions are deeply held by him, and have provided compass points for his ministry. Part two is the central core of the book. It outlines a program that gives flesh and reality to its three underpinning convictions. It provides a practical step- by step outline for people to plan, launch and direct the program in a way that helps participants come to know God’s providence and love amid the contradictions and joys of daily living, and live as his beloved children. It then forms and inspires them to live their relationships in a spirit of joyful service and with love towards all whom they meet, and in a way that enhances renewal and community connections within their parish. Each week presents an important facet of Christian living in a style that is easy to follow, while at the same time inspirational. It all means that hosting this program is within the capacity of anyone who knows a genuine encounter with God, and a desire to share his love with others. Part three consists of a scripture passage and a brief reflection for each day for the duration of the program. It supports the theme of each week. It seeks to help people to pray with the help of the scriptures; to inspire a new or more personal relationship with Christ; and to yield to the mystery of God’s loving. Then what may have proved to be elusive in the past becomes part of one’s own personal story. Part three can equally be looked upon as a booklet, which stands on its own, and which can be used with profound effect as a personal support in recognizing God who is continually searching for them. In an easy to read style, this book will provide possibilities and sightlines for individuals, communities and parishes, in their search for authentic freedom, renewal, and community.

Living Words

Living Words PDF Author: Michael Hurley
Publisher: Messenger Publications
ISBN: 1788123042
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 54

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Book Description
A collection of readings and reflections for participants in the Inspiring Faith Communities program.

Living Words

Living Words PDF Author: Michael Hurley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781788122962
Category : Devotional literature, English
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
A collection of readings and reflections for participants in the Inspiring Faith Communities programme.

Slow Church

Slow Church PDF Author: C. Christopher Smith
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830841148
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
In today's fast-food world, Christianity can seem outdated or archaic. The temptation becomes to pick up the pace and play the game. But Chris Smith and John Pattison invites us to leave franchise faith behind and enter the kingdom of God, where people know each other well and love one another as Christ loves the church.

Creating the Future Together

Creating the Future Together PDF Author: Loren B. Mead
Publisher: Alban Books
ISBN: 9781566993647
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Congregations today face a multitude of challenges in trying to adapt to a quickly changing world. Balancing new concerns with core values is a complicated process that can leave too many members feeling that their voices and needs are not being met. Loren B. Mead and Billie T. Alban have developed Creating the Future Together to share their knowledge of how congregations can use large group methods to navigate these new waters. Large group methods involve getting all the stakeholders together to work on major issues of common concern. Mead and Alban outline four such methods--two for identifying a preferred future and two designed to create community and discover common interest. This book is not meant to be a how-to volume; its primary purpose is to familiarize leaders with these whole-system approaches and to provide a conceptual framework for evaluating their potential usefulness against any given challenge. The authors also share stories from a variety of Christian and Jewish faith communities where ordinary religious leaders, lay and clergy together, have faced issues related to change using large group methods. Combining their wealth of experience in leading religious and secular bodies through times of change, Mead and Alban bring hope to faith communities as they work to embrace, and even thrive through, the need for change.

The Exuberant Church

The Exuberant Church PDF Author: Barbara Glasson
Publisher: Darton, Longman & Todd
ISBN: 9780232528619
Category : Listening
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This visionary book from one of the most intriguing and unsettling new voices to have emerged from the churches in recent years finds life and growth in surprising places.Barbara Glasson’s widely discussed first book, I Am Somewhere Else, described ‘the bread church’, the inclusive faith community in Liverpool where people gathered to bake bread and worship God together. She has since worked with lesbian, gay and transgendered Christians, with survivors of childhood sexual abuse, with a group of disabled ministers and with other individuals and groups dealing with trauma and displacement. It is in these ‘prophetic communities’ that she has discovered new ways of understanding the transforming power of the love of God.The ‘Exuberant Church is not a church on a ‘journey’, not an ‘emerging church’, but something more explosive and unpredictable and messy, a church undergoing the strange, frightening but liberating process of ‘coming out’. In The Exuberant Church we are invited to a new way of understanding mission and the church. At a time of meltdown, reorientation and confusion, Barbara Glasson sees hope for the churches in communities sometimes seen as threatening and troubling, and in the process of ‘coming out’ something both profoundly human and deeply of God.

Inspiring Faith in Schools

Inspiring Faith in Schools PDF Author: Marius Felderhof
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317115937
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Inspiring Faith in Schools addresses the privileging of secularism that appears to affect RE in countries influenced by modern western thought. The authors argue that a more engaging form of RE would emerge if religious life were to inhabit centre stage. Currently religious faith is made to hover in the wings awaiting the call to face the inquisitorial challenge of the modern day enquirer. The consequent relationship between pupil and the Divine as the purpose of study is then already intrinsically irreligious, as indicated in the Book of Job by putting God in the dock, whereas it is the pupil who should be (cross-)examining his or her life. What are the ways of exciting and engaging the young so that they begin to entertain the possibility of religious life as a genuine option for themselves? Leading scholars in philosophy and theology from the UK, Australia, Canada and the USA come together to address these questions together with RE experts. Marius Felderhof writes an Afterword summing up the challenges faced by such a re-visioning of RE.

Faith, Hope, and Sustainability

Faith, Hope, and Sustainability PDF Author: Cybelle T. Shattuck
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438482000
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Faith, Hope, and Sustainability explores the experiences of fifteen faith communities striving to care for the earth and live more sustainably. A church in Maine partners with fishermen to create the first community-supported fishery so they can make a living without overfishing. A Jewish congregation in Illinois raises extra funds to construct a green synagogue that expresses their religious mission to heal the world. Benedictine sisters in Wisconsin adopt caring for the earth as part of their mission and begin restoring one hundred acres of prairie, reviving their community in the process. Presbyterians in Virginia, dismayed by air pollution in Shenandoah National Park, take courage from their conviction that "God does not call us to do little things" and advocate for improved national air pollution policies. Stories such as these highlight the variety of environmental actions that people of faith are enacting through congregational venues. Beyond simply narrating inspiring stories, however, this book compares these case studies to explore in detail the processes through which the communities took action. In addition to examining why faith communities engage in earth care, Cybelle T. Shattuck explores how they put intention into action and how the congregational context affects what they do. She introduces an analytical framework focusing on four domains of activity—champions, faith leaders, congregations, and organizations—to explicate the full range of factors that influence how initiatives develop and whether sustainability becomes embedded in these religious organizations. Both the framework and the information on process presented in this book will be highly useful to scholars and to people of faith interested in implementing an earth-care ethic through sustainability programs.

Faith Community Nursing

Faith Community Nursing PDF Author: P. Ann Solari-Twadell
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030161269
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
A multi-authored book, with editors and authors who are leaders in Faith Community Nursing (FCN) that aims to address contemporary issues in faith-based, whole person, community based health offering cost effective, accessible, patient centered care along the patient continuum while challenging contemporary health policy to include more health promotion services. Twenty-five chapters take the reader from a foundational understanding of this historic grass-roots movement to the present day international specialty nursing practice. The book is structured into five sections that describe both the historical advancement of the Faith Community Nursing, its current implications and future challenges, taking into account the perspectives of the pastor, congregation, nurse, health care system and public health national and international organizations. The benefits of this book are that it is intended for a mixed audience including lay, academic, medical professionals or health care executives. By changing the mindset of the reader to see the nurse as more than providing illness care, the faith community as more than a place one goes to on Sunday and health as more than physical, creative alternatives for promoting health emerge through Faith Community Nursing.

Connecting for a Change

Connecting for a Change PDF Author: Christie Latona
Publisher: Abingdon Press
ISBN: 1501874381
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
At its simplest, Mission Strategy is about aligning the what, who, how and when with God’s why. Learn to implement Mission Strategy in your community of faith! Church and community relevance and vitality depends on leaders who see their situation through the lens of Mission Strategy. At its simplest, Mission Strategy is about aligning the what, who, how and when with God’s why. The authors have lived Mission Strategy in a variety of bold ways and have helped others do the same. In doing so, they have created vitality in existing congregations and in newly formed clusters of churches. They have helped create zones of innovation and new ministry development. The sky is the limit when pastors, church leaders and laity in local churches begin emphasizing mission strategy in their conferences, regions, neighborhoods and churches.