The Inventive Age (the cultural turning following the Agrarian, Industrial, and Information ages) provides opportunities for reshaping all institutions and communities. Doug Pagitt brings to life ten Inventive Age characteristics as they are experienced through the community of Solomon's Porch - a holistic missional Christian community in Minneapolis. These ten characteristics of Inventive Age culture will serve as a guide for those creating new faith communities and making changes in existing ones.
Many books seek to predict the future of Christianity, but few help us grasp the opportunities of the current situation and equip us to navigate the present. Doug Pagitt, author, radio host, and pioneering leader, does just that, offering fresh, optimistic insights and practical suggestions. According to Pagitt, the last two centuries can be divided into four epochs: Idyllic, Industrial, Informational and now-Inventive. The Inventive Age - our currently reality - presents distinct opportunities for how faith communities think, what they value, and the tools they use. Pagitt offers leaders in Christian communities (and beyond) essential frameworks for participation in the Inventive Age.
What kind of communities are we forming? What story are we telling? How can we tell it more effectively? Pagitt takes on these questions and investigates the goals and roles of preaching in the Inventive Age. From the book: “I find myself wanting to live with the people of my community, where I can preach … but not allow that to become an act of speech making. Instead, I want it to be a living interaction of the story of God and the story of our community being connected by our truth telling, our vulnerability, and our open minds, ears, and eyes – all brought together by the active work of the Spirit of God….”
We live in changing times of significant cultural change. In the Inventive Age (the cultural turning following the Agrarian, Industrial, and Information ages) how people think has changed. This has created a new context for Evangelism. Previous methods not only do not work, they are often counterproductive. Evangelism in the Inventive Age is not a "next-level" resource for those who are already comfortable and confident evangelists, but is a book for the rest of us. For most Christians the issue of converting other people or sharing their faith is a troubled endeavor. Very few are in a comfortable place of natural invitation, faithful integration, and hopefulness in sharing faith. This book will create a new perspective on evangelism for the ordinary person who has extraordinary questions. Evangelism in the Inventive Age is for those who have deep questions about the validity of evangelism and for whom evangelism does not come naturally.
Church reimagined for a new day Katie Hays, planter-pastor of Galileo Church, shares the story of departing from the traditional church for the frontier of the spiritual-but-not-religious and building community with Jesus-loving (or at least Jesus-curious) outsiders. Now well-established, Galileo Church “seeks and shelters spiritual refugees” in the suburbs of Fort Worth, Texas—especially young adults, LGBTQ+ people, and all the people who love them. Told in funny, poignant, and short vignettes, Galileo's story is not one of how to be cool for Christ. Like its founder, Galileo is deeply uncool and deeply devout, and always straining ahead to see what God will do next. Hays says curiosity is her greatest virtue, and she recounts how her curiosity led her to share the good news with people who are half her age and intensely skeptical. If you are all-in with Jesus but have trust issues with church, We Were Spiritual Refugees will give you hope for finding a community-of-belonging to call home.
What theologies are popular and formative of Christian thinking in the present day? How should they be assessed by those Christians who want to be "in the world" without being "of the world"? Theologies of the 21st Century begins with an overview of the historical roots from which current theological thinking has developed, and then moves on to a detailed evaluation of the chief doctrinal and practical emphases, taking an evangelical biblical perspective that seeks to be at once both critical and irenic.
American Christians, weary of decades of entrenched partisan feuding, are increasingly distancing themselves from politics. Some, however, continue to turn toward the state and public policy to find solutions to the world's problems. The problem is that both responses allow a narrow vision of politics to determine the church's mission and ministries, which often ends up separating its commitment to personal faith from the pursuit of social justice--the King from the kingdom. Christians too easily forget that the church is inherently political, a community defined by its allegiance to a King, its citizenship in a new world, and its call to work alongside others in pursuit of a new way of life. The church needs a political vision that is more than blind acceptance or mere rejection of past models. It needs a positive vision that takes its cues about politics not from the nation-state but from another political reality: the kingdom of God. This book tells the stories of the visits of two researchers to five diverse congregations across the United States. From the megachurch energy of Rick Warren's Saddleback Church in California, to a young Emergent community in Minneapolis, to the politically active home of Martin Luther King in Atlanta, these stories illuminate the vastly different ways congregations understand and approach politics--and offer a glimpse of a new political imagination for today's church.
