For the Life of the World
For the Life of the World

Author: Miroslav Volf

Publisher: Brazos Press

Published: 2021-09-21

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9781587435553

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Christianity Today 2020 Book Award (Award of Merit, Theology/Ethics) Outreach 2020 Recommended Resource of the Year (Theology and Biblical Studies) The question of what makes life worth living is more vital now than ever. In today's pluralistic, postsecular world, universal values are dismissed as mere matters of private opinion, and the question of what constitutes flourishing life--for ourselves, our neighbors, and the planet as a whole--is neglected in our universities, our churches, and our culture at large. Although we increasingly have technology to do almost anything, we have little sense of what is truly worth accomplishing. In this provocative new contribution to public theology, world-renowned theologian Miroslav Volf (named "America's New Public Intellectual" by Scot McKnight on his Jesus Creed blog) and Matthew Croasmun explain that the intellectual tools needed to rescue us from our present malaise and meet our new cultural challenge are the tools of theology. A renewal of theology is crucial to help us articulate compelling visions of the good life, find our way through the maze of contested questions of value, and answer the fundamental question of what makes life worth living.

Holy Envy
Holy Envy

Author: Barbara Brown Taylor

Publisher: Canterbury Press

Published: 2019-03-30

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 1786220792

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The renowned Christian preacher and New York Times bestselling author of An Altar in the World recounts her moving discoveries of finding the sacred in unexpected places while teaching world religions to undergraduates in Baptist-saturated rural Georgia, revealing how God delights in confounding our expectations. Christians are taught that God is everywhere--a tenet that is central to Barbara Brown Taylor's life and faith. In Holy Envy, she continues her spiritual journey, contemplating the myriad ways she encountered God while exploring other faiths with her students in the classroom, and on field trips to diverse places of worship. Both she and her students ponder how the knowledge and insights they have gained raise important questions about belief, and explore how different practices relate to their own faith. Inspired by this intellectual and spiritual quest, Barbara turns once again to the Bible for guidance, to see what secrets lay buried there. Throughout Holy Envy, Barbara weaves together stories from her classroom with reflections on how her own spiritual journey has been challenged and renewed by connecting with people of other traditions--and by meeting God in them. At the heart of her odyssey is her trust that it is God who pushes her beyond her comfortable boundaries and calls us to "disown" our privatised versions of the divine--a change that ultimately deepens her relationship with both the world and with God, and ours.

Expository Exultation
Expository Exultation

Author: John Piper

Publisher: Crossway

Published: 2018-04-16

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 1433561166

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“God has appointed preaching in worship as one great means of accomplishing his ultimate goal in the world.” —John Piper John Piper makes a compelling claim in these pages about the purpose of preaching: it is intended not merely as an explanation of the text but also as a means of awakening worship by being worship in and of itself. Christian preaching is a God-appointed miracle aiming to awaken the supernatural seeing, savoring, and showing of the glory of Christ. Distilling over forty years of experience in preaching and teaching, Piper shows preachers how and what to communicate from God’s Word, so that God’s purpose on earth will advance through Biblesaturated, Christ-exalting, God-centered preaching—in other words, expository exultation.

The Life of the Church
The Life of the Church

Author: Joe Thorn

Publisher: Moody Publishers

Published: 2017-03-07

Total Pages: 102

ISBN-13: 0802494676

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What should a church do? Look at your church’s calendar and you will learn something of its mission. But how do you know it’s the mission Jesus gave? In The Life of the Church, Joe Thorn explains the mission of the church and the three rhythms for fulfilling it. The result is a simple, memorable model for church life and ministry, grounded in Scripture and aligned with historic practices. Useful for training in membership class, discipleship groups, and elder boards—and even for devotional reading—The Life of the Church is at once theological, practical, and experiential. Readers will not simply be informed, but led to a deeper conviction about their role in the body of Christ. Pastors will be equipped to refocus their ministries, and Christians to fulfill their purpose: be and make disciples. If you wonder what it means to be saved into a body of believers, why the various parts of a worship service matter, and how to engage in the world as a citizen of heaven, then The Life of the Church is for you. It answers this critical question: “Why does the church exist, and how does it shape my life?”

Homiletical Theology
Homiletical Theology

Author: David Schnasa Jacobsen

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2015-02-13

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1630878758

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Karl Barth famously argued that all theology is sermon preparation. But what if all sermon preparation is actually theology? This book pursues a thoroughgoing theological vision for the practice of preaching as a way of doing theology. The idea is not just that homiletics is the realm of theological application. That would leave preaching in the position of simply implementing a theology already arrived at. Instead, the vision in these pages is of a form of theology that begins with preaching itself: its practice, its theories, and its contexts. Homiletical theology is thus a unique way of doing theology--even a constructive theological task in its own right. Homiletician David Schnasa Jacobsen has assembled several of the leading lights of contemporary homiletics to help to see its task ever more deeply as theological, yet in profoundly diverse ways. Along the way, readers will not only discover how homileticians do theology homiletically, but will deepen the way in which they understand their own preaching as a theological task.

Be My Witness
Be My Witness

Author: Marvin Andrew McMickle

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780817017729

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Be My Witness addresses the unique challenge and opportunity that preachers face in declaring the gospel with power and relevance to the many concerns society faces-including issues of race, gender, and economic justice. In this volume, Dr. McMickle presents a model for sermon content, context, and spiritual preparation based on Acts 1:6-8, "Be my witnesses, in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Exploring these words of the Risen Christ as a Great Commission to those called to preach, the veteran pastor and professor of preaching unpacks the threefold implications of what it means to be a witness for Jesus: Seeing something, Saying something, Suffering something, Further, the book examines the vital role of the Spirit in becoming Christ's witnesses in the world, and the need to broaden ministry to connect not only with our local neighborhoods but to the global community as well. Book jacket.

Judgment Day
Judgment Day

Author: Paul Collins

Publisher: UNSW Press

Published: 2010-10

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1742240151

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Global warming is now a reality that looms over us, and ecological devastation continues apace. Now, more than ever, there is clear recognition that we face a crisis. But who is to blame for this crisis? In this bold, challenging and provocative book, Paul Collins argues that Christianity has made a major contribution to the plight of the planet and must come to terms with a disaster that is now also the responsibility of the church.

Living in The Story
Living in The Story

Author: Charlotte Vaughan Coyle

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2021-08-26

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 1666705233

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What kind of book is the Bible? Is it a rulebook or a guidebook for moral living? Is it a history book or a book filled with fascinating (and sometimes fantastic) stories? Did humans write the Bible or did God somehow speak a perfect message that the authors transcribed? Many people have asked these questions about the nature of this beautiful, odd, comforting, disturbing book the church calls its “Holy Scripture.” Charlotte Vaughan Coyle shares her own journey to make sense of the Bible in this read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year project. She discovered that the crucial work of asking hard questions and even arguing with the Bible revealed the Scriptures to be a symphony of polyphonic voices, a work of art that paints an alternative vision of reality, a complex novel-like story unavoidably embedded in its own culture and time, and yet able to give witness to the God beyond history who has acted (and continues to act) within history. With the heart of a pastor and the passion of a preacher, Rev. Coyle invites seekers and students (both churched and un-churched) to strap on their scuba gear and join her for a deeper dive beneath the surface of this immense, colorful, mysterious world of the Bible.

Jesus, Liberation, and the Biblical Jubilee
Jesus, Liberation, and the Biblical Jubilee

Author: Sharon H. Ringe

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2004-06-17

Total Pages: 143

ISBN-13: 1592447139

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Sharon H. Ringe, beginning with this Lukan text, addresses the Jubilee images and traditions in the Synoptic Gospels, especially in Jesus' proclamation of the reign of God. She illuminates how the Jubilee traditions served as a source for early Christian ethics and Christology: to confess Jesus as the Christ - herald of the Jubilee, messenger, and enactor of liberation - is to participate in acts of liberation. Ringe concludes that the agenda of liberation constitutes the very core of both the gospel message and biblical faith: the word of God fulfilled in the presence of Jesus of Nazareth is alive with images of liberation. In the final chapter, In Christ We Are Set Free, she explores further the implications of her findings for contemporary ethical and christological reflection.

Latino Pentecostals in America
Latino Pentecostals in America

Author: Gastón Espinosa

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2014-08-25

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 0674728874

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"Seeks to provide a history of the Latino AG [Assemblies of God] that can also serve as a case study and window into the larger Latino Pentecostal, Evangelical, and Protestant movements along with the changing flow of North American religious history." (page 2).