The twentieth century brought new problems: racial conflict that led to the establishment of regional conferences and the call for Black unions, and congregational rumblings that continue to the present. As the church contemplates a third cycle of restructuring, the author wonders whether it will be flexible enough to change again.
This biography by historian George Knight makes use of previously unavailable sources, letters, and logbooks to shed new light on the first theologian and real founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Short-term mission trips are commonplace in American church life. Yet their growth and practice have largely been divorced from theological education, seminary training, and mission studies. Consuming Mission takes important steps in offering a theological assessment of the practice of STM and tools for subsequent mission training. Using relevant academic studies and original focus-group interviews, Haynes offers important insights into this ubiquitous practice. While carefully examining the biblical and historical foundations for mission, Consuming Mission engages more contemporary movements like the Missio Dei, Fresh Expressions, the Emergent Church, and Third-Wave Mission movements that have helped shape mission. The unique role of United Methodist mission is illustrated through its historical roots and contemporary expression in the ubiquitous STM movement in the United States. Haynes uses original field research data to gather the implicit and explicit theologies of lay and clergy participants. Cultural influences are significantly influencing STM participants as they use their time, money, sacrifice, and service, applied in the name of mission, to purchase a personal growth experience commonly sought by pilgrims. The resulting tensions from mixing mission, pilgrimage, and tourism creates are explored. Haynes offers important steps to move the practice away from using mission for personal edification.
In some parts of the world it seems the Seventh-day Adventist Church is in danger of settling down into a social club. That is, unless it remembers its mission.With growing secularization, disorientation, and institutionalism, how can the church maintain its identity? How is the church to function considering it was founded on the belief that time is short-yet time keeps going on?Not just for church administrators and academics-this is a call to duty to all church members, a call to become a church alive with passion and purpose. Let these pages reinvigorate you with fresh thoughts about the Adventist mission and how to accomplish it. Because the world doesn't need another social club. It needs to hear God's message.
Profiles a large Christian denomination that is only two centuries old, but has a rapidly growing member base, including a large presence in the Third World. Reviews the notable historical events in a chronology; explains the development of the Seventh-day Adventist as a world religion in the introductory essay; describes the persons, places, events, doctrines, publications, institutions, organizations, and societies that played a significant role in shaping the religion; and provides an extensive bibliography of works on Seventh-day Adventism and books expressing Adventist views on theological and other issues.
Following Jesus is hard to do – but even harder if we take ourselves too seriously. The Unofficial United Methodist Handbook is the indispensable companion for anyone trying to live a committed Christian life, with a healthy dose of humor. Timeless biblical truths stand alongside everyday life situations that everyone meets, with step-by-step instructions that make the going easy: How to Stay Alert in Church How to Identify an Angel (with diagram) How to Survive for One Hour in an Un-Air-Conditioned Church How to Share Your Faith with Someone How to Identify and Avoid Evil How to Survive an Old Testament Plague How to Memorize a Bible Verse Common Christian Symbols and What They Mean What Is Unique about The United Methodist Church and Its History …plus dozens of other illustrations, maps, diagrams, and essential tips! This unique and incredibly handy resource is perfect for United Methodist youth, adults, students, families, and all those interested in learning about life in the church.
In Ministers and Masters Charity R. Carney presents a thorough account of the way in which Methodist preachers constructed their own concept of masculinity within -- and at times in defiance of -- the constraints of southern honor culture of the early nineteenth century. By focusing on this unique subgroup of southern men, the book explores often-debated concepts like southern honor and patriarchy in a new way. Carney analyzes Methodist preachers both involved with and separate from mainstream southern society, and notes whether they served as itinerants -- venturing into rural towns -- or remained in city churches to witness to an urban population. Either way, they looked, spoke, and acted like outsiders, refusing to drink, swear, dance, duel, or even dress like other white southern men. Creating a separate space in which to minister to southern men, women, and children, oftentimes converting a dancehall floor into a pulpit, they raised the ire of non- Methodists around them. Carney shows how understanding these distinct and often defiant stances provides an invaluable window into antebellum society and also the variety of masculinity standards within that culture. In Ministers and Masters, Carney uses ministers' stories to elucidate notions of secular sinfulness and heroic Methodist leadership, explores contradictory ideas of spiritual equality and racial hierarchy, and builds a complex narrative that shows how numerous ministers both rejected and adopted concepts of southern mastery. Torn between convention and conviction, Methodist preachers created one of the many "Souths" that existed in the nineteenth century and added another dimension to the well-documented culture of antebellum society.
Born just as the Civil War began, Lewis Sheafe grew to manhood at a pivotal moment in American history. But instead of racial equality, the nation offered its freed slaves further oppression and injustice. Sheafestrong-willed, dynamic, and seemingly tirelesshad but two main objectives: uplift his people spiritually and socially, and consistently adhere to biblical principle in all aspects of life. In this gripping biography Douglas Morgan pieces together the life of this forgotten leader whose story sheds light on the reason that no lasting, separate Black Adventist denomination ever formed.
Sand Creek. At dawn on the morning of November 29, 1864, Colonel John Milton Chivington gave the command that led to slaughter of 230 peaceful Cheyennes and Arapahos—primarily women, children, and elderly—camped under the protection of the U. S. government along Sand Creek in Colorado Territory and flying both an American flag and a white flag. The Sand Creek massacre seized national attention in the winter of 1864-1865 and generated a controversy that still excites heated debate more than 150 years later. At Sand Creek demoniac forces seemed unloosed so completely that humanity itself was the casualty. That was the charge that drew public attention to the Colorado frontier in 1865. That was the claim that spawned heated debate in Congress, two congressional hearings, and a military commission. Westerners vociferously and passionately denied the accusations. Reformers seized the charges as evidence of the failure of American Indian policy. Sand Creek launched a war that was not truly over for fifteen years. In the first year alone, it cost the United States government $50,000,000. Methodists have a special stake in this story. The governor whose polices led the Cheyennes and Arapahos to Sand Creek was a prominent Methodist layman. Colonel Chivington was a Methodist minister. Perhaps those were merely coincidences, but the question also remains of how the Methodist Episcopal Church itself responded to the massacre. Was it also somehow culpable in what happened? It is time for this story to be told. Coming to grips with what happened at Sand Creek involves hard questions and unsatisfactory answers not only about what happened but also about what led to it and why. It stirs ancient questions about the best and worst in every person, questions older than history, questions as relevant as today’s headlines, questions we all must answer from within.
