This innovative book helps pastors and teachers enhance their teaching with original, audience appropriate stories--the way Jesus did! Bruce Seymour explains how such stories work, when to use them, and how to create them.
A New York Times Notable Book A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012 A bold approach to understanding the American evangelical experience from an anthropological and psychological perspective by one of the country's most prominent anthropologists. Through a series of intimate, illuminating interviews with various members of the Vineyard, an evangelical church with hundreds of congregations across the country, Tanya Luhrmann leaps into the heart of evangelical faith. Combined with scientific research that studies the effect that intensely practiced prayer can have on the mind, When God Talks Back examines how normal, sensible people—from college students to accountants to housewives, all functioning perfectly well within our society—can attest to having the signs and wonders of the supernatural become as quotidian and as ordinary as laundry. Astute, sensitive, and extraordinarily measured in its approach to the interface between science and religion, Luhrmann's book is sure to generate as much conversation as it will praise.
This is a complete and practical introduction to storying, especially for people who want to learn about using biblical storytelling in cross-cultural contexts and who want to train others to become storytellers. It includes many fascinating accounts of the responses of tribal people to the first proclamation of the gospel through storytelling. The result of years of research and field testing, Telling God's Stories with Power is a product of the author's own journey as he confronted the challenges of teaching the Bible in parts of the world where people are unaccustomed to a Western style of learning. Full of innovative and groundbreaking insights, this study is packed with ideas, explanations, and constructive suggestions stated in clear and simple language. Throughout the book there are extensive examples from the storytellers' own experiences. Tracing the movement of the biblical stories across multiple generations of tellers and listeners, storytelling is found to be superior for knowledge transfer and for bypassing resistance to the gospel in oral contexts, thus presenting clear evidence of the effectiveness of biblical narrative among oral learners.
How religious caregivers can find spiritual renewal in their own story Recalling Our Own Stories, which author Edward P. Wimberly describes as "a spiritual retreat in book form," is designed to help clergy and religious caregivers face the challenges of ministry. It is also a valuable resource for practitioners who assist these clergy and caregivers in meeting the challenges of their work. Wimberly enables caregivers to map out and come to grips with cultural expectations of their profession. He also helps readers explore and edit the mythologies that make up their self-image, attitudes toward others, expectations about their performance and role, and convictions about ministry. Finally, he provides a model for spiritual and emotional review grounded in narrative psychology and spiritual approaches. As Wimberly explains, this book offers a way to renew our motivation for ministry by reconnecting to our original call, visualizing again how God has acted and remains intricately involved in our lives. Wimberly demonstrates how religious caregivers, often facing burnout, can tap the sources of renewal that reside in the faith community.
Written by a team of 21st-century scholar-practitioners, Discovering the Mission of God explores the mission of God as presented in the Bible, expressed throughout church history and in cutting-edge best practices being used around the world today.
How does the world’s oral majority—adults with limited formal education (ALFE)—really prefer to learn? Few pause long enough to ask those who eschew print. The result of scholarly research and prolonged immersion in the Cambodian culture, Connected Learning exposes the truth about orality—the shame associated with limited formal education; the unfortunate misnomer that is orality; the place of spirituality, grace, and hope; and the obvious but overlooked learning preferences. ALFE have different ways of learning and knowing, a different epistemology and culture from print learners, even though we all begin alike. The choice is not between Ong’s orality or literacy, but between learning from people or from print. Dr. Thigpen, a veteran cross-cultural worker, shares remedies for the hegemony and inequities unwittingly fostered by the literate minority. In a dominant culture where learning from people is prime, how can educators with a preference for print adapt? Providing an important tool in the Learning Quadrants diagram, Connected Learning advises teaching to the quadrant and calls for seven necessary shifts in teaching. Anyone versed in orality will admit these findings have “global implications and applications” (Steffen). The reader who heeds will positively impact a huge portion of humanity.
Have Western exegetes turned an Eastern book into a Western one? Has our fondness for a fixed printed text capable of being analyzed with precision and exactitude blinded us to other hermeneutic possibilities? Does God require all people to be able to analyze grammar to interpret Scripture? Does God assume all people can interpret Scripture through oral means? The authors recognize the effects of centuries of literacy socialization that produced a blind spot in the Western Christian world--the neglect by most in the academies, agencies, and assemblies of the foundational and forceful role orality had on the biblical text and teaching. From the inspired spoken word of the prophets, including Jesus (pre-text), to the elite literate scribes who painstakingly hand-printed the sacred text, to post-text interpretation and teaching, the footprint of orality throughout the entire process is acutely visible to those having the oral-aural influenced eyes of the Mediterranean ancients. Could oral hermeneutics be the "mother of relational theology"?
“I vaguely remember finding Jesus when I was a child, but I vividly recall losing him.” Jared Herd grew up the son of a preacher, baptized in religion before he was ever baptized in church. As a child, his parents went through a painful and public divorce, and Jesus became a distant memory, like an artifact of childhood that gets put away and forgotten. Eventually Jared broke a promise he made to himself and walked back into church. He realized the problem wasn’t God—it was how he had been told to think about God. Like Jared, teenagers and young adults are leaving the church in astonishing numbers. Something is obviously wrong. Is the problem Jesus? Or is the problem how we have been told to think about Jesus? Perhaps you’ve always wondered how music, movies, friends, or anything on the outside of Christianity could relate to your life inside of it. Perhaps something in your life keeps you from believing you would ever fit in as a believer. Maybe you were always told what to become, but no one tried to understand how you became who you are. In More Lost Than Found, Jared Herd comes alongside anyone who has ever struggled with faith to reengage them in the truth they long to hear. If you have ever felt you didn’t fit at church or had questions about God, maybe it’s time to give your faith another chance. God wants to find you where you are. Endorsements: In More Lost Than Found Jared Herd writes with both honesty and hope as he shares his journey and welcomes us all to re-examine true faith in the midst of a fragmented culture. Like he speaks, Jared crafts More Lost Than Found with humor and grace as he seeks to repair pathways once broken and ushers a new generation into the wonder and mystery of the Gospel. ?Louie Giglio, The Passion Movement, Passion City Church Jared Herd is a powerful and free spirit, ruled by truth and grace. He is a voice that comes to us every so often, reminding our mind and soul which direction to amicably go—closer to God. Not only am I grateful to have his writings, I am even more astounded to have him as a friend. Let us all find what we seek. ?Matt Schulze, actor, leading roles in Fast and Furious, The Transporter, and many more Jared Herd belies our usual assumption that to be “wise” one must be “old.” Here is a young guy who teems with shrewd discernment. He is a vigorous boundary-crosser, moving readily back and forth between old and new, secular and sacred, “pop” and serious, innovation and tradition. In the midst of it, he senses a purpose other than his own and a calling out beyond self. Readers are invited to such boundary-crossing toward a future where faith matters enormously. ?Walter Brueggemann- world renowned theologian, Columbia Theological Seminary In More Lost than Found, Jared Herd presents us the Christian faith in a way that is engaging, intellectual, and disarming. He moves between popular culture and his own biblical convictions with a humble and honest voice, while pulling his audience back to a God they've grown weary of. As someone who has worked for over 50 years in the entertainment industry, I can tell you how rare it is to find someone who can speak to the next generation. Jared Herd is one of those voices. I'm grateful for his work and his friendship. ?Michael Jay Solomon, founder, Solomon Entertainment, former president of Warner Bros International Television
The Cape Town Commitment, which arose from The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization (Cape Town, 2010), stands in the historic line of The Lausanne Covenant (1974) and The Manila Manifesto (1989). It has been translated into twenty-five languages and has commanded wide acceptance around the world. The Commitment is set in two parts. Part 1 is a Confession of Faith, crafted in the language of covenantal love. Part 2 is a Call to Action. The local church, mission agencies, special-interest groups, and Christians in the professions are all urged to find their place in its outworking. This annotated bibliography of The Cape Town Commitment, arranged by topic, has been compiled by specialists in a range of fields. As such, it is the first bibliography of its kind. Arranged in sections for graduate-level teaching Equally useful for research students