New, different readings of church history are finally reflecting Christianity s deep roots in every culture worldwide. Gonz lez listens to voices from centers other than the North Atlantic to help us see a different perspective of church history -a global story that includes those previously marginalized -as he offers us a hopeful outlook for the future of world Christianity.
How should thoughtful Christians—especially historians and missiologists—make sense of global Christianity as an unfolding historical movement? Highlighting both the continuity and the diversity within the Christian movement over the centuries, this comprehensive resource from Scott Sunquist offers a framework for how to read and write church history.
Allan Doig explores the Christian Church through the lens of twelve particular churches, looking at their history, archaeology, and how the buildings changed over time in response to developing usage and beliefs.
While the church today looks quite different than it did two thousand years ago, Christians share the same faith with the church fathers. Although separated by time and culture, we have much to learn from their lives and teaching. This book is an organized and convenient introduction to how to read the church fathers from AD 100 to 500. Michael Haykin surveys the lives and teachings of seven of the Fathers, looking at their role in such issues as baptism, martyrdom, and the relationship between church and state. Ignatius, Cyprian, Basil of Caesarea, and Ambrose and others were foundational in the growth and purity of early Christianity, and their impact continues to shape the church today. Evangelical readers interested in the historical roots of Christianity will find this to be a helpful introductory volume.
Church has changed-this book shows how to follow the Spirit out into the community, and reimagine our mission for the 21st century. The decline in mainstream religious denominations is palpable. For years, the question has been: How can we "fix" the church' With thirty years of experience pastoring congregations in small towns, suburbs, and urban neighborhoods in renewal, Alan J. Roxburg knows that the answer is to instead, embrace the church, reinvigorate communities with the Holy Spirit, and re-engage our neighbors with the mission of God. In this timely perspective on the role of the church in today's environment, he shows how each one of us can become a leader in that mission. Roxburg distills the best missional wisdom for both clergy and laity alike, and offers concrete steps in transforming individual congregations and society. He sheds light on the troubling history that brought us to this point, and how ecumenically and globally we can implement the simple but necessary steps to build from it. An urgent call for Christians to guide any church-large or small-to becoming a vital center for a new spirituality, Joining God is an invitation "to embark on the journey you always wanted to take" (Philip Clayton, scholar, activist and author of Transforming Christian Theology)
Mark Shaw offers ideas from the most significant Christian leaders of the last five hundred years, including Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, William Carey, John Wesley, Richard Baxter and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From one of the world’s most influential spiritual thinkers, a long-awaited book exploring what it means that Jesus was called “Christ,” and how this forgotten truth can restore hope and meaning to our lives. “Anyone who strives to put their faith into action will find encouragement and inspiration in the pages of this book.”—Melinda Gates In his decades as a globally recognized teacher, Richard Rohr has helped millions realize what is at stake in matters of faith and spirituality. Yet Rohr has never written on the most perennially talked about topic in Christianity: Jesus. Most know who Jesus was, but who was Christ? Is the word simply Jesus’s last name? Too often, Rohr writes, our understandings have been limited by culture, religious debate, and the human tendency to put ourselves at the center. Drawing on scripture, history, and spiritual practice, Rohr articulates a transformative view of Jesus Christ as a portrait of God’s constant, unfolding work in the world. “God loves things by becoming them,” he writes, and Jesus’s life was meant to declare that humanity has never been separate from God—except by its own negative choice. When we recover this fundamental truth, faith becomes less about proving Jesus was God, and more about learning to recognize the Creator’s presence all around us, and in everyone we meet. Thought-provoking, practical, and full of deep hope and vision, The Universal Christ is a landmark book from one of our most beloved spiritual writers, and an invitation to contemplate how God liberates and loves all that is.
This book addresses several dimensions of the transformation of English Nonconformity over the course of an important century in its history. It begins with the question of education for ministry, considering the activities undertaken by four major evangelical traditions (Congregationalist,Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian) to establish theological colleges for this purpose, and then takes up the complex three-way relationship of ministry/churches/colleges that evolved from these activities. As author Dale Johnson illustrates, this evolution came to have significant implicationsfor the Nonconformist engagement with its message and with the culture at large. These implications are investigated in chapters on the changing perception or understanding of ministry itself, religious authority, theological questions (such as the doctrines of God and the atonement), and religiousidentity.In Johnson's exploration of these issues, conversations about these topics are located primarily in addresses at denominational meetings, conferences that took up specific questions, and representative religious and theological publications of the day that participated in key debates or advocatedcontentious positions. While attending to some important denominational differences, The Changing Shape of English Nonconformity, 1825-1925 focuses on the representative discussion of these topics across the whole spectrum of evangelical Nonconformity rather than on specific denominationaltraditions.Johnson maintains that too many interpretations of nineteenth-century Nonconformity, especially those that deal with aspects of the theological discussion within these traditions, have tended to depict such developments as occasions of decline from earlier phases of evangelical vitality and appeal.This book instead argues that it is more appropriate to assess these Nonconformist developments as a collective, necessary, and deeply serious effort to come to terms with modernity and, further, to retain a responsible understanding of what it meant to be evangelical. It also shows thesedevelopments to be part of a larger schema through which Nonconformity assumed a more prominent place in the English culture of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
In this book Mark Noll makes the compelling case that how Americans have come to practice the Christian faith is just as globally important as what the American church has done in the world. He backs up this substantial claim with the scholarly attentiveness we've come to expect from him.
Mission-Shaped Church launched a movement. Mission-Shaped Questions addresses the big theological and practical queries that movement unleashed, including: What exactly is church? Can we develop churches that can transform culture? Can we be missionshaped and kingdom-focused, too?
