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Author: Jay Y. Kim
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2020-03-31
Total Pages: 223
ISBN-13: 0830841989
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAs our culture begins to reckon with the limits of a digital world, it's time for the church to do the same. In our efforts to stay relevant in our digital age, have we begun to move away from transcendence? Pastor Jay Kim grapples with the ramifications of a digital church, from worship and Christian community to how we engage Scripture.
Author: Stephanie A. Martin
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Published: 2021-05-18
Total Pages: 281
ISBN-13: 0817320849
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA nuanced look at the rhetorical narratives used by conservative Republicans and evangelicals to make both personal and political choices As a political constituency, white conservative evangelicals are generally portrayed as easy to dupe, disposed to vote against their own interests, and prone to intolerance and knee-jerk reactions. In Decoding the Digital Church: Evangelical Storytelling and the Election of Donald J. Trump, Stephanie A. Martin challenges this assumption and moves beyond these overused stereotypes to develop a refined explanation for this constituency’s voting behavior. This volume offers a fresh perspective on the study of religion and politics and stems from the author’s personal interest in the ways her experiences with believers differ from how scholars often frame this group’s rationale and behaviors. To address this disparity, Martin examines sermons, drawing on her expertise in rhetoric and communication studies with the benefits of ethnographic research in an innovative hybrid approach she terms a “digital rhetorical ethnography.” Martin’s thorough research surveys more than 150 online sermons from America’s largest evangelical megachurches in 37 different states. Through listening closely to the words of the pastors who lead these conservative congregations, Martin describes a gentler discourse less obsessed with issues like abortion or marriage equality than stereotypes of evangelicals might suggest. Instead, the politicaleconomic sermons and stories from pastors encourage true believers to remember the exceptional nature of the nation’s founding while also deemphasizing how much American citizenship really means. Martin grapples with and pays serious, scholarly attention to a seeming contradiction: while the large majority of white conservative evangelicals voted in 2016 for Donald J. Trump, Martin shows that many of their pastors were deeply concerned about the candidate, the divisive nature of the campaign, and the potential effect of the race on their congregants’ devotion to democratic process itself. In-depth chapters provide a fuller analysis of our current political climate, recapping previous scholarship on the history of this growing divide and establishing the groundwork to set up the dissonance between the political commitments of evangelicals and their faith that the rhetorical ethnography addresses.
Author: Tim Hutchings
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-04-21
Total Pages: 238
ISBN-13: 1136277498
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOnline churches are internet-based Christian communities, pursuing worship, discussion, friendship, support, proselytization, and other key religious goals through computer-mediated communication. Hundreds of thousands of people are now involved with online congregations, generating new kinds of ritual, leadership, and community and new networks of global influence. Creating Church Online constructs a rich ethnographic account of the diverse cultures of online churches, from virtual worlds to video streams. This book also outlines the history of online churchgoing, from its origins in the 1980s to the present day, and traces the major themes of academic and Christian debate around this topic. Applying some of the leading current theories in the study of religion, media and culture to this data, Tim Hutchings proposes a new model of religious design in contexts of mediatization, and draws attention to digital networks, transformative third spaces and terrains of existential vulnerability. Creating Church Online advances our understanding of the significance and impact of digital media in the religious and social lives of its users, in search of new theoretical frameworks for digital religion.
Author: Joseph Prince
Publisher: FaithWords
Published: 2015-10-27
Total Pages: 325
ISBN-13: 1455561312
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFrom New York Times bestselling author Joseph Prince comes a book about living above defeat and experiencing breakthroughs in every area of life. GRACE REVOLUTION is about living above defeat and experiencing lasting breakthroughs in every area of life. It's about the explosive, inside-out transformation that occurs in the innermost sanctum of the human heart when a person meets Jesus personally. To help the reader live out this new perspective, the author gives five practical and powerful keys that, if understood and internalized, will become highly effective principles of success and living a victorious life.
Author: Justin Wise
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Published: 2014-01-29
Total Pages: 179
ISBN-13: 0802487467
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDid you know you can read online reviews of your church? How often have you talked about “reaching people where they are”—and realized that much of the time, they are on the Internet? We’ve been living in a digital world for quite a while now. Justin Wise speaks about social media as this generation's printing press—a revolutionary technology that can spread the gospel farther and faster than we can imagine. It’s time to take what we know (and admit what we don’t know) and learn together how to move forward as the church. Are you ready to think theologically about this digital age and reach people in a new way?
Author: Nona Jones
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2020-06-23
Total Pages: 192
ISBN-13: 0310104017
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book outlines digital discipleship principles for building an online community and provides practical instruction for how to do it no matter how big or small a local church may be. There are more than 2.3 billion professing Christians in the world and more and more new churches launching globally, yet statistics show that in-person church attendance is declining or plateauing in every nation. Although social technology has been around for more than two decades, church leaders have long bristled at the idea of church online, ranking it as the last concern on their minds in Barna's 2020 state of the church report published February 3, 2020. And then, three weeks later, COVID-19 closed the doors of every church on earth and suddenly forced them entirely online. Nona Jones, a globally acclaimed thought leader on leveraging technology for ministry, had been leading a movement and sounding the alarm for several years to make digital discipleship a central part of every church’s ministry approach. In From Social Media to Social Ministry, she outlines her digital discipleship principles and provides practical instruction for how to do it no matter how big or small a local church may be. There are plenty of books to help churches build a social media strategy, but this is the first book of its kind that goes beyond digital marketing to digital ministry. Readers will leave this book with: Clarity on what discipleship truly is The data that underscores the urgency for digital discipleship Understanding of the resources required to do it well A step-by-step guide on how to implement digital discipleship into ministry plans Knowledge of the differences among and purposes of the most popular social platforms, as well as the tools best positioned for digital ministry
Author: Jeffrey H. Mahan
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2021-12-15
Total Pages: 175
ISBN-13: 1538135817
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJust as the emergence of print and literacy created conditions for vast religious change at the time of the Reformation, the emergence of a digital culture shaped by computers and the internet has led to radically different assumptions about religious identity, how people connect and maintain transformative relationships, and how people follow and give authority to leaders. The central issues concerning this digital culture are not technological but theological and anthropological. Old models of stable religious identity and community seem irrelevant in a culture in which everyone is in motion. The book identifies three profound changes produced by digital culture which challenge existing understandings of church: 1) a shift to seeing Christian identity as an ongoing constructive project, 2) the development of fluid networked forms of community, and 3) the emergence of less hierarchical more conversational forms of leadership.
Author: Caleb J. Lines
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2021-09-02
Total Pages: 118
ISBN-13: 1725287846
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAttendance in US churches continues to sharply decline. As church leaders struggle to identify both root causes and possible responses, they often feel a sense of despair . . . but there is hope! When social media is used intentionally, it is the greatest tool that the church has ever had to fulfill the Great Commission. In our time, we should hear a Great Digital Commission. The Great Digital Commission offers a theological reflection on the importance of social media—while acknowledging its shortfalls—and suggests practical steps that can help congregations think about strategies for church growth and transformation. This book is designed to be approachable for pastors, church leaders, and church social media managers, as well as congregants who want a clearer sense of why social media is important to use within the church and how they can foster healthy social media accounts. The Great Digital Commission has been commanded! We have been called to spread the Good News from our doorsteps to the ends of earth using not only our words, but our posts, our tweets, our memes, our videos, our events, our pins, and our very lives. May it be so.
Author: Elizabeth Drescher
Publisher: Church Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2011-05
Total Pages: 209
ISBN-13: 0819224235
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSocial media has ushered in a dramatic global shift in the nature of faith, social consciousness, and relationships. How do churches navigate the Digital Reformation? Tweet If You Heart Jesus brings the wisdom of ancient and medieval Christianity into conversation with contemporary theories of cultural change and the realities of social media, all to help churches navigate a landscape where faith, leadership, and community have taken on new meanings.
Author: Hanna Stähle
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-08-23
Total Pages: 175
ISBN-13: 1000420949
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Russian Orthodox Church, the largest and most powerful religious institution in Russia, has become one of the central pillars of Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism. While church attendance remains low, the religiously inspired rhetoric of traditionalism has come to dominate the mainstream political and media discourse. Has Russia abandoned its atheist past and embraced Orthodox Christianity as its new moral guide? The reality is more complex and contradictory. Digital sources provide evidence of rising domestic criticism of the Russian Orthodox Church and its leadership. This book offers a nuanced understanding of contemporary Russian Orthodoxy and its changing role in the digital era. Topics covered within this book include: • Mediatization theory; • Church reforms under Patriarch Kirill; • Church–state relations since 2009; • The Russian Orthodox Church’s media policy; • Anticlericalism vs. Church criticism; and • Religious, secular, and atheist critiques of the Church in digital media. Using contemporary case studies such as Pussy Riot's Punk Prayer, this book is a gripping read for those with an interest in media studies, digital criticism of religion, religion in the media, the role of religion in society, and the Russian Orthodox Church.
