Downtown Church
Downtown Church

Author: Howard Edington

Publisher:

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 9780687054404

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Here is the story of a man with a vision for new life in urban churches. In this book, Edington shows how to use innovation to lead a congregation to numerical, financial and spiritual success. He shows pastors in the city environment proven methods for keeping their churches alive and well despite the particular obstacles facing them in the urban landscape.

Developing Community in a Downtown Church
Developing Community in a Downtown Church

Author: William H. Johnstone

Publisher:

Published: 1985

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13:

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The challenge facing the downtown church in a large city is to develop its understanding of community so that it can have realistic expectations for its life and create strategies to promote inclusiveness among its members and service to the city. Part of the challenge in this particular study is to promote inclusiveness for women by the termination of the church's Woman's Association and the merger of the Association's purposes into the wider life of the church. The theological principle at work in this study is that a church is a group of persons with a common loyalty to the God we know in Christ who form a community bound together like a body so that by using their various gifts (or parts) in common pursuits they reflect the inclusive love seen in Christ as they seek to edify one another and minister to the world. The most important conclusions of this study are that community is an intermediate style of group life, between the interactions of a primary group and those of a task oriented organization, a style of group life that has identifiable characteristics; that new organizational structures can promote inclusiveness within the membership and toward new members; and that the Biblical image of the body of Christ is a most important factor for centering the thought, attitudes, vision and mission of the community.

Public Religion and Urban Transformation
Public Religion and Urban Transformation

Author: Lowell W Livezey

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2000-05-01

Total Pages: 554

ISBN-13: 0814753213

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American cities are in the midst of fundamental changes. De-industrialization of large, aging cities has been enormously disruptive for urban communities, which are being increasingly fragmented. Though often overlooked, religious organizations are important actors, both culturally and politically in the restructuring metropolis. Public Religion and Urban Transformation provides a sweeping view of urban religion in response to these transformations. Drawing on a massive study of over seventy-five congregations in urban neighborhoods, this volume provides the most comprehensive picture available of urban places of worship-from mosques and gurdwaras to churches and synagogues-within one city. Revisiting the primary site of research for the early members of the Chicago School of urban sociology, the volume focuses on Chicago, which provides an exceptionally clear lens on the ways in which religious organizations both reflect and contribute to changes in American pluralism. From the churches of a Mexican American neighborhood and of the Black middle class to communities shared by Jews, Christians, Hindus, and Muslims and the rise of "megachurches," Public Religion and Urban Transformation illuminates the complex interactions among religion, urban structure, and social change at this extraordinary episode in the history of urban America.