Tragedies and Christian Congregations
Tragedies and Christian Congregations

Author: Christopher Southgate

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-09-26

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 135105077X

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When tragedy strikes a community, it is often unexpected with long-lasting effects on the people left in its wake. Too often, there aren’t adequate systems in place to aid those affected in processing what has happened. This study uniquely combines practical theology, pastoral insight and scientific data to demonstrate how Christian congregations can be helped to be resilient in the face of sudden devastating events. Beginning by identifying the characteristics of trauma in individuals and communities, this collection of essays from practitioners and academics locates sudden trauma-inducing tragedies as a problem in practical theology. A range of biblical and theological responses are presented, but contemporary scientific understanding is also included in order to challenge and stretch some of these traditional theological resources. The pastoral section of the book examines the ethics of response to tragedy, locating the role of the minister in relation to other helping agencies and exploring the all-too-topical issue of ministerial abuse. Developing a nuanced rationale for good practical, pastoral, liturgical and theological responses to major traumas, this book will be of significant value to scholars of practical theology as well as practitioners counselling in and around church congregations.

Trauma-Sensitive Theology
Trauma-Sensitive Theology

Author: Jennifer Baldwin

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2018-09-20

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 149829684X

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The intention of Trauma Sensitive Theology is to help theologians, professors, clergy, spiritual care givers, and therapists speak well of God and faith without further wounding survivors of trauma. It explores the nature of traumatic exposure, response, processing, and recovery and its impact on constructive theology and pastoral leadership and care. Through the lenses of contemporary traumatology, somatics, and the Internal Family Systems model of psychotherapy, the text offers a framework for seeing trauma and its impact in the lives of individuals, communities, society, and within our own sacred texts. It argues that care of traumatic wounding must include all dimensions of the human person, including our spiritual practices, religious rituals and community participation, and theological thinking. As such, clergy and spiritual care professionals have an important role to play in the recovery of traumatic wounding and fostering of resiliency. This book explores how trauma-informed congregational leaders can facilitate resiliency and offers one way of thinking theologically in response to traumatizing abuses of relational power and our resources for restoration.

Prophetic Lament
Prophetic Lament

Author: Soong-Chan Rah

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2015-09-03

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 0830897615

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The American church avoids lament. But lament is a missing, essential component of Christian faith. Soong-Chan Rah's prophetic exposition of the book of Lamentations provides a biblical and theological lens for examining the church's relationship with a suffering world. Hear the prophet's lament as the necessary corrective for Christianity's future.

Disunity in Christ
Disunity in Christ

Author: Christena Cleveland

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2013-10-04

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0830864954

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Despite Jesus' prayer that all Christians "be one," divisions have been epidemic in the body of Christ. Though we may think we know why this happens, Christena Cleveland says we probably don't. Learn the hidden reasons behind conflict and divisions, the unseen dynamics at work that tend to separate us from others. Here are the tools we need to build bridges.

Organic Church
Organic Church

Author: Neil Cole

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2007-06-15

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 0787997846

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Churches have tried all kinds of ways to attract new and younger members - revised vision statements, hipper worship, contemporary music, livelier sermons, bigger and better auditoriums. But there are still so many people who aren't being reached, who don't want to come to church. And the truth is that attendance at church on Sundays does not necessarily transform lives; God's presence in our hearts is what changes us. Leaders and laypeople everywhere are realizing that they need new and more powerful ways to help them spread God's Word. According to international church starter and pastor Neil Cole, if we want to connect with young people and those who are not coming to church, we must go where people congregate. Cole shows readers how to plant the seeds of the Kingdom of God in the places where life happens and where culture is formed - restaurants, bars, coffeehouses, parks, locker rooms,and neighborhoods. Organic Church offers a hands-on guide for demystifying this new model of church and shows the practical aspects of implementing it.

Catastrophic Crisis
Catastrophic Crisis

Author: Steve F. Echols

Publisher: B&H Publishing Group

Published: 2011-05-01

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 1433673681

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Nature's fury, horrible accidents, criminal acts, moral failures, personal attacks. Nothing tests a ministry leader's skills more than a crisis. When sudden events turn things upside down, and the normal methods of operation are no longer possible, the leader and the leadership moment are placed in the fire and thrust into the spotlight at once. With that in mind, Catastrophic Crisis authors Steve Echols and Allen England take a case study approach to understanding effective Christian leadership, looking back at eight trials or tragedies faced at religious institutions in recent years. From the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary's encounter with Hurricane Katrina to the First Baptist Church in Maryville, Illinois, where pastor Fred Winters was shot and killed while preaching, this well-researched book tells the inside stories of each event, analyzes the leadership responses to draw out important lessons, and then poses direct questions that will help the reader actively process what is being learned. Catastrophic Crisis concludes with the "Leadership Lifeboats" and "Aftermath" chapters, focusing respectively on practical, biblical insights from various other leadership authors and the hope and blessing God ultimately provides following a personal catastrophic crisis.

Dangerous Church
Dangerous Church

Author: John Bishop

Publisher: Zondervan

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0310318327

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Dangerous churches are willing to put everything on the line for the one thing that matters most; reaching lost people. Through probing questions and amazing stories of God's grace, John Bishop confronts church leaders to embrace what matters most to the heart of God, whatever the cost. Most churches naturally gravitate to what is safe and familiar. Church leaders who take risks are bound to fail, and fear drives us to continue in our comfortable, but ineffective patterns. But reaching out to a lost world was never meant to be easy. Jesus promised his followers that they would have trouble in this world. Dangerous churches are churches that are willing to risk everything--comfort, safety, and the security of the familiar--for the sake of the one thing that matters most: reaching out to people who may spend eternity separated from the God who created them. God wants us to live on the edge of our margins, walking by faith and not simply following scripted methods or programmed patterns. Dangerous Church takes you back to the Book of Acts and reminds church leaders that the heartbeat of the church is not found in agendas or human plans, but in pursuing the mission of God and reaching out to a lost world. Learn what can happen when church leaders abandon their fears and begin to live a dangerous faith. Dangerous Church is part of the Leadership Network Innovation Series.

When Church Conflict Happens
When Church Conflict Happens

Author: Michael Hare

Publisher: Moody Publishers

Published: 2019-04-02

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 0802496830

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You Don’t Have to Dread Conflict Every church will experience conflict at some point. But it doesn’t have to destroy you. In fact, conflict can be an incredible opportunity, if you know how to seize it. Unfortunately, very few churches use the opportunity well, but your church can. Michael Hare, PhD, has been helping churches recover (and even grow) from conflict for over 20 years, and now he can help you too. Learn: how to recognize healthy and unhealthy conflicts what the five levels of conflict are and why they matter how to design an action plan that will succeed how to prevent unhealthy conflict before it begins With copious case studies and practical tools, you’ll find it’s surprisingly manageable to develop these new skills. Learn to lead confidently in the face of conflict and invest in your church’s future today. PLUS! Additional Resources in the back include: Conflict management Style Survey Conflict Assessment Tools Interview Questions for Assessing Conflict and more! "I enthusiastically endorse this book and welcome it as a valuable addition to the growing stable of peacemaking resources!" KEN SANDE Author of the Peacemaker and Founder of Peacemaker Ministries and Relational Wisdom 360 "Few things break God’s heart more, and cause the hosts of hell to rejoice more, than conflict among His followers. My friend Mike Hare is well-qualified to prepare church leaders with practical intervention strategies (brought to life by case stories) that enable us to anticipate, analyze, and resolve conflict, moving step-by-step through processes that result in unity and blessing." DR. WESS STAFFORD President Emeritus, Compassion International Author of Too Small to Ignore and Just a Minute

This Tragic Gospel
This Tragic Gospel

Author: Louis A. Ruprecht, Jr.

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2008-07-23

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0470374357

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This Tragic Gospel suggests that the "Gospel" of John intended to supplant the first three gospels and succeeded in gaining undue influence on the early churches. This study focuses on the tragic moment when Jesus prays for deliverance from his impending death in the garden of Gethsemane. Ruprecht contends that John rewrote this scene in order to convey a very different dramatic meaning from the one reflected in Mark's gospel. In John's version, not only did Jesus not pray to be spared, he actually mocked this prayer, embracing his imminent demise with godlike confidence. Ruprecht believes that this dramatic reinterpretation undermined the tragedy of Jesus's death as Mark imagined it and so paved the way for the development of a kind of Christianity that focused far less on compassion in the face of human suffering. John's Jesus offers the faithful food so that they will never hunger, water so that they will never thirst, and the promise of a world in which no faithful person ever sheds a tear. Mark's Christians do suffer, but they witness to suffering and death differently...with compassion. Mark's Christ suffers, like all Christians after him, but he embodies a tragic hope in the promise of a faith shored up by love and compassion.

Remorse
Remorse

Author: Anthony Bash

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2020-10-02

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1725272342

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Though the Christian church has a well-developed theology of Godward-facing remorse about sin, it has paid little attention to the interpersonal implications of the remorse that people feel when they wrong one another. Since the nineteenth century, important work has been done by psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers, ethicists, scientists, and lawyers that has implications for the way theologians might think about remorse. This book draws on the biblical record in its ancient settings as well as on insights from contemporary scholarship to offer a new and distinctively Christian contribution to an understanding of remorse.