Green Shoots out of Dry Ground
Green Shoots out of Dry Ground

Author: John P. Bowen

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2013-01-25

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1610978625

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All over Canada, from coast to coast, there is new life in the Christian church. In spite of declining numbers, every Christian tradition has stories to tell of new ministries, fledgling Christian communities, and fresh expressions of church springing up, sometimes in unlikely places. Here, seventeen authors with experience in areas such as church revitalization, innovative ministry, evangelism, and church planting, reflect on what they are seeing and how the lessons they have learned can guide us into ways of health and vitality. They tell us about immigrant churches and indigenous ministries, about youth research and environmental concerns, about churches in the city and churches in the country, about leadership and spirituality. Scattered throughout the book are ten exciting stories of new ministries and new churches, from different traditions and different parts of the country, all seeking to engage their communities with the Gospel. Does the church in Canada have a future? The answer these authors give is a resounding yes--green shoots can grow out of dry ground--if we are prepared to rise to the challenge and follow where the Spirit of God leads. This book is timely, comprehensive, challenging, and deeply encouraging.

The Past, Present, and Future of Evangelical Mission
The Past, Present, and Future of Evangelical Mission

Author: Narry F. Santos

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2022-07-15

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 1666722979

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Crisis is an invitation to both prophetic evaluation and new imagination. In this volume, Canadian missiologists and practitioners consider the past and how the past might enable the church to move forward in Christian mission--in the academy, agency, assembly, and the agora. How can the Canadian church welcome different voices from the periphery? What must be done to empower the next generation? How can we respond in light of the injustices done to our Indigenous brothers and sisters? Where does reconciliation fit into the picture? How might we navigate between secularization and fundamentalisms? How ought we move together in mission and in unity across denominational difference? How can we equip laypeople to live their callings faithfully in the agora? How can work in the marketplace be ministry? And lastly, how is the Spirit at work in our contexts in this day and age? These questions (among others) onboard us into the ongoing conversation about the state of evangelical mission in Canada, and each of these essays adeptly lead us into the beginnings of answers to these questions. These essays address how the past informs our future, and how we might answer the prophetic call with both hope and renewed vigor to participate in the mission of God.

The Unfolding Gospel
The Unfolding Gospel

Author: John P. Bowen

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 2021-07-06

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1506471684

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Many congregations and their leaders are discouraged about the future of the church. John Bowen's conviction is that the solution is to be found not in new programs or strategies but in a recovery of theological vision--that of Jesus and his gospel, which transforms every aspect of life. This vision restores hope in the only way realistically possible._ Words like mission, discipleship, church, evangelism, renewal, and church planting are used like billiard balls--all rolling around a single table, unconnected and bouncing randomly off one another. This book pulls these ideas together into a coherent and organic whole. The gospel is the hermeneutical key for understanding each of these topics and what draws them together. Thus, chapter 1 is an exposition of the gospel (God's determination to make all things new through Jesus Christ). Chapter 2 discusses discipleship (we only understand discipleship in light of the gospel), and chapter 3 covers church (we only understand church if we understand discipleship). Chapter 4 considers culture as the arena in which the gospel is lived and talked about, and chapter 5 builds on that with a discussion of translation, not only as a missional necessity but as a ministry which itself incarnates the nature of the gospel. The remaining chapters (on evangelism, the future of "inherited churches," church planting, and leadership) demonstrate how the gospel is the integration point for all._ The author's hope is that church leaders--evangelical and mainline, young and old, emerging and traditional, present and future--will have a transformative "Aha!" moment as this gospel hypothesis unfolds._

Cultivating an Evangelistic Character
Cultivating an Evangelistic Character

Author: Christopher James Schoon

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2018-04-24

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1532644329

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This project explores the relationship between worship, discipleship, and evangelism within the missional church movement. Engaging contributions from liturgical theology, Christian ethics, and post-Christendom evangelism, the book proposes a missional approach to worship that, when integrated with a praxis-oriented discipleship, cultivates Jesus' character among God's people. Along the way, the project attends to the Holy Spirit's transformative presence, the liturgical rhythms of remembering and anticipating, and the practices of hospitality and compassion. In the end, Cultivating an Evangelistic Character contends that the Spirit works through the integration of worship and discipleship to form God's people. In other words, God's people become evangelistic, or as Newbigin said, "the hermeneutic of the gospel."

Preaching and the Mission of God
Preaching and the Mission of God

Author: David R. Fields

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2023-03-16

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1666755419

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In an age divided and skeptical, when the true Christian story is often unknown or deeply misunderstood, how do we even begin to share the news of Jesus? And how might preaching in a local church both equip God's people for their missional task and speak in a way that a weary world can hear and even rejoice in? The answer begins with seeing the Bible as a document developed in a missionary context for a missionary purpose. This book starts there. It begins by examining the Bible as a document of mission that needs to be interpreted through a missional lens. It then moves to offer a mission-shaped vision for preaching and the needed tools for contextualizing the gospel in our post-Christendom setting. You'll find short, accessible chapters with personal reflection questions as well as three group discussion sections, ideal for either a classroom setting, a preaching team in a local church, or a preacher's guild.

Good News Church
Good News Church

Author: John P Bowen

Publisher: Castle Quay Books

Published: 2018-05-28

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1988928028

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In more than forty years of ministry, Harold Percy has sought to waken a slumbering church by reminding it of its true calling—to imaginative evangelism, faithful discipleship, and innovative leadership. As a priest in the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, and as founding Director of the Wycliffe College Institute of Evangelism, Harold has challenged and encouraged leaders in a range of denominations across Canada through articles and books, conferences and workshops. This books engages in lively dialogue with Harold’s many contributions to the life of the church today, with chapters on leadership, discipleship, spirituality, congregational ministry, and missional outreach from eighteen pastoral practitioners, all of whom continue to expand on his unique legacy in the service of Christ.

Trauma and Survival in the Contemporary Church
Trauma and Survival in the Contemporary Church

Author: Jonathan S. Lofft

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2021-03-24

Total Pages: 165

ISBN-13: 1527567699

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Drawing on a wide diversity of sources, this volume constitutes an additional layer to the phenomenon of trauma by exemplifying its experience within the context of the church, specifically the worldwide Anglican Communion, a family of churches rooted in the English appropriation of the Reformation. As shown here, a wide variety of analytic techniques can be deployed to examine trauma in the context of the church. At an uncertain moment characterized by institutional breakup and decline in several Anglican churches, this volume addresses an urgent need in the literature of church history as constituencies both within the church and without come to terms with ongoing and wide-ranging experiences of trauma. The variety of traumas and the responses, official and otherwise, documented in this collection reflect the wide-ranging testimony of the contributors. Shedding light for the first time on significant traumatic episodes, these narratives examine a difficult and seemingly inexhaustible topic.

Lessons from Laodicea
Lessons from Laodicea

Author: Ross A. Lockhart

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2016-04-08

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 149823903X

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"I'm rich and I don't need a thing," bragged the early Christians in the big city of Laodicea. The Apostle John, however, saw their affluence and arrogance through a theological lens. He declared them to be bankrupt, "lukewarm Christians" whom God would gladly gargle and spit out. Today, the mainline church in the West finds itself in a dominant culture of Laodicean affluence, where even faith is a commodity to be consumed. While the gospel spreads and thrives in the global South and East, the Western mainline church looks longingly back at Christendom and forward in fear. As Christians living in a North American culture that highly prizes the unholy Trinity of individualism, consumerism, and secularism, we require a new kind of missional leadership to "pray" attention to what God is doing in the world around us. This book names the challenges and promises inherent in partnering with the Holy Spirit in order to offer missional leadership in a culture of affluence. It is about both living in Laodicea and leaving it behind. We are no longer in a Babylonian captivity but a Laodicean one. This work helps chart a course for Christians who long to let go of "country club religion" and instead belong to a community that helps equip missionary disciples, resistant to the dominant culture and resplendent in the love of our triune God.

118 Days (Canadian Edition)
118 Days (Canadian Edition)

Author: Tricia Gates Brown

Publisher: Christian Peacemaker Teams

Published: 2008-05-19

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1438222270

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On November 26, 2005 Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) members Tom Fox and Jim Loney along with delegation members Norman Kember and Harmeet Sooden were kidnapped in Iraq. Tom Fox was killed on March 9, 2006. Jim, Norman and Harmeet were freed two weeks later on March 23 after 118 days of captivity. The kidnapping of these four men was like a rock thrown into a pond. This book describes the ripples on the water, the impact and results of that rock. Ripples in the lives of CPT teams and the communities in which they work. Ripples among families and friends of those taken. Ripples across the world in faith communities, prisons, in the media and among their audiences, and in the lives of the four men. Dozens of Muslim leaders who knew CPT's peacemaking work courageously called for the release of the CPT delegation. Christian leaders in turn called for justice for the 14,000 Iraqis held by Multinational Forces in Iraq without charges or access to their families.

God is Always Bigger
God is Always Bigger

Author: John P. Bowen

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2021-01-05

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1725288613

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For forty years, John Bowen has been a popular speaker, teacher, and preacher on university campuses, in churches and in classrooms, and at conferences across Canada. This book brings together forty of his best sermons, talks, and articles. You will be encouraged and you will be challenged. You will laugh and cry, think and pray--sometimes all at the same time. The topics are wildly various: "The Spiritual Quality of Craziness," "Vacuum Cleaner Church," "The Vocation of a Garbage Collector," "Spirituality in my Sixties," "What's Wrong with Amazing Grace?" and "Strong and Weak" (a reflection on his bypass surgery in 2017). The audiences are as varied as the subjects: a conference of Christians in science, the visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury to Wycliffe College, a camp reunion, a diocesan conference, a church planting conference, his mother's funeral, and (not least) his own parish church in Hamilton, Ontario. This is a book to dip into or to read from cover to cover. You will not be disappointed.