Here are insightful, often hilarious glimpses into everyday Christian life from a rookie pastor, Karl Beck. Includes Why Preaching Will Never Be an Olympic Event, Counseling Your Average Moral Hyena and Never Trust a Spiritual Revolution You Can't Dance To. 119 pages, paper
Somewhere in the midst of this new world order, full of high tech gadgets and hover vehicles, eleven year old Brent Camden is on a quest for answers. After finally passing the Unified History Test to become a netizen of the World Network of Communities (WNC), Brent heads to the Academy, but mysterious events lead him to discover that the world is not as perfect as it seems.
Do you lead a small church? Big churches get all the love. Articles, books, conferences—they mostly feature leaders of large congregations. Yet big churches are a small part of the ecclesial landscape. In fact, more than 90 percent of churches have fewer than 200 people. That means small churches play a big part in what God is doing. Small Church Essentials is for leaders of these smaller congregations. It encourages them to steward their role well, debunking myths about small churches while offering principles for leading a dynamic, healthy small church. Based on the popular six-hour lecture that Karl Vaters delivers to church leaders across the country, Small Church Essentials will affirm small church leaders and show them how to identify what they do well, and how to do it even better. Readers will: Be assured that leading a small congregation does not make them ministry failures Come away inspired to lead with passion, regardless the size of their church Have field-tested principles for leading a church in their context Possess new metrics for biblically measuring vitality in small churches Have a toolkit of resources to use in their everyday ministry Karl Vaters has been a small church pastor for 30 years, is the author of The Grasshopper Myth: Big Churches, Small Churches, and the Small Thinking that Divides Us (2013), and travels extensively to churches and conferences to speak about leading a small church well. If you are pastoring a small church, this book will be a breath of fresh air. It will affirm your calling while giving you fresh tools to help you lead. It will help you: Stop believing lies about small churches Lead your church to fulfill the role only small churches can Understand your congregation’s strengths and weaknesses Turn around a dying or unhealthy church Identify good trends and bad in church and culture
90% of the churches in the world have less than 200 people. What if that's not a bad thing? What if smallness is an advantage God wants us to use, not a problem to fix?
Despite the burgeoning literature on Karl Barth, his doctrine of the Holy Spirit continues to be under-appreciated by his friends and critics alike. Yet, while Barth's commitment to the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son (Filioque) is well-known, many scholars dismiss his stand as ecumenically untenable and few have bothered to subject his stance on the Filioque to close theological analysis. For those interested in this long-standing ecumenical point of contention between Eastern and Western trinitarian theology, this book will show how Barth's doctrine of the Filioque may still have something to contribute to the debate. The work traces the origin of Barth's commitment to the Filioque in his early career (particularly in Romans and the Göttingen Dogmatics), and then analyzes how the doctrine functions throughout the Church Dogmatics. Guretzki concludes that Barth's doctrine of the Filioque, while clearly standing within the Western trinitarian tradition, is atypical in that he refuses to speak of a double-procession in favour of a common procession of the Spirit--a position that has more affinity with the Eastern position than many of Barth's critics may have thought
From the beginning of his career, Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) was often in conflict with the spirit of his times. While during the First World War German poets and philosophers became intoxicated by the experience of community and transcendence, Barth fought against all attempts to locate the divine in culture or individual sentiment. This freed him for a deep worldly engagement: he was known as "the red pastor," was the primary author of the founding document of the Confessing Church, the Barmen Theological Declaration, and after 1945 protested the rearmament of the Federal Republic of Germany. Christiane Tietz compellingly explores the interactions between Barth's personal and political biography and his theology. Numerous newly-available documents offer insight into the lesser-known sides of Barth such as his long-term three-way relationship with his wife Nelly and his colleague Charlotte von Kirschbaum. This is an evocative portrait of a theologian who described himself as "God's cheerful partisan," who was honored as a prophet and a genial spirit, was feared as a critic, and shaped the theology of an entire century as no other thinker.
'Karl Barth' is an unparalleled accomplishment. An authentic church father of the Post-Reformation era, the Basel professor's contributions to theology, the life of the church, and the world of culture and politics have been frequently noted. This work, however, presents extraordinary new information and insight based on his own correspondence and notes. What one finds in this work is Barth's own running commentary on events and people - from 1886 to 1968. Everything is depicted from his perspective and chiefly in his own words, and this is precisely what makes the volume so fascinating and valuable. The brilliance, wit, and humanity of Barth shine through everywhere as he is seen as son, brother, student, editor, friend, pastor, husband, father, soldier, teacher, theologian, church leader, political critic, polemicist, ecumenist, author, preacher, music lover, senior citizen. The gigantic theologian is here, but - even more - the man shines through. An abundance of pictures accompanies the text - most of them to be seen for the first time. The contents of this book are new and of utmost interest and importance. Readers not familiar with the accomplishment of Karl Barth will learn to know both the man and his thought. Specialists will for the first time discern the figure behind the intellect. All who propose to understand the story of the twentieth century will be illumined by this book.
Karl Barth was a prolific theologian of the 20th century. This work places his theology in its social and political context from World War 1 to the Cold War.