Emerging Churches

Emerging Churches
Author: Eddie Gibbs
Publisher: Baker Academic
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2005-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0801027152

Provides a comprehensive examination of the emerging church phenomenon, considering emerging patterns in leadership, worship, mission, spiritual practices, and cultural engagement.

Making Neighborhoods Whole

Making Neighborhoods Whole
Author: Wayne Gordon
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2013-08-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830895779

Civil rights leader John Perkins and CCDA president Wayne Gordon revisit the founding principles of the Christian Community Development Association, seeking to provide the terms for a new discussion around the emerging priorities of Christian community development today. Includes profiles of thriving urban ministries.

Creating Church Online

Creating Church Online
Author: Tim Hutchings
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2017-04-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1136277498

Online 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.

Creating Christian Indians

Creating Christian Indians
Author: Bonnie Sue Lewis
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2003
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780806135168

"Creating Christian Indians takes issue with the widespread consensus that missions to North American indigenous peoples routinely destroyed native cultures and that becoming Christian was fundamentally incompatible with retaining traditional Indian identities"--from jkt.

Building Community

Building Community
Author: Loughlan Sofield
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1998
Genre: Christian communities
ISBN: 9780877936480

Insights from psychology, group theory, and theology are knit together to create a primer for Christian communities. Especially helpful are insights into conflict, forgiveness, decision-making, intimacy, and confrontation.

Making Congregational Music Local in Christian Communities Worldwide

Making Congregational Music Local in Christian Communities Worldwide
Author: Monique M. Ingalls
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2018-04-09
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1351391682

What does it mean for music to be considered local in contemporary Christian communities, and who shapes this meaning? Through what musical processes have religious beliefs and practices once ‘foreign’ become ‘indigenous’? How does using indigenous musical practices aid in the growth of local Christian religious practices and beliefs? How are musical constructions of the local intertwined with regional, national or transnational religious influences and cosmopolitanisms? Making Congregational Music Local in Christian Communities Worldwide explores the ways that congregational music-making is integral to how communities around the world understand what it means to be ‘local’ and ‘Christian’. Showing how locality is produced, negotiated, and performed through music-making, this book draws on case studies from every continent that integrate insights from anthropology, ethnomusicology, cultural geography, mission studies, and practical theology. Four sections explore a central aspect of the production of locality through congregational music-making, addressing the role of historical trends, cultural and political power, diverging values, and translocal influences in defining what it means to be ‘local’ and ‘Christian’. This book contends that examining musical processes of localization can lead scholars to new understandings of the meaning and power of Christian belief and practice.

Churches That Make a Difference

Churches That Make a Difference
Author: Ronald J. Sider
Publisher: Baker Books
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2002-04-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1585582190

Churches over the past generations have been weakened by a failure to meet both the physical and spiritual needs of their communities. Many have adopted a narrow vision, focusing on only one aspect of ministry. But in today's environment of faith-based opportunities many Christians are eager to start reaching out to their world with both Good News and good works, and therefore they are searching for appropriate ways to integrate both into their ministry. In Churches That Make a Difference, best-selling author Ron Sider and his coauthors give those involved in community outreach a comprehensive resource for developing holistic ministry--a balance of evangelism and social outreach. Illustrations and helpful organizational tips detail the how-to's of an effective holistic ministry. Case studies that show how different churches across the United States reach out to their communities provide a variety of ideas and practical applications. User-friendly tools are included as well for congregational studies, surveys, evaluations, and community assessments. The authors draw on extensive experience with church ministries and faith-based organizations as they share the life-changing vision and biblical mandate for living the whole gospel. Church leaders will be encouraged in their process of developing and maintaining a holistic ministry, and local churches will rediscover a passion for loving the whole person the way Jesus did.

Turning Ourselves Inside Out

Turning Ourselves Inside Out
Author: Russell Daye
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2021-09-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1506470033

Turning Ourselves Inside Out emerges from the Thriving Christian Communities Project started by the authors in 2015, as well as from a Facebook conversation where someone asked, "We always hear about the problems in our churches. When are we going to talk about the good news stories?" This got the authors thinking: How do we learn about what is exciting and what the Holy Spirit is doing? How do we broaden the conversation beyond how sad, afraid, and grumpy we often are as church people? These kinds of questions filled the authors' imaginations as they scouted out the long walking route of Camino Nova Scotia, the pilgrimage program offered by Atlantic School of Theology. The long hours walking together gave them space and peace to think more broadly about what they wanted to learn, and how to share it with the wider church. In interviews with thirty-five faith communities, the authors discovered that amid great upheaval, Christ is giving us a new church, and this book offers readers a firsthand glimpse of it. Turning Ourselves Inside Out isn't an "off the shelf" program or model. It invites readers to listen to others' experiences and then dig deep into their own and get down to the business of dreaming God's dream and making it real, right where they are. Leaders of congregations, and all who care about what God is up to in the world, need to hear these stories. They are a source of hope and courage, as God renews and revives God's people.

Paradoxy

Paradoxy
Author: Ken Howard
Publisher: Paraclete Press (MA)
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2010
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781557257758

As Western Christianity moves toward a religious realignment of epic proportions that debates definitions of conservative and liberal, Howard shares his thoughts on identifying where a congregation stands and how changes will be navigated.