Don't Fire Your Church Members

Don't Fire Your Church Members
Author: Jonathan Leeman
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2016-01-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1433686228

Church membership is not just a status, it’s an office. Leaders shouldn’t fire members from the responsibilities given to them by Jesus—they should train them! When members are trained, the church grows in holiness and love, discipleship and mission. Complacency and nominalism are diminished. Jesus gives every church member an office in the church’s government: to assume final responsibility for guarding the what and the who of the gospel in the church and its ministry. Similarly, Jesus gives leaders to the church for equipping the members to do this church-building and mission-accomplishing work. In our day, the tasks of reinvigorating congregational authority and elder authority must work together. The vision of congregationalism pictured in this book offers an integrated view of the Christian life. Congregationalism is biblical, but biblical congregationalism just might look a little different than you expect. It is nothing less than Jesus’ authorization for living out his kingdom rule among a people on mission.

The Last Puritans

The Last Puritans
Author: Margaret Bendroth
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2015-08-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 146962401X

Congregationalists, the oldest group of American Protestants, are the heirs of New England's first founders. While they were key characters in the story of early American history, from Plymouth Rock and the founding of Harvard and Yale to the Revolutionary War, their luster and numbers have faded. But Margaret Bendroth's critical history of Congregationalism over the past two centuries reveals how the denomination is essential for understanding mainline Protestantism in the making. Bendroth chronicles how the New England Puritans, known for their moral and doctrinal rigor, came to be the antecedents of the United Church of Christ, one of the most liberal of all Protestant denominations today. The demands of competition in the American religious marketplace spurred Congregationalists, Bendroth argues, to face their distinctive history. By engaging deeply with their denomination's storied past, they recast their modern identity. The soul-searching took diverse forms--from letter writing and eloquent sermonizing to Pilgrim-celebrating Thanksgiving pageants--as Congregationalists renegotiated old obligations to their seventeenth-century spiritual ancestors. The result was a modern piety that stood a respectful but ironic distance from the past and made a crucial contribution to the American ethos of religious tolerance.

Elders in Congregational Life (Newton)

Elders in Congregational Life (Newton)
Author: Phil A. Newton
Publisher: Kregel Academic
Total Pages: 194
Release:
Genre: Baptists
ISBN: 9780825494789

(Foreword by Mark Dever) A biblically functioning church requires intentional devotion to the New Testament model of the church. In this practical book, Phil Newton gives a definitive and biblical study of elder-based leadership.

The Congregational Way of Life

The Congregational Way of Life
Author: Arthur Acy Rouner
Publisher:
Total Pages: 200
Release: 1960
Genre: Congregationalism
ISBN:

History, life and worship of the Congregational Church written for the 300th anniversary of its founding.