Lessons in Belonging from a Church-Going Commitment Phobe PDF Download

Author: Erin S. Lane
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830897623
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Why bother with a church? An unthinkable question just a generation ago, this is now the first theological hurdle not just for millennials but for people of faith from all sectors. Erin Lane mines her own complicated relationship with the church to give fresh insight into the complexities and possibilities of a shared faith.

Author: Terry Shoemaker
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725277468
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Millennials and progressive Christians are continuing their work of creating alternative spaces for spiritual and religious expressions in North America. The practices and beliefs of progressive Christian movements like the emerging church and millennials, who tend toward spirituality over and against religion, have been the targets of much criticism. Yet millennials and progressive Christians continue to both curate spaces for self- and collective expression while also engaging within contexts often critical or hostile. This collection analyzes these movements from theological, religious-studies, and social-scientific perspectives to provide a more holistic view of what is taking shape in religious and spiritual trends, and it ventures to project what may lie ahead for the progressive Christianity that is emerging and enduring.

Author: Jay Y. Kim
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830841989
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
As our culture begins to reckon with the limits of a digital world, it's time for the church to do the same. In our efforts to stay relevant in our digital age, have we begun to move away from transcendence? Pastor Jay Kim grapples with the ramifications of a digital church, from worship and Christian community to how we engage Scripture.

Author: Kendra Weddle
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 153263188X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Letha Dawson Scanzoni changed the landscape of American evangelicalism through her groundbreaking work on the gospel-based intersection of gender and LGBTQ justice. She coauthored two of the first books that support women's equality and LGBTQ rights with the Bible: All We're Meant to Be and Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? In all her work Scanzoni applies the liberating message of Jesus to women and to people who have been marginalized by church and society because of sexual orientation. Building Bridges combines an exploration of the life and work of Letha Dawson Scanzoni with stories of people she continues to empower through her writing and the Evangelical & Ecumenical Women's Caucus - Christian Feminism Today, an organization she cofounded. This book illustrates her growing influence as she continues her prophetic collaboration with new generations. In addition, it provides resources for churches as they build bridges for their ministries of liberation, justice, and peace.

Author: Debbie Blue
Publisher: JUANUNO1 Books
ISBN: 1637531052
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
WOMEN THAT BREAK THE RULE RULES AND MAKE THEMSELVES VISIBLE. THOUGHT AND ACTION PROVOKING. INTIMATE, FURIOUS AND LOVING, DEBBIE BLUE GIVES VOICE TO THE WOMEN OF THE BIBLE AS TOGETHER THEY TURN THE TABLE OF PATRIARCHY. "The sayings of the wise are like goads," warned a preacher of old: words that are not as restful as one might expect. The wise speak and are goaded into action. Or perhaps the community works and the wise merely capture its hidden wisdom –words and deeds that can be more disruptive at times than polite. Debbie Blue attempts to tap into this spirit as she develops her preaching ministry as a founding pastor of House of Mercy, in St Paul, Minnesota. Debbie took a step further along the line of the preacher of old. She collected her sermons, and as a result you have this book in your hand. Its contents are piercing as nails sometimes: Goads that are unsettling more than complacent when it comes to questioning patriarchy. This is a collection of fifteen sermons that revolve around women. "The women in the Bible break a lot of rules, resist empire, disobey the cultural norms, cause good trouble (and sometimes not such good trouble). They are fully human. They help us glimpse the possibility of transformation (not always, but often). I think we are at a time and place in the life of the world where we need to hear their stories." THERE IS A STORY BEHIND THE REIGNING, PATRIARCHAL CHRISTIAN NARRATIVE. IT IS THE STORY OF WOMEN, THEIR GOD, THEIR RESISTANCE True to her style, pastor, preacher and author Debbie Blue, in Magnificat: A God Who Never Stopped Considering Women, spurs us on to that "possibility of transformation". She and the women in the stories with their resourcefulness, dancing, joie de vivre, irreverence, solidarity, pain, laughter and anger, constantly reminds us that God loves us and means to set us free.

Author: Erin S. Lane
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593329317
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Theologian Erin S. Lane overturns dominant narratives about motherhood and inspires women to write their own stories. Is it possible to do something more meaningful than mothering? As a young Catholic girl who grew up in the American Midwest on white bread and Jesus, Erin S. Lane was given two options for a life well-lived: Mother or Mother Superior. She could marry a man and mother her own children, or she could marry God, so to speak, and mother the world’s children. Both were good outcomes for someone else’s life. Neither would fit the shape of hers. Interweaving Lane’s story with those of other women—including singles and couples, stepparents and foster parents, the infertile and the ambivalent—Someone Other Than a Mother challenges the social scripts that put moms on an impossible pedestal and shame childless women and nontraditional families for not measuring up. You may have heard these lines before: “Motherhood is the toughest job.” This script diminishes the work of non-moms and pressures moms to make parenting their full-time gig. “It’ll be different with your own.” This script underestimates the love of nonbiological kin and pushes unfair expectations onto nuclear families. “Family is the greatest legacy.” This script turns children into the ultimate sign of a woman’s worth and discounts the quieter ways we leave our mark. With candor and verve, Someone Other Than a Mother tears up the shaming social scripts that are bad for moms and non-moms alike and rewrites the story of a life well-lived, one in which purpose is bigger than body parts, identity is fuller than offspring, and legacy is so much more than DNA.

Author: Steve Wiens
Publisher: NavPress
ISBN: 1631464043
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Look around, and you'll notice: The world is covered with jagged edges. People are broken all over the place. Places are broken all around us. But we were made for better than this: We were made for shalom. We were made to be whole--and to make things whole. This is an empowering journey for those who hunger for a better life, for a better world ... for those who want to plant and grow the seeds of restoration in themselves and their communities ... and for those who want to see the jagged edges made smooth as we move from brokenness to wholeness.

Author: Kelley Nikondeha
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 1467458619
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
There would be no Moses, no crossing of the Red Sea, no story of breaking the chains of slavery if it weren’t for the women in the Exodus narrative. Women on both sides of the Nile exhibited a subversive strength resisting Pharaoh and leading an entire people to freedom. Defiant explores how the Exodus women summoned their courage, harnessed their intelligence, and gathered their resources to enact justice in many small ways and overturned an empire. Women find themselves in similar circumstances today. The Women’s March stirred the conscience of a nation and prompted women to organize with and for their neighbors, it is worth reflecting on the resistance literature of Exodus and what it has to offer women. Defiant is about the deep work women do to create conditions for liberation in their church, community, and country. The women of Exodus defied Pharaoh, raised Moses, and plundered Egypt. We are invited to consider what the midwives, mothers of Moses, Miriam, Zipporah and her sisters demonstrate under the oppressive regime of Pharaoh and what it might unlock for us as we imagine our mandate under modern systems of injustice. Kelley Nikondeha presents a fresh paradigm for women, highlighting a biblical mandate to join the liberation work in our world. Women’s work involves more than tending to our own family and home. According to Exodus, it moves us beyond the domestic territory and into relationship with women across the river, confronting injustice and working to liberate our neighborhoods so all mothers and children are free. Nikondeha calls women to continue to be active agents in heralding liberation as we organize and march together for one another’s freedom.

Author: A. J. Swoboda
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 1493412906
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
We live in a 24/7 culture of endless productivity, workaholism, distraction, burnout, and anxiety--a way of life to which we've sadly grown accustomed. This tired system of "life" ultimately destroys our souls, our bodies, our relationships, our society, and the rest of God's creation. The whole world grows exhausted because humanity has forgotten to enter into God's rest. This book pioneers a creative path to an alternative way of existing. Combining creative storytelling, pastoral sensitivity, practical insight, and relevant academic research, Subversive Sabbath offers a unique invitation to personal Sabbath-keeping that leads to fuller and more joyful lives. A. J. Swoboda demonstrates that Sabbath is both a spiritual discipline and a form of social justice, connects Sabbath-keeping to local communities, and explains how God may actually do more when we do less. He shows that the biblical practice of Sabbath-keeping is God's plan for the restoration and healing of all creation. The book includes a foreword by Matthew Sleeth.

Author: Liuan Huska
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830848088
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
What is healing when our bodies suffer chronic illness? As Liuan Huska went through years of chronic pain, she questioned how the Christian story speaks to our experiences of pain and illness. Countering a gnosticism that pits body against spirit, Huska helps us redefine what it means to find healing and wholeness, even in the midst of ongoing pain.