Author: Peter R. Lawson Publisher: Xlibris Corporation ISBN: 1462809219 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 156
Book Description
In Jesus Circles....... ..........Peter Lawson says it is possible to imagine and create a new social order in which the abundance of the earth is justly shared and the domination system with its inherent reliance on violence is no longer sanctioned . The new social order is based on the movement Jesus started among marginalized peasants in Galilee; a movement that undermined the Roman/ Judean system of domination and violence. His program incarnated an alternative community in which oppressed common folk experienced healing, wholeness and abundance even in the midst of a system of extreme violence. Many of us have moved away from the notions of God that prevailed in the ancient world. Many of us have found that even those concepts of God that survived the enlightenment no longer fit the demands of 21st century thought and culture. We long for a progressive religious expression that recognizes many religious paths to the life of abundance we all desire and that concepts of spirituality are culturally conditioned. Those of us who come out of a Christian heritage find we can no longer say the creeds in a meaningful way. We cant accept or ascribe to beliefs about a blood sacrifice that appeases an angry God. We are offended by the human violence and the violence of God that pervades the Bible. We no longer take the Holy Scriptures as definitive historical documents and rightly treat them as fictionalized accounts of (sometime barely discernible) events. Yet out of what we reject, the powerful figure of a Galilean sage has emerged and seized our imaginations. Many of us find ourselves liberated by the recent Third Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Biblical scholarship which follows the same strategies.. Through sophisticated developments in archeology and cultural anthropology in the last half of the 20th century, we know more about the politics, economics and cultural life of the Mediterranean basin in the 1st century CE than its inhabitants could know. We now have, for example, spectacular new awareness of the sociological structure of agrarian societies It appears that most of the literature of the New Testament is the interpretive works of upper class men (sic) trying to fit the radical Jesus into their Greco-Roman cultural frame. Listen to these words In the half-century before the creation of the first narrative gospel - the Gospel of Mark ... (Jesus) a visionary sage was transformed from an iconoclast to an icon and his radical vision of Gods domain dissipated in debates about divinity. With all of this scholarship we can now look behind the editorial embellishments of early Christian literature. We can peer deeply into Jesus message and mission in the context of his own social reality. We know, better than ever, how his radical stance so mightily offended the ruling powers of Galilee and Judea that they sought his assassination. We know how his healing and teaching enthused and energized marginalized Jewish peasants in Galilee. If we are to have any worthwhile life in our own world, dominated as it is by violence, we must begin to explore ways to embody today the nonviolent message and program of Jesus. Our first task is to get as many of the interpretive notions of those upper class literate Gospel writers out of the way so we can see Jesus as he himself spoke and acted, knowing our vision will still be a bit blurry. Because the differences between the first-century culture of the Mediterranean world and ours of the twenty-first century are radical, our second task is to look at and listen to the specific things Jesus said and did in the context of his culture. That will enable us to unpack the impact
Author: Jimmy Scroggins Publisher: Lifeway Church Resources ISBN: 9781535998826 Category : Christian life Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Have you ever struggled to share your faith with someone? Have you felt ill-equipped to talk about Jesus as the answer to our problems, issues, and concerns? The experience is more common than you think. For all sorts of reasons, whether good or bad, we struggle to find the right words in the right moment. We don't quite know how to turn the conversation to the gospel and the hope we have because of Jesus. The realities of God's design, brokenness, and the gospel give us a framework to talk about our faith with others. We can have spiritual conversations without the pressure of knowing it all or getting it all right. This framework allows us to focus on the choices we all have to make to repent and believe the gospel so we can recover and pursue God's design for our lives. This Bible Study Will Help You... Trace the greater story of redemption found in Scripture. Understand important biblical concepts like God's design, sin, brokenness, repentance, belief, and the gospel. Consider ways to use the 3 Circles to talk about your faith with others. Also Available, 3 Circles Leader Kit includes resources for leading a six-session group study: one Bible study book, one DVD, digital downloads, and extra leader resources. Digital Resources, eBook and digital leader kit available at LifeWay.com/3circles Book jacket.
Author: Carolyn T. Ritzman Publisher: B&H Publishing Group ISBN: 1433676656 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 191
Book Description
In this stylish re-issue of W. Oscar Thompson's classic book on evangelism, Thompson shows Christians how to spread the love and good news of Christ by building and repairing personal relationships. Too often the only kind of evangelism encouraged is the preaching to strangers, anonymous crowds, and foreign countries. This book hits readers where they live, teaching them that the most effective way to witness is through a simple plan of meeting the needs of close family first, then friends, and then all others.Published post-humously, this book is a living testament of the brilliance of Oscar Thompson and his innovative method. It will be a perfect guide to lifestyle evangelism for church study groups, conferences, and the classroom.
Author: Jimmy Scroggins Publisher: B&H Publishing Group ISBN: 1462747841 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 130
Book Description
Authors Jimmy Scroggins and Steve Wright outline a reproducible method of sharing the gospel that has been tested in the real world. Turning Everyday Conversations Into Gospel Conversations is a simple strategy to train new and seasoned believers to join God in His reconciliation work. Turning Everyday Conversations Into Gospel Conversations equips believers to use the innovative "3 Circles," a user-friendly evangelistic tool for a new generation. Scroggins and Wright train readers to incorporate the biblical metanarrative, as well as our own personal stories, to tell the good news that Jesus has made a way out of the broken places we find ourselves.
Author: Dustin Willis Publisher: Moody Publishers ISBN: 0802491499 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 192
Book Description
If you had a ladder made of splinters, would you stand on it? Unfortunately, the mission practices of most churches stand on weak foundations. Life on Mission gives gospel-centered, biblical, practical foundations for how missions was meant to be: an everyone-together effort. Life on Mission is a thorough yet simple guide for everyday missionaries—electricians, lawyers, church planters, students, etc.—that equips them with truths and practices for living out the gospel within their own community. Adaptable to any context, Life on Mission functions great as both an individual and small-group study. Threaded with engaging stories and probing reflection questions, Life on Mission will help you and your community take bold steps to living life on mission.
Author: Larry W. Hurtado Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing ISBN: 1467425044 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 293
Book Description
In How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? Larry Hurtado investigates the intense devotion to Jesus that emerged with surprising speed after his death. Reverence for Jesus among early Christians, notes Hurtado, included both grand claims about Jesus' significance and a pattern of devotional practices that effectively treated him as divine. This book argues that whatever one makes of such devotion to Jesus, the subject deserves serious historical consideration. Mapping out the lively current debate about Jesus, Hurtado explains the evidence, issues, and positions at stake. He goes on to treat the opposition to -- and severe costs of -- worshiping Jesus, the history of incorporating such devotion into Jewish monotheism, and the role of religious experience in Christianity's development out of Judaism. The follow-up to Hurtado's award-winningLord Jesus Christ (2003), this book provides compelling answers to queries about the development of the church's belief in the divinity of Jesus.
Author: Mark Batterson Publisher: Zondervan ISBN: 0310346924 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 241
Book Description
With over one million copies sold, New York Times bestseller The Circle Maker is a must-read for revolutionizing your prayer life. Get ready to experience new breakthroughs, knowing that bold prayers honor God and God honors bold prayers. Do you ever sense that there's far more to prayer than what you're experiencing? Are you praying over your impossible dreams and greatest fears? Do you feel like something is holding you back in your prayer life? It's time you learned from the legend of Honi the Circle Maker. When his land was drought-stricken in ancient times, Honi ha-M'agel drew a circle in the sand, stepped inside it, and wouldn't budge until God answered his petition for rain. Honi's story transformed author Mark Batterson's own experience with prayer and inspired him to document his journey to praying more powerful prayers in The Circle Maker. Sharing inspiring stories from modern-day circle makers as well as his own experiences, Mark imparts the timeless wisdom and encouragement you need to: Discern God's will for your life Uncover your heart's hidden desires Pursue God-sized dreams Connect with God in fresh ways Deepen your faith and your relationship with prayer Draw prayer circles around your family, your community, your challenges, and your dreams This updated and expanded edition of The Circle Maker also includes new insights about the ways that God answers prayer along with stories that add convincing proof to the reality that God is able to do exceedingly far greater than all we could ask or imagine. Learn for yourself that drawing prayer circles around our dreams isn't just a way that we accomplish great things for God--it's a way that God accomplishes great things in us.
Author: Kristin Kobes Du Mez Publisher: Liveright Publishing ISBN: 1631495747 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 384
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism—or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.” As acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. Many of today’s evangelicals might not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they’ve read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex—and they have a silver ring to prove it. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. And evangelical culture is teeming with muscular heroes—mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.” Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.
Author: David E. Fitch Publisher: InterVarsity Press ISBN: 0830899413 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 235
Book Description
How can the church engage the world, not by judgment nor accommodation but by becoming the good news in our culture? Offering seven distinct spiritual practices, David Fitch helps you re-envision church, what you do in the name of church, and the way you lead a church. Reimagine the church as the living embodiment of Christ, reflecting God's faithful presence to a desperate world.
Author: Catherine Bird Publisher: ACU Press ISBN: 0891126228 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 212
Book Description
In Building Circles of Grace, moms and daughters will explore what it means to build and sustain Christ centered relationships that we develop beyond our relationship with God. Some of the toughest experiences we encounter as young girls (and moms, too) are a result of the people we choose as friends. How do you respond with grace to a bully? How do you cope with the loss of a friendship? Can you really make a difference by putting Jesus first when it is not the cool thing to do? Building Circles of Grace invites moms and daughters to discuss all of these questions and more.
Author: Peter R. Lawson
Author: Jimmy Scroggins
Author: Carolyn T. Ritzman
Author: Jimmy Scroggins
Author: Dustin Willis
Author: Larry W. Hurtado
Author: Mark Batterson
Author: Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Author: David E. Fitch
Author: Catherine Bird