Many a Westerner has had a cross-cultural experience of honor and shame. First there are those stuttering moments in the new social landscape. Then after missed cues and social bruises comes the revelation that this culture-indeed much of the world-runs on an honor-shame operating system. When Western individualism and its introspective conscience fails to engage cultural gears, how can we shift and navigate this alternate code? And might we even learn to see and speak the gospel differently if we did? In Ministering in Honor-Shame Cultures Jayson Georges and Mark Baker help us decode the cultural script of honor and shame. What's more, they assist us in reading the Bible anew through the lens of honor and shame, often with startling turns. And they offer thoughtful and practical guidance in ministry within honor-shame contexts. Apt stories, illuminating insights and ministry-tested wisdom complete this well-rounded guide to Christian ministry in honor-shame cultures.

2018 WORLD Magazine Book of the Year - Accessible Theology 2018 ECPA Top Shelf Book Cover Award Publishers Weekly starred review We live in a distracted, secular age. These two trends define life in Western society today. We are increasingly addicted to habits-and devices-that distract and "buffer" us from substantive reflection and deep engagement with the world. And we live in what Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor calls "a secular age"-an age in which all beliefs are equally viable and real transcendence is less and less plausible. Drawing on Taylor's work, Alan Noble describes how these realities shape our thinking and affect our daily lives. Too often Christians have acquiesced to these trends, and the result has been a church that struggles to disrupt the ingrained patterns of people's lives. But the gospel of Jesus is inherently disruptive: like a plow, it breaks up the hardened surface to expose the fertile earth below. In this book Noble lays out individual, ecclesial, and cultural practices that disrupt our society's deep-rooted assumptions and point beyond them to the transcendent grace and beauty of Jesus. Disruptive Witness casts a new vision for the evangelical imagination, calling us away from abstraction and cliche to a more faithful embodiment of the gospel for our day.

Eine Anthropologie fur die Pastoralpsychologie stellt ein Desiderat dar, das in der Entwicklung dieser Disziplin offen geblieben ist. Dieses Buch gibt Antwort auf die Suche nach einer anthropologischen Grundlegung mit einer eigenen Konstellation: Die organistische Philosophie Alfred North Whiteheads wird mit der analytischen Psychologie Carl Gustav Jungs und einzelnen Aussagen theologischer Anthropologie Pierre Teilhard de Chardins und Karl Rahners in Verbindung gebracht. So entsteht eine Prozessanthropologie, die thematische Gegenuberstellungen zu Konturen dieser Anthropologie fuhrt und zu Optionen fur die tiefenpsychologische Ausrichtung der Pastoralpsychologie kommt.

Although a minority of the Asian population, Protestants in Asia are a fast-growing group. What are the political implications of this evangelical Christianity? In some cases, religion has enabled poor and marginalized people to gain greater prosperity, self-confidence and civic skills, and more open-minded and democratic societies. But does religion have the kind of cultural currency needed to generate political changes in governments such as China's? Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Asia provides six case studies on China, Western India, Northeast India, Indonesia, South Korea, and the Philippines. The contributors, mainly younger scholars based in Asia, bring first hand-knowledge to their chapters. The result is a groundbreaking work, indispensable to everyone concerned with the future of the region.
Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Asia is one of four volumes in the series Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in the Global South and grew from a Pew-funded study that sought to answer the question: What happens when a revivalist religion based on scriptural orthodoxy participates in the volatile politics of the Third World? At a time when the global-political impact of another revivalist and scriptural religion - Islam - fuels debate, these volumes offer an unusual comparative perspective.

A pastor's frank advice for Christians who want to bring the gospel to their neighbors. Gold Medal Winner, 2016 Illumination Book Award in ministry/mission, Independent Publishers How can Christians represent the love of Christ to their neighbors (let alone people in foreign countries) in an age when Christianity has earned a bad name from centuries of intolerance and cultural imperialism? Is it enough to love and serve them? Can you win their trust without becoming one of them? Can you be a missional Christian without a church? This provocative book, based on a recently uncovered collection of 100-year-old letters from a famous pastor to his nephew, a missionary in China, will upend pretty much everyone's assumptions about what it means to give witness to Christ. Blumhardt challenges us to find something of God in every person, to befriend people and lead them to faith without expecting them to become like us, and to discover where Christ is already at work in the world. This is truly good news: No one on the planet is outside the love of God. At a time when Christian mission has too often been reduced to social work or proselytism, this book invites us to reclaim the heart of Jesus' great commission, quietly but confidently incarnating the love of Christ and trusting him to do the rest.

This collection of essays is committed to the belief that evangelicalism continues to have the historical assets and intellectual (hermeneutical and theological) tools able to contribute to the global church. Evangelicalism possesses assets with explanatory power to address significant theological and cultural issues arising out of the churches in the Global South. Evangelical approaches to contextualization and biblical studies can produce valuable fruit. Therefore in May 2008 over a dozen evangelical scholars (Chinese and Western) from the United States, Hong Kong and Taiwan, came together to address issues of Christian and evangelical identity. The Inter-Cultural Theological Conversation was titled Beyond Our Past: Bible, Cultural Identity, and the Global Evangelical Movement. This collection of papers from the conference demonstrates the value of the careful balancing of judicious appropriation of the social sciences and thorough biblical inquiry. Questions of evangelical identity in China and around the world are addressed from the disciplines of history, biblical studies, and systematic theology/contextualization.

Throughout the history of the Christian church, two narratives have constantly clashed: the imperial logic of Babel that builds towers and borders to seize control, versus the logic of Pentecost that empowers "glocal" missionaries of the kingdom life. To what extent are Westernized Christians today ready for the church of the Pentecost narrative? Are they equipped to do ministry in different cultural modes and to handle disruption and perplexity? What are Christians to make of the Holy Spirit's occasional encounters with cultures and religions of the Americas before the European conquest? Oscar Garcia-Johnson explores a new grammar for the study of theology and mission in global Christianity, especially in Latin America and the Latinx "third spaces" in North America. With an interdisciplinary, "transoccidental," and narrative approach, Spirit Outside the Gate offers a constructive theology of mission for the church in global contexts. Building on the familiar missiological metaphor of "outside the gate" established by Orlando Costas, Garcia-Johnson moves to recover important elements in ancestral traditions of the Americas, with an eye to discerning pneumatological continuity between the pre-Columbian and post-Columbian communities. He calls for a "rerouting of theology"-a realization that theology cannot make its home in Christendom but is a global creation that must come home to a church without borders. In this volume Garcia-Johnson considers pneumatological insights into de/postcolonial studies traces independent epistemic contributions of the American Global South shows how American indigenous, Afro-Latinx, and immigrant communities provide resources for a decolonial pneumatology describes four transformations the American church must undergo to break free from colonial, modernist, and monocultural structures Spirit Outside the Gate opens a path for a pneumatological missiology that can help the church act as a witness to the gospel message in a postmodern, postcolonial, and post-Christendom world. Missiological Engagements charts interdisciplinary and innovative trajectories in the history, theology, and practice of Christian mission, featuring contributions by leading thinkers from both the Euro-American West and the majority world whose missiological scholarship bridges church, academy, and society.

The Religious Right came to prominence in the early 1980s, but it was born during the early Cold War. Evangelical leaders like Billy Graham, driven by a fierce opposition to communism, led evangelicals out of the political wilderness they'd inhabited since the Scopes trial and into a much more active engagement with the important issues of the day. How did the conservative evangelical culture move into the political mainstream? Angela Lahr seeks to answer this important question. She shows how evangelicals, who had felt marginalized by American culture, drew upon their eschatological belief in the Second Coming of Christ and a subsequent glorious millennium to find common cause with more mainstream Americans who also feared a a 'soon-coming end, ' albeit from nuclear war.
In the early postwar climate of nuclear fear and anticommunism, the apocalyptic eschatology of premillennial dispensationalism embraced by many evangelicals meshed very well with the "secular apocalyptic" mood of a society equally terrified of the Bomb and of communism. She argues that the development of the bomb, the creation of the state of Israel, and the Cuban Missile Crisis combined with evangelical end-times theology to shape conservative evangelical political identity and to influence secular views. Millennial beliefs influenced evangelical interpretation of these events, repeatedly energized evangelical efforts, and helped evangelicals view themselves and be viewed by others as a vital and legitimate segment of American culture, even when it raised its voice in sharp criticism of aspects of that culture. Conservative Protestants were able to take advantage of this situation to carve out a new space for theirsubculture within the national arena. The greater legitimacy that evangelicals gained in the early Cold War provided the foundation of a power-base in the national political culture that the religious right would draw on in the late seventies and early eighties. The result, she demonstrates, was the alliance of religious and political conservatives that holds power today.

This volume provides an authoritative account of evangelicalism from the 1790s to the 1840s, skilfully balancing British and American developments and also encompassing Canada, Australia, the West Indies and elsewhere. An account of the formative impact of revivalism is followed by discussion of spirituality and worship, and the place of evangelicalism in the lives of women, men and the family. The book then explores the broader social and political impact of the movement, giving particular attention to the slavery question. Major figures, such as Lyman Beecher, Thomas Chalmers, Charles Finney, Hannah More and William Wilberforce, are surveyed alongside other fascinating, lesser-known personalities. The concluding coverage of the 1846 London meeting of the Evangelical Alliance - one of the few grand gatherings of evangelicals from the Atlantic world and beyond - contributes key insights into the movement as a whole.

Revealing the impact of diasporic Scots on church and society in South Africa and beyondUtilising a large trove of primary source documents, this book presents a trans-generational narrative of the influence and role played by diasporic Scots and some of their descendants in the religious and political lives of Dutch/Afrikaner people in British colonial southern Africa. It demonstrates how this Scottish religious culture helped to develop a complicated counter-narrative to what would become the mainstream discourse of Afrikaner Christian nationalism in the early 20th century. Retief Muller provides new perspectives on the ways in which the historical changeover from British Imperial rule to apartheid South Africa was both contradicted and facilitated by the influence and legacies of Scottish religious emissaries, and considers the backlash to the Scots-Afrikaner tradition from the side of Afrikaner Christian nationalist opponents.

La question ecologique inquiete les ecologistes et les climato-septiques. Sans se confondre, avec eux, le theologien Augustin Kalamba propose a travers ce livre une " ecologie theo-logique ". Fondee sur la cosmologie du salut d'Adolphe Gesche et l'ecologie integrale du pape Francois, elle est un projet spirituel d'ordre superieur qui, partant d'une approche phenomenologique de la crise ecologique, reaffirme la responsabilite de " l'homme-parlant-de-Dieu-dans-la-foi " dans le projet du salut du cosmos. L'homme est invite a redecouvrir l'identite eco-theologique du monde comme " creation " et " maison commune " afin de le cultiver, labourer, proteger, et sauve-garder avec gratitude et dans la serenite qui vient de la foi en un Dieu Createur du ciel et de la terre, de l'univers visible et invisible.

More than ever, North America is being flooded by people from all around the world, many of them here illegally. How should the church respond to these sojourners among us? In Strangers Next Door professor of evangelism and church planting J. D. Payne introduces the phenomenon of migrations of peoples to Western nations and explores how the church should respond in light of the mission of God. As we understand and embrace the fact that the least-reached people groups now reside in (and continue to migrate to) Western countries, churches have unprecedented opportunites to freely share the gospel with them. This book includes practical guidelines for doing crosscultural missions and developing a global strategy of mission. It also highlights examples of churches and organizations attempting to reach, partner with, and send migrants to minister to their people. Discover how you can reach out to the strangers next door by welcoming them into God's family.

The Missionary, the Catechist and the Hunter examines the role of Protestantism in the Danish colonisation of Greenland and shows how the process of colonisation entails a process of subjectification where the identity of indigenous population is transformed. The figure of the hunter, commonly regarded as quintessential Inuit figure, is traced back to the efforts of the Greenlandic intelligentsia to distance themselves from the hunting lifestyle by producing an abstract hunter identity in Greenlandic literature.

The various media genres involving evangelical performance may seem tangential but are in fact significant and influential cultural products employing sophisticated tactics to reach large audiences of firm believers, extreme skeptics, and those in between. Sensational Devotion examines contemporary Passion plays, biblical theme parks, Holy Land recreations, creationist museums, and megachurches in order to understand how they serve their evangelical believer-users while also shaping larger cultural and national dialogues. The book examines how performative media support specific theologies and core beliefs by creating sensual, live experiences for those who use them. Because they often appear in accessible, familiar forms (such as theme parks) and employ pop culture motifs, a wide range of people-including those hostile toward Christianity or religion generally-are often willing to "try out" these genres, even if only for curiosity's sake. This familiarity not only helps these genres achieve their goals, but it also enables them to contribute to public dialogue about the role of religious faith in America. The book demonstrates the unique ways in which these genres, which certainly reflect religious belief, also simultaneously make religious belief. Jill Stevenson explores evangelical performance across a range of media and sites, including film, television, theater, tourist attractions, museums, and places of worship. Using historical research coupled with firsthand experiences at the evangelical venues, Stevenson not only critically examines these spaces and events within their specific religious, cultural, and national contexts, but also places them within a longer devotional tradition in order to suggest how they cultivate religious belief by generating vivid, sensual, affectively oriented, and individualized experiences. Stevenson shows how the genres analyzed function through a distinctive dramaturgy that assumes certain interpretations of representation, realism, enactment, spectatorship, and presence, in order to achieve particular aesthetic, ideological, and experiential effects. The performances don't simply represent theological concepts and depict biblical stories, but confront users with vivid, sensual, and rhythmic experiences designed to foster embodied beliefs that will respond to specific devotional needs and desires. Employing cognitive theory and theories of affect, the author demonstrates how these performative forms effectively foster the personal and experiential aspects of American evangelicalism, thereby reinforcing core theological tenets by means of the believer-user's body. Sensational Devotion contributes to existing scholarship on American evangelicalism and evangelical Christian media, especially work that examines performance. The analysis builds upon existing work on performance and cognition, as well as theories of affect. The author also draws connections between contemporary Protestant forms and medieval affective culture, thereby contributing to scholarship on medieval culture and medievalism. Finally, this book responds to the growing public interest in evangelical Christianity and evangelical media generally.

Christ has ascended. Yet his work continues. Much has been made of a "missional" view of the church in recent theological literature, but largely overlooked in this discussion has been the contribution that T. F. Torrance, the late Church of Scotland minister and theologian, can make to this discussion. Addressing this lacuna, theologian and pastor Joseph Sherrard considers how Torrance's theology can inform the church's understanding of its ministry and mission-in particular, his appeal to the church's participation in the ascended Christ's threefold office as king, prophet, and priest. Through the ministry of the church, Christ is still at work. Featuring new monographs with cutting-edge research, New Explorations in Theology provides a platform for constructive, creative work in the areas of systematic, historical, philosophical, biblical, and practical theology.

What's so big about small groups? With proven results in drawing people into community and helping them grow to maturity in Christ, small groups have established themselves as a crucial ministry of the church to its members and its mission field. But whether leading a small group, coaching small group leaders or implementing a churchwide ministry, you need vision, knowledge and skill to minister effectively through small groups. Jeffrey Arnold knows the pressures of small group ministry, but he has also seen the power of small groups in many ministry settings. In this revised edition of The Big Book on Small Groups, he breaks down small groups so that you can see them from all angles. The first four chapters focus on the structure and benefits of a small group ministry. Further chapters explore the basics of Christian community--prayer, worship, Bible study, outreach and mission, as well as how to multiply groups. Resources for further reading, ideas for coaches and trainers, and curriculum to photocopy for small group sessions are also included. A constant companion throughout your small group ministry, The Big Book on Small Groups will give you the basics to get you going--and the support and nurture you need to make small groups effective as a strategy for outreach and discipleship.

Die Publikation prasentiert den kurzesten und kompaktesten Text der Vision einer Jenseitsreise des Hochmittelalters. Sie wurde im 12. Jahrhundert von einem Moench aus Luttich erstellt und zeichnet mit minimalistischen Mitteln ein eigenwilliges Bild von Himmel, Fegefeuer und Hoelle. Der Text ist didaktisch angelegt zur Belehrung des Visionars selbst, aber auch seiner Mitbruder, und soll weiterhin in einer Schachtelvision die Bauern des Klostergutes ansprechen. Der Text ist in drei Handschriften aus dem 15. Jahrhundert aus Kloestern des heutigen Belgien erhalten geblieben. Dieses Buch beinhaltet die erstmalig erstellte kritische Edition mit einer UEbersetzung und einem ausfuhrlichen Kommentar.

14th Annual Outreach Magazine Resource of the Year, Cross-Cultural Category From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is a crosscultural book. Scripture is full of narratives of God's people crossing cultures in pursuit of God's mission. Biblical texts shed light on mission dynamics: Sarah and Hagar functioning in an honor-shame culture, Moses as a multicultural leader, Ruth as a crosscultural conversion, David and Uriah illustrating power distance, the queen of Sheba as an international truth-seeker, Daniel as a transnational student, Paul in Athens as a model of contextualization, and much more. Missionary and missions professor Marvin Newell provides a biblical theology of culture and mission, mining the depths of Scripture to tease out missiological insights and crosscultural perspectives. Unlike other such books that are organized topically, this text is organized canonically, revealing how the whole of Scripture speaks to contemporary mission realities. Comprehensive in scope, filled with biblical insight and missional expertise, this book is an essential resource for students and practitioners of crosscultural ministry and mission.

Elenktik ist die Lehre vom Gewissen des Menschen in seinem jeweiligen kulturellen und religisen Kontext. Das individuelle Gewissen, das die Basis der emotionalen Intelligenz des Menschen bildet, stellt eine der elementarsten Bedingungen dar, ohne die er nicht fhig ist, mit anderen zusammen in einer funktionsfhigen Gemeinschaft zu leben. Nur ein angemessen geformtes Gewissen verleiht dem Menschen den Status eines sozialen Wesens. Davon handelt dieses Buch. Es stellt nicht nur dar, in welch unterschiedlicher Weise Menschen Verste gegen ethische Normen als Snde" werten und welche Rolle ihre Kultur oder gesellschaftliche Schicht dabei spielt, sondern geht auch der Frage nach, was hinter Amoklufen, Ehrenmorden und religisem Fanatismus steckt, ob Gewissensbisse" als Schuld, Scham oder Angst empfunden werden, wie verschiedene Prgungen des Gewissens zum Frieden mit sich selbst und dem eigenen gesellschaftlichen Umfeld fhren, und was unter diesen Bedingungen Bue" und Vergebung" bedeuten. Ausfhrlich kommt zur Sprache, welche Autoritten fr ein individuelles Gewissen Bedeutung haben, und in welcher Weise ethische Normen Einfluss auf das Verstehen von Recht" und Ehre" in einer Gesellschaft nehmen. Der Autor bezieht ethnologische, psychologische, soziologische, pdagogische, theologische und viele andere Gesichtspunkte in seine berlegungen ein und entwirft somit eine umfassende Theorie des Gewissens, mit deren Hilfe besonders auch das Europern oft so unverstndliche Verhalten von Menschen aus anderen Gesellschaftsordnungen, beispielsweise von Asylbewerbern, erklrt und verstanden werden kann.

In recent decades churches have accommodated people with disabilities in various ways. Through access ramps and elevators and sign language, disabled persons are invited in to worship. But are they actually enfolded into the church's mission? Have the able-bodied come to recognize and appreciate the potential contributions of people with disabilities in the ministry and witness of the church? Benjamin Conner wants to stimulate a new conversation between disability studies and Christian theology and missiology. How can we shape a new vision of the entire body of Christ sharing in the witness of the church? How would it look if we "disabled" Christian theology, discipleship, and theological education? Conner argues that it would in fact enable congregational witness. He has seen it happen and he shows us how. Imagine a church that fully incorporates persons with disabilities into its mission and witness. In this vision, people with disabilities contribute to the church's pluriform witness, and the congregation embodies a robust hermeneutic of the gospel. Picture the entire body of Christ functioning beyond distinctions of dis/ability, promoting mutual flourishing and growing into fullness. Here is an enlargement of the church's witness as a sign, agent, and foretaste of the kingdom of God. Here is a fresh and inspiring look at the mission of the church when it enfolds people with disabilities as full members. Missiological Engagements charts interdisciplinary and innovative trajectories in the history, theology, and practice of Christian mission, featuring contributions by leading thinkers from both the Euro-American West and the majority world whose missiological scholarship bridges church, academy, and society.

Get your children interested in mission by using this excellent Sunday School resource book. 'This gets inside the lives of people from another culture. An essential resource for launching children into the adventure of missions. Prepare for take off!' Stephen Nichols, All Souls. 'If you are teaching 7-11 year olds you need this book. Let the children taste new cultures and meet colourful characters. A creative blend of facts, games, crafts and ideas. User friendly and flexible. Easy to adapt to fit the needs of your group. Ideal for dipping into or using week by week. All you need for a five-minute slot or a two hour session. 'Cor! Cool!' Shona Clements, age 11

This essay deals with the missionary work of the Society of Jesus in today's Micronesia from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Although the Jesuit missionaries wanted to reach Japan and other Pacific islands, such as the Palau and Caroline archipelagos, the crown encouraged them to stay in the Marianas until 1769 (when the Society of Jesus was expelled from the Philippines) to evangelize the native Chamorros as well as to reinforce the Spanish presence on the fringes of the Pacific empire. In 1859, a group of Jesuit missionaries returned to the Philippines, but they never officially set foot on the Marianas during the nineteenth century. It was not until the twentieth century that they went back to Micronesia, taking charge of the mission on the Northern Marianas along with the Caroline and Marshall Islands, thus returning to one of the cradles of Jesuit martyrdom in Oceania.