|
Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Christian institutions & organizations > Christian mission & evangelism
Debates about the place of mission work in English Language
Teaching continue to rage, and yet full-length studies of what
really happens at the intersection of ELT and evangelical
Christianity are rare. In this book, Johnston conducts a detailed
ethnography of an evangelical language school in Poland, looking at
its Bible-based curriculum, and analyzing interaction in classes
for adults. He also explores the idea of 'relationship' in the
context of the school and its mission activity, and more broadly
the cultural encounter between North American evangelicalism and
Polish Catholicism. The book comprises an in-depth examination of a
key issue facing TEFL in the 21st century, and will be of interest
to all practitioners and scholars in the field, whatever their
position on this topic.
Many young men and women entertain idealistic thoughts of traveling
to a poverty-stricken corner of the world to work with the poor.
Susan Conroy, a Dartmouth junior, didn't just think about it -- she
did it, journeying on her own to Calcutta to spend a summer
volunteering with Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity. In
her moving, first-hand account of Mother Teresa and her work, Susan
learned to find incredible peace and happiness in a city where she
also found hell on earth. Her experience in Calcutta changed her
life forever. Now you can share her account of life in Calcutta,
her never-before seen photographs, and her remarkable profile of a
modern saint -- the woman we soon will call St. Teresa of Calcutta.
Der Band ist die erste groessere Studie zur Vita von Josef Busnaya.
Diese Quelle beschreibt in grossem Detailreichtum das alltagliche
Leben im 10. Jahrhundert in einem ostsyrischen Kloster und seinem
ruralen Umfeld in einer ansonsten schlecht dokumentierten Zeit und
Region. Der Autor veranschaulicht das alltagliche Leben im Kloster,
seine oekonomische Grundlage und das Verhaltnis der Moenche zu
ihrem christlichen und nicht-christlichen Umfeld und analysiert es
im Kontext seiner historischen Situation. Das Ergebnis ist eine
Momentaufnahme mit erstaunlichen Einsichten in das alltagliche,
multireligioes gepragte Leben im Nordirak des 10. Jahrhunderts.
Allerdings sind diesen durch die Natur der Quelle als
hagiographischer Text Grenzen gesetzt.
The Christian faith depends to a great degree on persuasion. In one
of his letters to early Christians, the apostle Paul wrote, "Let
your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may
know how you ought to answer everyone" (Col. 4:6). Yet rhetoric-the
art of persuasion-has been largely ignored by most Christians. In
this book, James Beitler seeks to renew interest in and hunger for
an effective Christian rhetoric by closely considering the work of
five beloved Christian communicators: C. S. Lewis, Dorothy L.
Sayers, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Desmond Tutu, and Marilynne Robinson.
Moreover, he situates these reflections within the Christian
liturgical seasons for the essential truths they convey. These
writers collectively demonstrate that being a master of rhetoric is
not antithetical to authentic Christian witness. Indeed, being a
faithful disciple of Christ means practicing a rhetoric that
beneficially and persuasively imparts the surprising truth of the
gospel. It means having seasoned speech.
As a pastor, the author loved to do evangelism, but noticed most in
his congregation didn't share his enthusiasm, despite their desire
to share the gospel. Sjogren presents a collection of 101 ways that
Christians can reach out to those around them. These "read-and-do"
concepts are designed to be read and then done with a few friends,
a small group, or an entire church.
How should today's Church shape its response to the Gospel? How can
we set about 'making disciples of all nations' in our
post-Christian, multi-faith world? What does 'mission' mean in our
times? Here, at last, is a book which addresses these issues - and
many more - with honesty and openness. It strips 'mission' of its
old associations with colonialism and militarism. It looks anew at
the underlying theology, reminding us that our task is God's
mission, not a human construct. It explores key aspects of
contemporary mission, from the familiar - such as the relation of
mission to evangelism, and to people of others faiths - to the
unusual and thought-provoking - such as mission and the
environment, justice for the poor, and the overcoming of violence.
J. Andrew Kirk, who has written and lectured widely on the subject
of mission, also reflects on the importance of partnership and
community - of mission as a shared enterprise. He brings the fruits
of his own broad experience, along with current academic thinking
in missiology, and presents this afresh for a wide readership.
Brief exercises at the end of each chapter draw the reader
personally into the issues covered. Students of mission and
Christians who wish to engage with today's world, to integrate
faith and life, will find here an inclusive, comprehensive and
lucid presentation of all relevant discussions.
In 1854, American Presbyterian missionaries arrived in Egypt as
part of a larger Anglo-American Protestant movement aiming for
worldwide evangelization. Protected by British imperial power, and
later by mounting American global influence, their enterprise
flourished during the next century. American Evangelicals in Egypt
follows the ongoing and often unexpected transformations initiated
by missionary activities between the mid-nineteenth century and
1967--when the Six-Day Arab-Israeli War uprooted the Americans in
Egypt. Heather Sharkey uses Arabic and English sources to shed
light on the many facets of missionary encounters with Egyptians.
These occurred through institutions, such as schools and hospitals,
and through literacy programs and rural development projects that
anticipated later efforts of NGOs. To Egyptian Muslims and Coptic
Christians, missionaries presented new models for civic
participation and for women's roles in collective worship and
community life. At the same time, missionary efforts to convert
Muslims and reform Copts stimulated new forms of Egyptian social
activism and prompted nationalists to enact laws restricting
missionary activities. Faced by Islamic strictures and customs
regarding apostasy and conversion, and by expectations regarding
the proper structure of Christian-Muslim relations, missionaries in
Egypt set off debates about religious liberty that reverberate even
today. Ultimately, the missionary experience in Egypt led to
reconsiderations of mission policy and evangelism in ways that had
long-term repercussions for the culture of American Protestantism.
The Revival of Evangelicalism presents a critical analysis of the
evangelical movement in the national Church. It emphasises the
manner in which the movement both continued along certain
pre-Disruption lines and evolved to represent a broader spectrum of
Reformed Presbyterian doctrine and piety during the long reign of
Queen Victoria. The author interweaves biographical case studies of
influential figures who played key roles in the process of revival
and recovery, including William Muir, Norman MacLeod and A. H.
Charteris. Based on a diverse range of primary sources, the book
places the chronological development of 'established
evangelicalism' within the broader context of British imperialism,
German biblical criticism, European Romanticism and Victorian print
culture.
Originally published in 1940, this book contains the text of the
Birkbeck Lectures for 1937-8. Smyth assesses the contributions that
Cambridge cleric Charles Simeon made to the Evangelical Revival in
Cambridge in the eighteenth century, and includes correspondence
between Simeon and other evangelical thinkers of the day among his
sources. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in
religion in Georgian England and the Evangelical Revival.
The twenty-first century has opened with a rapidly changing map of
Christianity. While its influence is waning in some of its
traditional Western strongholds, it is growing at a phenomenal pace
in the global South. And yet this story has largely eluded the
corporate news brokers of the West. Layered as it is with countless
personal and corporate stories of remarkable faith and witness, it
nevertheless lies ghostlike behind the newsprint and webpages of
our print media, outside the camera's vision on the network evening
news. Miriam Adeney has lived, traveled and ministered widely. She
has walked with Christians in and from the far reaches of the
globe. As she pulls back the veil on real Christians--their faith,
their hardships, their triumphs and, yes, their failures--an
inspiring and challenging story of a kingdom that knows no borders
takes shape. This is a book that coaxes us out of our comfortable
lives. It beckons us to expand our vision and experience of the
possibilities and promise of a faith that continues to shape lives,
communities and nations.
In 1730 a delegation of Illinois Indians arrived in the French
colonial capital of New Orleans. An Illinois leader presented two
ceremonial pipes, or calumets, to the governor. One calumet
represented the diplomatic alliance between the two men and the
other symbolized their shared attachment to Catholicism. The priest
who documented this exchange also reported with excitement how the
Illinois recited prayers and sang hymns in their Native language, a
display that astonished the residents of New Orleans. The
"Catholic" calumet and the Native-language prayers and hymns were
the product of long encounters between the Illinois and Jesuit
missionaries, men who were themselves transformed by these
sometimes intense spiritual experiences. The conversions of people,
communities, and cultural practices that led to this dramatic
episode all occurred in a rapidly evolving and always contested
colonial context.In "The Catholic Calumet," historian Tracy Neal
Leavelle examines interactions between Jesuits and
Algonquian-speaking peoples of the upper Great Lakes and Illinois
country, including the Illinois and Ottawas, in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. Leavelle abandons singular definitions of
conversion that depend on the idealized elevation of colonial
subjects from "savages" to "Christians" for more dynamic concepts
that explain the changes that all participants experienced. A
series of thematic chapters on topics such as myth and historical
memory, understandings of human nature, the creation of colonial
landscapes, translation of religious texts into Native languages,
and the influence of gender and generational differences
demonstrates that these encounters resulted in the emergence of
complicated and unstable cross-cultural religious practices that
opened new spaces for cultural creativity and mutual
adaptation.
Over the last four decades, evangelical scholars have shown growing
interest in Christian debates over other religions, seeking answers
to essential questions: How are we to think about and relate to
other religions, be open to the Spirit, and at the same time remain
evangelical and orthodox? Gerald R. McDermott and Harold A. Netland
offer critiques of a variety of theologians and religious studies
scholars, including evangelicals, but also challenge evangelicals
to move beyond parochial positions. This volume is both a manifesto
and a research program, critically evaluating the last forty years
of Christian treatments of religious others and proposing a
comprehensive direction for the future. It addresses issues
relating to the religions in both systematic theology and
missiology, taking up long-debated questions such as
contextualization, salvation, revelation, the relationship between
culture and religion, conversion, social action, and ecumenism. It
concludes with responses from four leading thinkers of African,
Asian, and European backgrounds: Veli-Matti Karkkainen, Vinoth
Ramachandra, Lamin Sanneh, and Christine Schirrmacher.
The Book Living Every Moment Rightly for Jesus can be summarised
as: As a Christian, where ever you are, whatever you do, remember
you are the messenger. Your life should speak for Jesus. If we
belong to Christ, people must see changes in our lives (2
Corinthians 5:17). Christianity is about transformation which gives
us a new life, a new heart and a new self (Ephesians 4:22-24).
Apostle Paul tells us that this transformation involves renewal of
our minds (Romans 12:1-2). He goes further and says that this
renewal is about having a new mindset or attitude that you find in
Christ himself (Philippians 2:5-8). The Church is where Christians
are equipped for the Ministry of Jesus (Ephesians 4:11-12). People
cannot advance Spiritually apart from what they hear on the pulpit.
Christians bear fruit outside the four walls of the Church. They
have been commanded to carry the Good News (the Gospel) which has
transformed their lives to people around them through their
personal examples. Christians should not expect people around them
to accept their doctrine and ignore their personal examples. Our
personal examples are what will win souls for Jesus. Jesus is our
Saviour and King. He gave His life to pay for our sins and to serve
Him faithfully with passion will change the world. The crowd needs
God's grace (Joel LIVING EVERY MOMENT RIGHTLY FOR JESUS 3:14). To
serve the Lord faithfully with gladness is serving for the Kingdom
purpose. It is a call to serve as against volunteering which means
I am doing you a favour. To serve is a manifestation of
Christianity; Jesus served (Matt hew 20:28). As Christians, we are
all in the Ministry of Jesus. The change (transformation) in our
lives (new heart, new mind and new self) should be reciprocated in
our communities, workplace, political and social life just to
mention but a few. The Word of Spirit and of Power: "For just as
the sufferings of Christ fl ow over into our lives, so also through
Christ our comfort overflows" (2 Corinthians 1:5).
|
|