A fervant millennial hope has often existed at the heart of Protestant evangelicalism. Varieties of eschatology have exercised a profound impact on the movement's theology and history. Although millennialism had a respected lineage within conservative Protestantism, it flourished with enormous energy in the early nineteenth century as evangelicals responded to the threat of the American and European revolutions and the cultural pessimism of the Romantic movement. By mid-century, the millennialism which had first been articulated for the defence of Protestant conservatism had paved the way for the subversion of historic theology and church practice, as a growing confidence in biblical inerrancy and the 'literal' hermeneutic challenged many of the historical assumptions of the evangelical faith. This volume of essays expands on neglected aspects of the impact of the evangelical millennialism in Britain and Ireland between 1800 and 1880 and includes an essay charting recent trends in the study of millennialism.

At his death on the eve of the 20th century, D. L. Moody was widely recognized as one of the most beloved and important men in 19th century America. A Chicago shoe salesman with a fourth grade education, Moody rose from obscurity to become God's man for the Gilded Age. Evensen focuses on the pivotal years during which Moody established his reputation on both sides of the Atlantic through a series of highly popular and publicized campaigns. In chronicling Moody's use of the press and their use of him, Evensen sheds new light on a crucial chapter in the history of evangelicalism and demonstrates how popular religion helped form our modern media culture.

What if you could find a way to share your faith in Jesus that feels natural, fits your personality, and ignites a fire in others? In this video-based evangelism training course (video streaming code included), author of Becoming a Contagious Christian Mark Mittelberg introduces five approaches to evangelism to help you determine which of them fit best with your unique gifts and personality: Friendship-Building Selfless-Serving Story-Sharing Reason-Giving Truth-Telling As disciples of Christ, we are called to share the gospel, but few of us are naturally comfortable with evangelism. We wrestle with a sense of insecurity, a lack of preparation, and the sense that reaching out to others might force us to act like someone we're not. And many of us feel guilty when we fail to use an opportunity to talk about our faith, lowering our confidence even further. Building upon popular personality-type methods, the Contagious Faith assessment will help you identify your primary style, along with any secondary styles you discover. You'll learn next steps for developing and deploying your natural approach to evangelism and work through interactive prompts to practice the methods Mark unpacks in the videos. The Contagious Faith Study Guide can be used in small groups, classes, student ministries, and church-wide campaigns and has everything you need to participate, including: The guide itself-with discussion and personal reflection questions, prompts, video notes, and a leader's guide. An individual access code to stream all six video sessions online (you don't need to buy a DVD!). An assessment quiz to help you determine your Contagious Faith style. The training videos also include short interviews with Mark and five individuals who speak and use each of the 5 faith-sharing styles so that you can see them in action. Streaming video access code included. Access code subject to expiration after 12/31/2027. Code may be redeemed only by the recipient of this package. Code may not be transferred or sold separately from this package. Internet connection required. Void where prohibited, taxed, or restricted by law. Additional offer details inside.

Too long the church has been programmed to accept the inevitabilities of meager results in the efforts toward Muslim evangelization. The reasons for this failure in mission must now be probed and resolved as the world today is coming alive to the presence of the Muslim religious community. Phil Parshall asks the missions world to forsake former presuppositions and to become conscious of God speaking in a new and fresh manner--not in regard to His changeless Word--but in areas of extra-biblical methodology.

As younger generations drift away from evangelical churches, the number of religiously unaffiliated young adults grows. Is the drift because of politics, personal morality, rebelliousness, culture wars, or something else? In this project, 16 young adults from the Churches of Christ participate in qualitative interviews over a five-year span. They describe messages they learned about success and survival from their faith communities as children, and how they have embraced and reinterpreted those messages into helpful life principles as adults. The resulting study explores issues of ethnicity in evangelical borderland communities and contrasts Latinx narratives with white narratives in religious and educative contexts. Findings also revealed gendered narratives, class-based narratives, and the glaring absence of helpful narratives around sexuality, filtered through the lenses of religion and education. The central finding of the interviews is this: participants experienced the Church of Christ as rewarding conformity with community, a strategy (when it works) which secures the future of the denomination and cements a conservative doctrine in the next generation of leadership. However, the study concludes that true survival narratives were the narratives participants constructed in response to the narratives provided by Churches of Christ.

Justice, Mercy and Humility explores the challenge of integral mission among the poor today. It locates the Christian response within a world of alternatives -- alternatives at the macro-level of policies and advocacy and the micro-level of lifestyle and affirms the need to integrate ourselves within a total missional response to the poor. Combing case studies from around the world with Jesus' own teaching and ministry, the book considers what it means for the church to be a countercultural ministry and in doing so raises new questions about what it means to be church. Included are contributions from Tom Sine, C. Rene Padilla and Elaine Storkey.

In this warm and personal book the author looks at what Muslims believe and how this affects--and often doesn't affect--their behavior. Phil Parshall compares and contrasts Muslim and Christian views on the nature of God, sacred scriptures, worship, sin, and holiness.

Christianity is the world's most global faith. Evangelical Christianity, meanwhile, is the world's fastest growing major religion in terms of conversion growth. And yet, at the dawn of the third millennium, the church's primary task ("go and make disciples of all nations") remains undone. Missions in the Third Millennium charts 21 trends both positive and negative with continuing significance for the Great Commission community in the 21st century. Revised and updated with two new chapters on urban missions and evangelizing Muslims, this up-to-date volume offers insights to help students, churches, missionaries, agencies, and Christians from outside the West grasp the big picture and take practical steps for more effective involvement. This edition contains extensive notes, expanded suggestions for further reading, and discussion questions.

In The Great Omission, respected missions thinker Robertson McQuilkin answers the question, "How is it--with so many unreached peoples, there are so few Christians going?" He investigates the reasons so few attempt to carry the message of Christ to the multitudes who have never heard of him. Not only is McQuilkin well-versed on trends and strategies in world missions, he also knows how to present the challenge of world evangelism in an unforgettable way.

This book brings together lectures and articles by the renowned historian of world Christianity, making them available, many for the first time, to scholars and students of world mission. While examining the many aspects that have characterized mission, indigenous Christianity, and colonialism in modern Africa, The Missionary Movement in Christian History has a far broader reach. Essays such as "The Gospel as the Prisoner and Liberator of Culture" reveal the paradoxes of the Christian movement as a whole in discussing how different primitive Mediterranean Christianity is from early Catholicism, from Celtic monasticism, from Reformation Protestantism, and from Nigerian Spirit Christianity. Andrew Walls shows how the central question for Christianity has always been one of identity in many different forms, a phenomenon revealed at each stage of its history by the missionary movement. What this means for theology, however, has hardly been explored. This is the subtext of Walls' work, providing extraordinary insights and successful counters to secular critiques of world Christianity.

"One problem with evangelistic sermons is that they look and sound like evangelistic sermons." So says Craig Loscalzo, respected preacher and teacher of preachers. He believes in the gospel and its unique power, but knows that today's pastors no longer proclaim the gospel in a more or less "Christian" culture. Our pluralistic setting means that the evangelistic sermons of yesterday--which assumed a common premise and deep respect for Christian authorities--can no longer work so smoothly. So here you will find invaluable guidance in shaping evangelistic sermons that are fresh and appealing to today's unbeliever. Evangelistic Preaching that Connects includes a rationale for evangelistic preaching, sample sermons and practical direction, making it ideal for working pastors and seminary students alike.

A 2001 Christianity Today Award of Merit winner "Arguably, the church's greatest challenge in the next century will be the problem of the scandal of particularity. More than ever before, Christians will need to explain why they follow Jesus and not the Buddha or Confucius or Krishna or Muhammed. But if, while relating their faith to the faiths, Christians treat non-Christian religions as netherworlds of unmixed darkness, the church's message will be a scandal not of particularity but of arrogant obscurantism. "Recent evangelical introductions to the problem of other religions have built commendably on foundations laid by J. N. D. Anderson and Stephen Neill. Anderson and Neill opened up the "heathen" worlds to the evangelical West, showing that many non-Christians also seek salvation and have personal relationships with their gods. In the last decade Clark Pinnock and John Sanders have argued for an inclusivist understanding of salvation, and Harold Netland has shed new light on the question of truth in the religions. Yet no evangelicals have focused--as nonevangelicals Keith Ward, Diana Eck and Paul Knitter have done--on the revelatory value of truth in non-Christian religions. Anderson and Neill showed that there are limited convergences between Christian and non-Christian traditions, and Pinnock has argued that there might be truths Christians can learn from religious others. But as far as I know, no evangelicals have yet examined the religions in any sort of substantive way for what Christians can learn without sacrificing, as Knitter and John Hick do, the finality of Christ. "This book is the beginning of an evangelical theology of the religions that addresses not the question of salvation but the problem of truth and revelation, and takes seriously the normative claims of other traditions. It explores the biblical propositions that Jesus is the light that enlightens every person (Jn 1:9) and that God has not left Himself without a witness among non-Christian traditions (Acts 14:17). It argues that if Saint Augustine learned from Neo-Platonism to better understand the gospel, if Thomas Aquinas learned from Aristotle to better understand the Scriptures, and if John Calvin learned from Renaissance humanism, perhaps evangelicals may be able to learn from the Buddha--and other great religious thinkers and traditions--things that can help them more clearly understand God's revelation in Christ. It is an introductory word in a conversation that I hope will go much further among evangelicals." (Gerald McDermott, in the introduction toCan Evangelicals Learn from World Religions?