This book examines the potential of conducting studies in comparative hagiology, through parallel literary and historical analyses of spiritual life writings pertaining to distinct religious contexts. In particular, it focuses on a comparative analysis of the early sources on the medieval Christian Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) and the Tibetan Buddhist Milarepa (c. 1052-1135), up to and including the so-called 'standard versions' of their life stories written by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1221-1274) and Tsangnyoen Heruka (1452-1507) respectively. The book thus demonstrates how in the social and religious contexts of both 1200s Italy and 1400s Tibet, narratives of the lives, deeds and teachings of two individuals recognized as spiritual champions were seen as the most effective means to promote spiritual, doctrinal and political agendas. Therefore, as well being highly relevant to those studying hagiographical sources, this book will be of interest to scholars working across the fields of religion and the comparative study of religious phenomena, as well as history and literature in the pre-modern period.

The Church, Authority, and Foucault addresses the problem of the Church's enmeshment with sovereign power, which can lead to marginalization. Breaking new ground, Ogden uses Foucault's approach to power and knowledge to interpret the church leader's significance as the guardian of knowledge. This can become privileged knowledge, under the spell of sovereign power, and with the complicity of clergy and laity in search of sovereigns. Inevitably, such a culture leads to a sense of entitlement for leaders and conformity for followers. All in the name of obedience. The Church needs to change in order to fulfil its vocation. Instead of a monarchy, what about Church as an open space of freedom? This book, then, is a theological enterprise which cultivates practices of freedom for the sake of the other. This involves thinking differently by exploring catalysts for change, which include critique, space, imagination, and wisdom. In the process, Ogden uses a range of sources, analysing discourse, gossip, ritual, territory, masculinity, and pastoral power. In all, the work of Michel Foucault sets the tone for a fresh ecclesiological critique that will appeal to theologians and clergy alike.

Questioning Authority analyzes current conflicts concerning authority in the Anglican church and offers a new framework for addressing them. It argues that authority in the church is fundamentally relational rather than juridical. All members of the church have authority to engage in discerning the church's identity, direction, and mission. Most of this authority is exercised in personal interactions and group practices of consultation and direction. Formal authority in the church confers power so responsibilities can be fulfilled. Church relations always include conflict, which may be creative and helpful rather than divisive. Conflict arises because persons and groups follow Christ in ways related to their own cultural context while also being in communion with others. Communion in the church requires embracing diversity, recognizing and respecting others' perspectives, and working together to discover and create common ground. Today's church needs more participatory forms of governance and decision-making that are conciliar and synodal.

Spiritual formation occurs primarily in the context of community. But as the modern cultural norm of what social scientists call "radical American individualism" extends itself, many Christians grow lax in their relational accountability to the church. Faith threatens to become an "I" not "us," a "my God" not "our God" concern."When the Church Was a Family "calls believers back to the wisdom of the first century, examining the early Christian church from a sociohistorical perspective and applying the findings to the evangelical church in America today. With confidence, author Joseph Hellerman writes intentionally to traditional church leaders and emerging church visionaries alike, believing what is detailed here about Jesus' original vision for authentic Christian community will deeply satisfy the relational longings of both audiences.

What's working and not working in your congregation? You'll explore the factors that inspired and motivated changes to reverse decline as other congregations wrestled with the same issues you're facing: ministry to current members, ministry to the unchurched, worship, changing neighborhoods, and more.

Here is a summons to pray with twenty great women of faith_from Hildegard of Bingen to Dorothy Day. Brief biographies are followed by commentary, prayer experiences, questions for reflection, and suggestions for action. Meehan brings these women to life, allowing their example to inspire, encourage, and empower you. Meet women who will change your life and enrich your spiritual journey with new possibilities of self-discovery, wisdom, creativity, and friendship. Reminding us that abundance is all around us, and challenging us to make a difference, this book is filled with stories of visionary women with whom we can share the longings that lie deep within us for divine love, deep tranquility, and human intimacy.

Draws on examples of 'entrepreneurs' from the Bible and Christian history to help readers imagine how such an approach could work in their own context Addresses the problems some have with the word 'entrepreneur' and sets out a positive and informed alternative understanding Full of informative and inspiring case-studies of entrepreneurial ministry in action

A compelling new interpretation of early Mormonism, Samuel Brown's In Heaven as It Is On Earth views this religion through the lens of founder Joseph Smith's profound preoccupation with the specter of death.
Revisiting historical documents and scripture from this novel perspective, Brown offers new insight into the origin and meaning of some of Mormonism's earliest beliefs and practices. The world of early Mormonism was besieged by death--infant mortality, violence, and disease were rampant. A prolonged battle with typhoid fever, punctuated by painful surgeries including a threatened leg amputation, and the sudden loss of his beloved brother Alvin cast a long shadow over Smith's own life. Smith embraced and was deeply influenced by the culture of "holy dying"--with its emphasis on deathbed salvation, melodramatic bereavement, and belief in the Providential nature of untimely death--that sought to cope with the widespread mortality of the period. Seen in this light, Smith's treasure quest, search for Native origins, distinctive approach to scripture, and belief in a post-mortal community all acquire new meaning, as do early Mormonism's Masonic-sounding temple rites and novel family system. Taken together, the varied themes of early Mormonism can be interpreted as a campaign to extinguish death forever. By focusing on Mormon conceptions of death, Brown recasts the story of first-generation Mormonism, showing a religious movement and its founder at once vibrant and fragile, intrepid and unsettled, human and otherworldly.
A lively narrative history, In Heaven As It Is on Earth illuminates not only the foundational beliefs of early Mormonism but also the larger issues of family and death in American religious history.

Jesus was uniquely adept in the art of "reading" people. He fit his approach to the precise needs and interests of the person with whom he was dealing, and he spoke the cultural language of that individual. In this book, Robert Perry takes what Jesus and others have done intuitively-niche marketing-and provides a framework for applying those principles in everyday practice. Convinced that congregations can learn from the wisdom of secular disciplines and apply that wisdom to congregational life without damaging the integrity of the Christian faith, Perry offers a detailed process for using sound marketing principles to identify a congregation's strengths and the needs of its community, and to develop strategies for effective ministry.

Leas, an Alban senior consultant and a nationally recognized authority on conflict in congregations, helps you to self-assess your conflict response and discover options appropriate to different levels of conflict. Leas draws on his years of experience helping conflicted congregations, providing valuable insights on the nature of conflict and its resolution. This new edition contains an improved Conflict Strategy Instrument, revised to reflect new learnings.

Becoming a churchwarden can be a richly rewarding experience, but the role is not an easy one. This warmly written handbook will help all those considering, or already in, office to understand what is involved. Focusing throughout on real-life situations, including many case studies, it is a guide to: * the responsibilities of a churchwarden * how to become a churchwarden * working with the minister * the duties of a churchwarden through the year * what a churchwarden should know * what a churchwarden should ask * what to do when problems arise Appendices containing relevant legal documents and other useful resources complete the book, making it an up-to-date, comprehensive and essential aid to negotiating this important office. 'Packed full of useful facts and presented in a very readable way.' thegoodbookstall

* Inviting and engaging, with cartoons throughout

Congregations today face a multitude of challenges in trying to adapt to a quickly changing world. Balancing new concerns with core values is a complicated process that can leave too many members feeling that their voices and needs are not being met. Loren B. Mead and Billie T. Alban have developed Creating the Future Together to share their knowledge of how congregations can use large group methods to navigate these new waters. Large group methods involve getting all the stakeholders together to work on major issues of common concern. Mead and Alban outline four such methods--two for identifying a preferred future and two designed to create community and discover common interest. This book is not meant to be a how-to volume; its primary purpose is to familiarize leaders with these whole-system approaches and to provide a conceptual framework for evaluating their potential usefulness against any given challenge. The authors also share stories from a variety of Christian and Jewish faith communities where ordinary religious leaders, lay and clergy together, have faced issues related to change using large group methods. Combining their wealth of experience in leading religious and secular bodies through times of change, Mead and Alban bring hope to faith communities as they work to embrace, and even thrive through, the need for change.

When first published in 1958, The Canons of the Council of Sardica, AD 343 at once became the standard account of the canons passed by the Western bishops assembled at Serdica in 343 and the thinking on Church matters that lay behind them. In this new edition Hamilton Hess has updated his account in the light of recent literature, included new material and the full texts of the canons, and translated all quotations into English to reach a wider audience. Three new opening chapters make a fresh contribution to the study of early church history in giving a comprehensive analysis of the rise of the conciliar movement from its earliest beginnings to the fourth-century establishments of councils as exclusively episcopal legislative assemblies. It is also shown that the emergence of canon law was a gradual evolutionary process leading towards the sixth-century organization of canonical collections as juridical ecclesiastical codes parallel with and complementary to the contemporary civil codes of the Roman empire.

This book examines the partnerships and power struggles between American missionaries and Korean Protestant leaders in both nations from the late 19th century to the aftermath of the Korean War. Yoo analyzes American and Korean sources, including a plethora of unpublished archival materials, to uncover the complicated histories of cooperation and contestation behind the evolving relationships between Americans and Koreans at the same time the majority of the world Christian population shifted from the Global North to the Global South. American and Korean Protestants cultivated deep bonds with one another, but they also clashed over essential matters of ecclesial authority, cultural difference, geopolitics, and women's leadership. This multifaceted approach - incorporating the perspectives of missionaries, migrants, ministers, diplomats, and interracial couples - casts new light on American and Korean Christianities and captures American and Korean Protestants mutually engaged in a global movement that helped give birth to new Christian traditions in Korea, created new transnational religious and humanitarian partnerships such as the World Vision organization, and transformed global Christian traditions ranging from Pentecostalism to Presbyterianism.

Church leaders live and work in complex systems, including their church, their staff, their congregation, their community, and society itself. How a leader navigates those systems, and how those systems operate, can have a huge impact on how church leaders achieve their goals. The Whole Church is an authoritative view of how clergy leadership can greatly benefit from understanding how systems theory is an essential learning tool to becoming an effective leader. The reader will learn how to diagnose symptoms of issue(s) that affect the church, how to overcome change and conflict, and ultimately emphasizes the significance of one's own spirituality and faith in guiding the congregation's pilgrimage.

Explore a variety of approaches congregations have taken to embrace differences; identify leadership issues diversity creates in congregations; and discover programmatic suggestions drawn from the experience of multicultural congregations to address these issues. This book helps readers to understand their own experience with racial and cultural differences and is a guide for gathering diverse people into the life and mission of the congregation.

William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury 1828-1848, led the Church of England during the beginning and expansion of the Oxford Movement, at a time when the precursor to the Church Commissioners was established, and during the momentous debates and decisions in Parliament which saw the final retreat from the myth of an all Anglican legislature. Howley's chairmanship of the commissions of the 1830s and 1840s which began the gargantuan task of reforming the Church's practices and re-arranging its finances, made him an object of fury and scorn to some of those who benefited from things as they were, most especially in the cathedrals. Exploring the central events and debates within the Church of England in the first half of the nineteenth century, this book draws on primary and secondary evidence about Howley's career and influence. A section of original sources, including his Charges and other public documents, correspondence and speeches in the House of Lords, places Howley's achievements in proper context and illustrates his prevailing concerns in education, the establishment and political reform, relationships with the Tractarians, and in the early stages of Church reform. Dealing thematically with many of the issues faced by Howley, and exploring his own High Church theological views in historical context, James Garrard offers a fruitful re-appraisal of the intellectual, spiritual and 'party' context in which Howley moved.

Combining thematic analysis and stimulating close readings, 'The Collar' is a wide-ranging study of the many ways - heroic or comic, shrewd or dastardly - in which Christian clergy have been represented in literature, from George Herbert and Laurence Sterne, via Anthony Trollope, G.K. Chesterton, T.S. Eliot, and Graham Greene, to Susan Howatch and Robertson Davies, and in film and television, such as 'Pale Rider', 'The Thorn Birds', 'The Vicar of Dibley', and 'Father Ted'. Since all Christians are expected to be involved in ministry of some type, the assumptions of secular culture about ministers affect more than just clergy. Ranging across several nations (particularly Britain, the U.S., and Canada), denominations, and centuries, 'The Collar' encourages creative and faithful responses to the challenges of Christian leadership and develops awareness of the times when leadership expectations become too extreme.Using the framework of different media to make inquiries about pastoral passion, frustration, and fallibility, Sue Sorensen's well-informed, sprightly, and perceptive book will be helpful to anyone who enjoys evocative literature and film as well as to clergy and those interested in practical theology.

Every Sunday people walk into your church and decide if they will return the following week before the preacher even opens his mouth. Many of those people don't know what to make of Jesus. They're hesitant to be in church. They're not sure they belong. But over and over in the pages of scripture, we see something extraordinary. People who were nothing like Jesus liked Jesus. Shouldn't that be true of the church as well? In Going Deep & Wide, Andy Stanley lays out a blueprint and offers practical steps to help you turn up the irresistible in your church. Each section includes discussion materials that walk you deeper into the content of Deep & Wide and invites conversations about how to apply what you've learned.

You’ve worked hard to achieve your dreams and goals. Many others have done the same—only to lose it all in the end. Every day, we read about successful people in various walks of life who have lost their power and influence. They’ve been fired, forced to resign, or shamed out of public life. They no longer have a market for their gifts, and they may even face criminal proceedings. These leaders have lost the trust of their companies, constituents, nations, followers, and families. Many were surprised to discover that their talents alone were not enough to prevent their downfall.

Why did they fail in the end? Because they lacked the one quality that would have protected their leadership and given them enduring influence. Ironically, this quality is seldom taught to leaders today, either formally or informally. It is the quality of moral force, or character.

Every human being is a leader over some domain as he or she exercises gifts and influence. That domain might be the halls of government, the boardroom, the classroom, the community, or the home. In The Power of Character in Leadership: How Values, Morals, Ethics, and Principles Affect Leaders, you will discover what character is, what it means to develop moral force, and how to preserve your leadership influence so that it is both effective and enduring.

Stemming from two conferences, held in 1994, and 1996, Prophecy and Diplomacy: The Moral Doctrine of John Paul II explores the general orientations and the specific applications of the moral teaching of Pope John Paul II. The first part of the book places the Pope's moral theory within a broader theological framework, attempting to identify the overarching philosophical and theological attitudes that shape the Pope's fundamental moral perspective. In part two, the work studies the Pope's teaching in the areas of applied ethics. Both the major lecturers and the respondents focus upon those areas of applied ethics that have provoked the greatest tension between the magisterium and the academy and between the Church and the state in the West. The volume concludes by presenting a homily that places the ethics of John Paul II within a spiritual framework of repentance and redemption. The Pope's moral teaching is not an academic survey of ethical themes. Nor is it a Pelagian call to human self-regeneration. The ultimate truth concerning human conduct and moral judgement emerges only with the proclamation of God's grace.

Arising out of consultations under the auspices of the Centre for the Study of the Christian Church, this book examines the Church of England's decision to ordain women to the priesthood and to make pastoral provision for those opposed. It attempts to discover and define the theological principles underlying both the ordination of women and the determination of the Church to maintain communion when these developments provoke fundamental disagreements. The book also considers the role of the so-called "flying Bishops", set in place by the Episcopal Ministry Act of Synod (1993). All the contributors support, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, the Act of Synod, but they are divided in their view of the ordination of women.