A wide-ranging collection of resources for Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Transfiguration, Harvest, Holocaust Memorial Day, Mothering Sunday, and other special days, and on areas of concern, like refugees and peacemaking. Worship rooted in city and country, in work and in schools, in peacemaking and the eradication of poverty, in churches and the Iona Community resident group ... So - as always with the Iona Community - worship which is contextual, prophetic, with a strong justice and peace edge.

By the end of the 19th century, the ascendance of a naturalistic worldview had made it increasingly difficult for many educated Christians to believe in a God who intervened in the natural world. At the same time, many in the emerging middle-class culture saw themselves as too busy to practice the rigorous devotions of their ancestors. In this book, Rick Ostrander explores the attempts of American Protestants to articulate a convincing and satisfying ethic of prayer in these changing circumstances. Ostrander shows that, in response to the assault on petitionary prayer by naturalistic scientists, American Evangelicals articulated a highly supernatural ethic of prayer and co-opted the "scientific method" to defend their stance, recording and cataloging numerous answers to prayer as empirical proof of prayer's efficacy. Liberal Protestants, on the other hand, with their desire to adapt to modern thought, gradually abandoned traditional belief in petitionary prayer. The debate about the efficacy of petitionary prayer and other "alternative therapies" in mental and physical healing has taken on new vigor today; this timely and engagingly written work not only chronicles the history of that debate, but serves to illuminate the issues that are at stake.

Known author and sure-footed Bible teacher

In Being in Love, William Johnston addresses the question of the purpose of prayer. He shares with the reader the discovery of new ways to a prayerful life that is both meditative and active. His message is to surrender in love to God, to love God with one's own being, through prayer. Here Being in Love shows us how to pray-with heart, mind, intellect and body-as a form of communicating with God, one another, and the world around us. Johnston reveals, using his relationship with the Eastern traditions as a backdrop, the need and importance of finding stillness in our inner lives. He demonstrates in a clear and practical way, how we can make prayer a place for meditation and personal growth.

This is a comprehensive study of the impact of ritualism on the Church of England, other Anglican churches, and non-Anglican churches in Britain in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on an exhaustive study of archival and contemporary printed sources, Dr Yates presents a new and refreshing approach to this fascinating subject.

Why do people sing hymns? Are hymns poetry? What makes a good hymn? The author discusses the nature of hymns and their particular appeal, examines the English hymn as a literary form, and systematically describes its development through four centuries, from the Reformation to the mid-twentieth century.

This is the first full-length study of the place and meaning of pilgrimage in European Renaissance culture. It makes new material available and also provides fresh perspectives on canonical writers such as Rabelais, Montaigne, Margurite de Navarre, Erasmus, Petrarch, Augustine, and Gregory of Nyssa. Wes Williams undertakes a bold exploration of various interlinking themes in Renaissance pilgrimage: the location, representation, and politics of the sacred, together with the experience of the everyday, the extraordinary, the religious, and the represented. Williams also examines the literary formation of the subjective narrative voice in his texts, and its relationship to the rituals and practices he reviews. This wide-ranging and timely new work aims both to gain a sense of the shapes of pilgrim experience in the Renaissance and to question the ways in which recent theoretical and historical research in the area has determined the differences between fictional worlds and the real.

In Being in Love, William Johnston addresses the question of the purpose of prayer. He shares with the reader the discovery of new ways to a prayerful life that is both meditative and active. His message is to surrender in love to God, to love God with one's own being, through prayer. Here Being in Love shows us how to pray-with heart, mind, intellect and body-as a form of communicating with God, one another, and the world around us. Johnston reveals, using his relationship with the Eastern traditions as a backdrop, the need and importance of finding stillness in our inner lives. He demonstrates in a clear and practical way, how we can make prayer a place for meditation and personal growth.

Year 2000 is a Jubilee year for the Catholic church and very large numbers are expected to make the pilgrimage to Rome. Debra Birch's lively account of pilgrimage to Rome throughout the medieval period is well-documented and clearly presented. HISTORY TODAY [Emma Mason]Well researched, clearly written, and, quite apart from the eternal city, provides an excellent introduction to pilgrimage as a whole. CHURCH TIMES [Nicholas Orme] Rome was one of the major pilgrim destinations in the middle ages. The belief that certain objects and places were a focus of holiness where pilgrims could come closer to God had a long history in Christian tradition; in the case of Rome, the tradition developed around two of the city's most important martyrs, Christ's apostles Peter and Paul. So strong were the city'sassociations with these apostles that pilgrimage to Rome was often referred to as pilgrimage `to the threshold of the apostles'. Debra Birch conveys a vivid picture of the world of the medieval pilgrim to Rome - the Romipetae, or `Rome-seekers' - covering all aspects of their journey, and their life in the city itself. DEBRA BIRCH is assistant secretary at the Institute of Historical Research. CONTENTS The Cult of Saints and Pilgrimage to Rome. The Journey to Rome . Obligations and Privileges . Rome of the Pilgrim I . Rome of the Pilgrim II . Welfare Provisions for Pilgrims in Rome . The Popularity of Pilgrimage to Rome in the 12th Century . The 13th-Century Revival.

The Power and Freedom of a Humble Life

Pride is often the true reason why we get our feelings hurt, why we feel rejection, why we won't admit to mistakes, why we want to be seen with certain people, and why we stay angry.

Jesus gives us the perfect example of a powerful life lived without conceit, smugness, or arrogance. So why do we not want to admit to our pride? It is because of our pride!

In The Power of Humility, R. T. Kendall challenges us to look deeply into our hearts and motives to recognize the pride and self-righteousness there. Using personal stories and enlightening examples from the Bible, he demonstrates how pride interferes with a close relationship with God and reveals how to overcome pride and become more like Jesus.

In this digest of his longer work, "The Birth of the Messiah, " Father Brown puts the adult Christ back into Christmas, treating the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke as the entire Gospel story in miniature.

A practical, exercise-filled companion to A Hunger for Healing that puts into practice the Christian principles of healing and growth

For many thousands of people, the Twelve Steps have become the spiritual discipline for a new decade, a way to turn to God and begin a pilgrimage toward wholeness as well as a journey out of addiction. Relating each of the Steps to biblical teaching, J. Keith Miller takes the reader inside the Steps, actually working through each one.

Each section of A Hunger for Healing Workbook begins with one of the Twelve Steps, followed by a biblical quote that touches upon the theme, a suggested reading in A Hunger for Healing, and a concise explanation of the Step and how it relates to spiritual growth. Built on solid biblical principles, the exercises and inventories provided will promote introspection, reflection, and action -- a clear pathway out of compulsion and pain into a world of serenity and healthy interaction with God and others.

Step by Step, this life-transforming program helps readers to

• Acknowledge their need for God's healing power


• Surrender to God's care


• Let God remove character defects


• Reconcile themselves with God and others


• Use prayer to enrich the life of the spirit


• Heal broken lives and relationships

Guidance for Leaders Seeking a Richer Way to Employ Worship Music Worship expert Constance Cherry offers comprehensive guidance to Christian leaders seeking a deeper, richer way to employ worship music in engaging ways for twenty-first-century worshipers. Following Cherry's successful book The Worship Architect, this work helps Christian leaders think theologically and act pastorally about worship music in their churches. It addresses larger issues beyond the surface struggles of musical styles and provides tools to critically evaluate worship songs. The book is applicable to all Christian traditions and worship styles and is well suited to both the classroom and the local church. Each chapter concludes with suggested practical exercises, recommended reading, and basic vocabulary terms.

Every year, millions of people around the globe celebrate Christmas. But what does it all mean? Drawing from both the Old and New Testaments, noted pastor and theologian David Jeremiah provides answers to 25 of the most thought-provoking questions surrounding the most pivotal moment in human history--the birth of Jesus Christ. The 25 chapters can be read according to the Advent calendar.

The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis was founded in honour of Dionysius, one of seven missionaries sent from Rome to Gaul around 250. It grew to be one of the most powerful monasteries in western Christendom and enjoyed a central position in French history as the first Gothic abbey, royal necropolis, and place of origin of the chronicles of the kings. This is a study of the music and ritual at Saint-Denis from the sixth to the sixteenth century. It is based on an examination of the liturgical books and archival sources relating to the abbey, in particular the surviving service-books, which tell us much about the history of the music and of the Divine Office at Saint-Denis. Anne Robertson also looks at the tropes and sequences proper to the office for Saint-Denis, provides information on the performance practices, instruments, musicians, and liturgists from the abbey, and offers an account of the history of the liturgy from the Council of Tours in 567 to the pillage of the abbey by the Huguenots in 1567, thus explicating the extant liturgical codices from Saint-Denis. For the author the ritual and history of the abbey is also inextricably linked to the reconstruction of its various buildings, the decorations of the church, even the monks' ambitions. This is a fascinating and wide-ranging study of this extraordinary institution.

Congregational Music, Conflict and Community is the first study of the music of the contemporary 'worship wars' - conflicts over church music that continue to animate and divide Protestants today - to be based on long-term in-person observation and interviews. It tells the story of the musical lives of three Canadian Mennonite congregations, who sang together despite their musical differences at the height of these debates in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Mennonites are among the most music-centered Christian groups in North America, and each congregation felt deeply about the music they chose as their own. The congregations studied span the spectrum from traditional to blended to contemporary worship styles, and from evangelical to liberal Protestant theologies. At their core, the book argues, worship wars are not fought in order to please congregants' musical tastes nor to satisfy the theological principles held by a denomination. Instead, the relationships and meanings shaped through individuals' experiences singing in the particular ways afforded by each style of worship are most profoundly at stake in the worship wars. As such, this book will be of keen interest to scholars working across the fields of religious studies and ethnomusicology.

Learning about one another's faiths provides the key to respect and tolerance. 'Initiation Rites' provides one angle from which to develop knowledge of different faiths, by focusing on the huge diversity in the customs and attitudes underlying initiation ceremonies in the world's religions. The collection includes notes and comments from senior figures of the faiths in question, and is an invaluable resource for teachers preparing their pupils for life in the multi-faith 'global community' of which we are already members 'Initiation Rites' is one of a series of three books in the Living Faiths series. The other titles are 'Marriage and the Family' (ISBN 978-0718824440), and 'Death' (ISBN 9780718830861). The series promotes a comprehensive inter-faith understanding by outlining the diverse attitudes and ceremonies found in different faiths. The series has close links with the Standing Conference on Inter-Faith Dialogue in Education, of which the series editor was former Publications Secretary.

2020 Outreach Magazine Resource of the Year ("Also Recommended," Church) Is a church just something we create to serve our purposes or to maintain old traditions? Or is it something more vital, more meaningful, and more powerful? This can be hard to believe when we look at what happens in any one congregation or denomination. Certainly not all churches act like Jesus in the world, and many individual churches in the West are dying. When it's so easy to be confused, frustrated, or simply apathetic about the church, how should we understand its purpose today? In this appealing introduction to the nature of the local church, set in the context of Christian history and global diversity, historian and missionary Scott Sunquist shows us the church in motion. Why Church? clarifies the two primary purposes of the church-worship and witness-and unpacks what the church is (and ought to be) using five movements of worship: come together stand to praise God kneel to confess sit to listen to the Word of God go out into the world Packed with stories and insights from experiences in churches around the world, this book explores cultural contextualization, the meaning of conversion, worship in both personal and communal aspects, and how mission combines telling the good news with being good news as a community. From Fuller Theological Seminary's renowned church-planting program, this primer is well suited to leaders and their core teams to read together and share with new attenders as they catch the spirit of the dynamic gathering that is the local church.

This book is a microsociological study of religious practice, based on fieldwork with Conservative Jews, Bible Belt Muslims, white Baptists, black Baptists, Buddhist meditators, and Latino Catholics. In each case, the author scrutinizes how a congregation's ritual strategies help or hinder their efforts to achieve a transformative spiritual encounter, an intense feeling that becomes the basis of their most fundamental understandings of reality. The book shows how these transformative spiritual encounters routinely depend on issues that can seem rather mundane by comparison, such as where the sanctuary's entrance is located, how many misprints end up in the church bulletin, or how long the preacher continues to preach beyond lunchtime. The spirit responds to other dynamics, as well, such as how congregations collectively imagine outsiders, or how they talk about ideas like individualism and patriarchy. Building on provocative theories from sociologists such as Emile Durkheim, Erving Goffman, Randall Collins, and Anne Warfield Rawls, this book shows how "interaction ritual theory" opens compelling new pathways for sociological scholarship on religion. Micro-level specifics from fieldwork in Texas are supplemented with large-scale survey analysis of a wide array of religious organizations from across the United States.

2020 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award Finalists - Body, Mind and Spirit I choose to breathe in the wonder of God's eternal love, And dance to the rhythm of eternal breath, Listening to the whispers calling me to slow down and take notice. I choose to absorb the beauty of the divine presence, to delight in the Creator of all things and relish the delight God takes in me. Can you imagine a God who dances with shouts of joy, laughs when you laugh, loves to play, enjoys life, and invites us to join the fun? Like many of us, Christine Sine had spent many years with an image of God who was "a very serious, workaholic type of God." And even when her theology told her this was not true, she struggled to live into this new way of thinking. What she needed was a childlike spirituality. In this book, Christine Sine, online host of the Godspace community, invites us to pay attention to childlike characteristics that have the power to reshape us. Each chapter addresses a childlike characteristic to embrace, including delight, playfulness, imagination, awe and wonder, love of nature, the ability to live in the present, and much more. Fresh spiritual practices that engage all our senses help us live a new spiritual life that embraces the wonder and joy that God intends for us.

The Divine Liturgy of Saint James is the eucharistic rite of the ancient Church of Jerusalem and the most ancient extant liturgy of the Eastern Church. In recent decades, the frequency of its use has increased throughout the Orthodox Church. This service book offers for the first time a parallel Church Slavonic-English text, suitable for use by clergy and servers. It also contains the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts of the Holy Apostle James, which is rarely served today but has been preserved in part in a few Greek manuscripts and in full in several Georgian sources. An introduction by Dr Vitaly Permiakov, a specialist in the Jerusalem liturgy, presents the provenance and integrity of both ancient Liturgical services.