The WorshipMusic.com 2003 Book of the Year Andy Park writes, "I've learned through the years that becoming a worship leader involves far more than developing a set of skills--it's all about developing a life in God." Here's your opportunity to sit at the feet of one who has for twenty-five years led contemporary worship services in the United States and Canada. In Park's book you'll get an inside look at how this worship leader has learned to follow the leading of the Spirit as he brings others into God's presence. And you'll find practical advice, experienced counsel and inspiring ideas on a variety of issues like songwriting pulling together a team staying humble planning the flow of worship what to do in times of dryness working with the pastor and much more Above all, Park will help you discover what it means for you as a worship leader to be first and foremost a worshiper.

In Spiritus Loci Bert Daelemans, who graduated as an architect and a theologian, provides an interdisciplinary method for the theological assessment of church architecture. Rather than a theory, this method is based on case studies of contemporary buildings (1995-2015), which are often criticized for lacking theological depth. In a threefold method, the author brings to light the ways in which architecture can be theology - or theotopy - by focusing on topoi (places) rather than logoi (words). Churches reveal our relationship with God by engaging our body, mind, and community. This method proves relevant not only for the way we perceive these buildings, but also for the way we use them, especially in our prophetic engagement for a better world.

In Giving Glory to God in Appalachia, Howard Dorgan explores the worship practices of Primitive, Regular, Old Regular, Union, Missionary, and Free Will Baptists. The worship practices of the denominations under consideration are varied and often exuberant, and Dorgan's writing is highly evocative, conveying in rich detail the joy and pathos of worship in these mountain churches.As Dorgan states in the introduction, he is less concerned with academic theorizing and more concerned with presenting a vivid, first-hand account of all that he has seen and heard. And in the nearly fifteen years he spent researching his book, Dorgan saw quite a lot: spirited, vociferous sermons, creek baptisms, foot washings, home comings, dinners on the ground, and evangelistic radio broadcasts. Dorgan's prose is at its most enchaining when he presents tableaus of these phenomena: a foot washing precipitates the erasure of interpersonal turmoil between two women; a preacher uses his lively mode of sermonic delivery to orchestrate the rapturous shouts and "hollers" of a group of women; a radio evangelist exhorts a recent widower to except salvation. The wonderful pictures interspersed throughout the book and the transcription of sermons help to further reify the worship scenes that Dorgan describes.At times, Dorgan's prose is intensely personal. Dorgan is always aware that he is writing about sets of shared values and worship practices that mean a great deal to the congregations he is studying, and Dorgan treats his subjects and their beliefs with tremendous sensitivity and respect. Ultimately, Dorgan is writing about people and the ways in which they invest their lives with meaning and purpose. This gives Giving Glory to God in Appalachia a universal appeal: even readers who find the religious settings in the book completely alien will be able to sympathize with the congregations' search for meaning.To sum up: Dorgan has written a beautiful, enthralling book. Don't think--just buy. And while you're at it, you might want to consider Airwaves Of Zion: Radio Religion In Appalachia(ISBN-10: 0870497979), also by Dorgan.

The call of Deep Church is not just for theologians and church leaders; it is also about each individual Christian experiencing and knowing that Jesus rescues from the depths and changes them deeply In this book Frog and Amy Orr-Ewing explore the concept of Deep Church in a 21st-century context. They argue that a missionary congregation needs to be deeply evangelical and evangelistic, deeply reliant on the power of the Holy Spirit, deeply engaged with its surrounding culture and community, deeply realistic about its limitations and temptations, and deeply convinced of its faith, in the face of all other worldviews and alternatives. Deep Church is about restoring the heart of the Christian faith within a rapidly changing and demanding culture, without lurching from one new methodology to another, rescuing today's church from unnecessary disillusionment, and wholeheartedly embracing Christ and his Kingdom.

Holiness is totally about our orientation to a Holy, perfect God who sees us, calls out our name and blesses us abundantly. Holiness is often taught as being about how well we live out our Christian faith and what we should and shouldn't do. This makes it about how well we perform as a believer. In A Monkey's Orientation holiness is unpacked and looked at as more about orientating ourselves to the Fathers blessing, making it about where we are rather than what we do.

Have we replaced the glory of God with our church programs. If so, is there anything we can do to get the glory of God back into our gatherings and individual lives? While we have good music, well-written songs and history to learn from, we can still miss having the presence of God in our meetings the way it was in Bible times. In this challenging and often provocative book, Jarrod Cooper deals with these important questions. Providing plenty of biblical illustrations to support his concerns, Jarrod shakes up more of our conventional thinking on the subject or worship. Can we for example only worship in the presence of the microphone, worship leader and powerpoint. What if all these were stripped away and it was just God and us? What would our worship be like then?

Rituals transform citizens into presidents and princesses into queens. They transform sick persons into healthy ones, and public space into prohibited sanctuary. Shamanic rituals heal, legal rituals bind, political rituals ratify, and religious rituals sanctify. But how exactly do they accomplish these things? How do rituals work? This is the question of ritual efficacy, and although it is one of the very first questions that people everywhere ask of rituals, surprisingly little has been written on the topic. In fact, this collection of 10 contributed essays is the first to explicitly address the question of ritual efficacy. The authors do not aspire to answer the question 'how do rituals work?' in a simplistic fashion, but rather to show how complex the question is. While some contributors do indeed advance a particular theory of ritual efficacy, others ask whether the question makes any sense at all, and most show how complex it is by referring to the sociocultural environment in which it is posed, since the answer depends on who is asking the question, and what criteria they use to evaluate the efficacy of ritual. In his introduction, William Sax emphasizes that the very notion of ritual efficacy is a suspicious one because, according to a widespread 'modern' and 'scientific' viewpoint, rituals are merely expressive, and therefore cannot be efficacious. Rituals are thought of as superficial, 'merely symbolic,' and certainly not effective. Nevertheless many people insist that rituals 'work,' and the various positions taken on the question tell us a great deal about the social and historical background of the people involved. One essay, for example, illuminates a dispute between 'materialist' and 'enlightenment' Catholics in Ecuador, with the former affirming the notion of ritual efficacy and the latter doubting it. In other essays, contributors address instances in which orthodox religious figures (mullahs, church authorities, and even scientific positivists) discount the efficacy of rituals. In several of the essays, 'modern' people are suspicious of rituals and tend to deny their efficacy, confirming the theme highlighted in Sax's introduction.

"You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God." Matthew 5:6 The Message We live in hungry times. Ours is a consumer culture, predisposed to quickly fill the cravings of body and mind. The idea of fasting--the voluntary denial of something for a specific time, for a spiritual purpose--sets us immediately on edge. But Lynne Baab makes the case that anyone can fast. Fasting is an expression of freedom. Free from the patterns and habits that mark everyday life, from time to time we can move beyond our appetites into meaningful encounter with God. In Fasting you'll discover an ancient Christian practice that extends beyond giving up food to any regular activity in our contemporary lives. You'll see how taking a break from eating--or driving, or checking e-mail, or watching television--opens us up to discover new things about ourselves and God and the world around us. You'll see that while not everyone should forgo food, anyone can step out of routine to feed the soul. In a time of great spiritual hunger, God invites us all to a feast: fellowship with the Creator of the universe, where all our truest needs are identified and attended to.

A personal retreat. We've never needed it more. We run from one place to the next--from meetings and appointments to our kid's soccer practice, from class to work to choir rehearsal, from the grocery store to small group--and then drop into bed later than we hoped, exhausted and dreading the morning. We want to slow down but don't know how and don't really believe that we can. And often, the idea of a personal retreat--time for solitude and silence--makes us feel as anxious as all our frenzied rushing. What in the world would we do with an hour, an afternoon or (gulp ) a whole day of solitude with God? But what is the cost of our frantic pace? What are we missing by not slowing down for reflection and meditation on Scripture? What kind of toll does our anxious running take on those around us--and, even more deeply, on our own soul? In Resting Place, retreat speaker Jane Rubietta addresses soul matters with retreat topics such as dealing with our fear of abandonment, wrestling with discontent, overcoming our attempts to control others and fulfilling our deep desire to be loved. These retreats help us enter Psalm 23 rest, a place of true rest and trust in our loving, gentle Shepherd. Full of quotes to contemplate, Scripture to meditate on, questions, prayer and journaling ideas, and ideas for creativity, Jane Rubietta leads us to and through times of silence and solitude that will follow us into our everyday world as we learn to allow Jesus to guide, comfort and restore us. Come to the Shepherd, and find the true rest your soul is longing for.

This uniquely comprehensive reference work provides a global account of the history, expansion, diversity, and contemporary issues facing the Anglican Communion, the worldwide body that includes all followers of the Anglican faith. * An insightful and wide-ranging treatment of this dynamic global faith, offering unrivalled coverage of its historical development, and the religious and ethical questions affecting the church today * Explores every aspect of this vibrant religious community from analyzing its instruments of Unity, to its central role in interfaith communication * Spans the Anglican Communion s long history through to 21st century debates within the church on such issues as sexual-orientation of clergy, and the pastoral role of women * Features a substantial articles on the Church s 44 provinces, including a brief history of each * Brings together a distinguished and international team of contributors, including some of the world s leading Anglican commentators

This book brings together, for the first time, the relevant material evidence demonstrating Christian use of the cross prior to Constantine. Bruce W. Longenecker upends a longstanding consensus that the cross was not a Christian symbol until Constantine appropriated it to consolidate his power in the fourth century. Longenecker presents a wide variety of artifacts from across the Mediterranean basin that testify to the use of the cross as a visual symbol by some pre-Constantinian Christians. Those artifacts interlock with literary witnesses from the same period to provide a consistent and robust portrait of the cross as a pre-Constantinian symbol of Christian devotion. The material record of the pre-Constantinian period illustrates that Constantine did not invent the cross as a symbol of Christian faith,- for an impressive number of Christians before Constantine's reign, the cross served as a visual symbol of commitment to a living deity in a dangerous world.

Let's give ourselves an A for effort. We keep our minds so preoccupied with work projects that we act and think on autopilot. We keep our kids so occupied with activities that they need day planners before grade school. We keep our schedules so full with church meetings and housekeeping and even entertaining that down-time sounds like a mortal sin. When we fail to rest we do more than burn ourselves out. We misunderstand the God who calls us to rest--who created us to be people of rest. Let's face it: our rest needs work. Sabbath recalls our creation, and with it God's satisfaction with us as he made us, without our hurried wrangling and harried worrying. It also recalls God's deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, and with it God's ability to do completely what we cannot complete in ourselves. Sabbath keeping reminds us that we are free to rest each week. Eighteen months in Tel Aviv, Israel, where a weekly sabbath is built into the culture, began Lynne M. Baab's twenty-five-year embrace of a rhythm of rest--as a stay-at-home mom, as a professional writer working out of her home and as a minister of the gospel. With collected insights from sabbath keepers of all ages and backgrounds, Sabbath Keeping offers a practical and hopeful guidebook that encourages all of us to slow down and enjoy our relationship with the God of the universe.

A Christ-centered guide to the Gospel of Mark for daily devotion and group study during Lent Lent is traditionally a time to reflect on the life, death, and resurrection of Christ and on our lives as followers of Christ. The devotional guide includes forty-six meditations based on a passage form Mark's Gospel with reflection questions and a prayer. For individual reading and meditation each day between Ash Wednesday and Easter, it includes an optional study guide for six weeks of small-group discussion. Especially for congregations that follow the Revised Common Lectionary, here is a resource for individual and corporate spiritual growth in the Year of Mark affordably priced for group use.

Winner of a Christianity Today 2005 Book Award Baptism. The Lord's Supper. We recognize these church practices. But do we really grasp their meaning and place in Christian worship? Is our neglect of them hindering our communion with Christ? Are we missing the real drama of our salvation? Often the object of debate, the sacraments are likewise neglected and superficially understood. Leonard Vander Zee makes a compelling case that these problems can be overcome when we see the connection between Baptism and the Lord's Supper and the continuing ministry of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God. Founding his discussion in biblical teaching reaching back to the creation narrative and forward to the teaching of Jesus and the apostle Paul, Vander Zee sees the Christ-centered celebration of these sacraments as essential to the renewal of the church. A reappropriation of Baptism and the Eucharist, especially in the evangelical church, holds great promise for healing the rift between the natural and the spiritual, the personal and social, the head and the heart, and between the body of believers and our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us and now lives to make intercessions for us. InChrist, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, Vander Zee not only opens up a Christ-centered approach to the sacraments but also provides guidance on the practical matters that face pastors and parishioners in the pursuit of a renewed and authentic Christian worship.

Underlying Exodus in its priestly redaction is a pilgrimage. Smith's new book starts by reviewing pilgrimage shrines, feasts and practices in ancient Israel. Next, it examines the two pilgrimage journeys in Exodus. In Exodus 1-15 Moses journeys to Mount Sinai, experiences God and receives his commission. In Exodus 16-40, Moses and the people together journey to Mount Sinai for the people's experience of God and their commission. Between lies Exodus 15, the fulcrum-point of the book: vv. 1-12 look back and vv. 13-18 look forward to Israel's journey to Sinai. Finally, the different meanings of torah in the book of Exodus are contrasted, and the book concludes with a consideration of Exodus's larger place in the Pentateuch.>

Faith and Place takes knowledge of place as a basis for thinking about the relationship between religious belief and our embodied life.
Recent epistemology of religion has appealed to various secular analogues for religious belief - especially analogues drawn from sense perception and scientific theory construction. These approaches tend to overlook the close connection between religious belief and our moral, aesthetic and otherwise engaged relationship to the material world. By taking knowledge of place as a starting point for religious epistemology, Mark Wynn aims to throw into clearer focus the embodied, action-orienting, perception-structuring, and affect-infused character of religious understanding.
This innovative study understands the religious significance of a site in terms of i. its capacity to stand for some encompassing truth about human life; ii. its conservation of historical meanings, where these meanings make a practical claim upon those located at the place at later times; and iii. its directing of the believer's attention to a sacred meaning, through enacted appropriation of the site.
Wynn proposes that the notion of 'God' functions like the notion of a 'genius loci', where the relevant locus is the sum of material reality. He argues that knowledge of God consists in part in a storied and sensuous appreciation of the significance of particular places.