Clergy, worship or music committees, organists, and choir or music directors will find this a practical and invaluable guide to the role and power of music to express and form faith. Clark researched twenty-four Episcopal and United Methodist congregations to discover how churchgoers express their faith through music. Discover how music can either enhance or detract from tradition and faith experience. Explore how it can shape your congregation's character.

If you've read the book or viewed the course, now lead your church in study with this workbook approach to Alban's Inviting Church materials. Its fifteen sessions are designed to help clergy or lay leaders guide committees or study groups through a dynamic exploration of their congregation's IQ (invitation quotient). Discover how well you invite, welcome, and incorporate new members. As participants uncover the inviting elements of your church, they develop a personal witness style that emerges comfortably from their individual gifts.

A two-volume study in the strategy of Christian evangelism as developed by two of its greatest exponents, set in the framework of biographical studies, which stand in their own right as scholarly contributions to the literature of their respective subjects. Although far separated in time and tradition, Pascal and Kierkegaard both insisted that self-complacent humanity needs first to be disturbed, and then comforted, by the Gospel. Most of the book is occupied by a thorough review of the lives and works of the two men, in such a way as to ring out their significant place in the spiritual history of modern Europe. But the author's purpose throughout is not merely biographical. He goes on to compare the conception and execution of their evangelistic tasks in a way which brings out the remarkable consensus between them; and in an epilogue he draws conclusions relating this historical study to the tasks and methods of modern evangelism.

An introduction to the preaching of John Calvin, showing how he developed out of an earlier tradition of preaching, and how his sermons influenced those of later preachers, particularly in English.

This book seeks to shed new light on the development of the ecclesiology of Jonathan Edwards from the writings of his youth until his Stockbridge treatises, setting this within the context of Reformation and Puritan debates, and his experience of the revivals during his Northampton ministry. Bezzant contends that Edwards repristinated an ossified New England ecclesiology by acknowledging the church's dynamic relationship with the created order, history and the nations, and by advocating renewal in ecclesial life through revivals, itinerancy, Concerts of Prayer, missionary initiatives outside of the local congregation, and doctrinal clarification. Bezzant shows that Edwards accommodated the Christendom model of ecclesiology to the new philosophical, political and social realities of the mid-eighteenth-century British Atlantic world. His ecclesiology can be aptly summarized as prophetic, in as far as the church makes identification with its social context, while yet providing an alternative millennial vision for human flourishing. Edwards's Gospel is preached within a larger vision of transformed society and the glory of God, for whom the church is an orderly but not ordinary instrument to promote visible union between believers and Christ.

Since the original publication of this title, the twelfth-century Calabrian Abbot Joachim of Fiore has been accorded an increasingly central position in the history of medieval thought and culture. In this classic work Marjorie Reeves shows the wide extent of Joachimist influence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries and demonstrates the continuity between medieval and Renaissance thought in the field of prophecy. Reeves pinpoints some of the most original aspects of Joachim's theology of history and traces his reputation and influence through succeeding centuries. She also explains how his vision of a final age of the spirit in history became a powerful force in shaping expectations of the future in Western Europe. The book traces in detail the development of the three great images in which these expectations came to be focused: New Spiritual Men, Angelic Pope, and Last World Emperor. In addition, Reeves illuminates how the pervading influence of Joachim's concepts of a future golden age forms the basis for an understanding of prophetic visions in later centuries.

Learning how to attend to what God is doing right now is the lifelong work of (and play) of the person of faith. Helping people to attend to God is the central work of the congregation. It all begins with learning to listen to God as a community and to notice what God is doing in our life together. John Ackerman offers two four-step models and several additional tools that help us attend to the mystery at the center of our lives and our congregations.

This study is a comprehensive history of the papacy, the oldest elective office in the world, and how it has managed over the centuries the most complex voluntary association of faith. The book argues that in fact through most of its existence, the papacy has adapted managerial models of the secular world and applied them to the Catholic Church. Since its emergence from the Jewish synagogues to a persecuted minority in the Roman Empire to becoming the established religion of the West, the Church and the papacy engaged the world on its own terms. It is only after the Council of Trent did the Church become somewhat more divorced and estranged from the environment around it. This book focused on those changes and on the great popes across the centuries who reformed and altered Catholicism. Special attention is directed to Gregory I, Innocent I, Innocent III, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius XI, Pius XII, John XXVII, Paul VI, and John Paul II. The conclusion is that the persistence of the Catholic Church for so many centuries was due to its ability to preserve the faith, but re-establish its forms and managerial class.

An instant New York Times bestseller, from the author of Crusaders, that finally tells the real story of the Knights Templar-"Seldom does one find serious scholarship so easy to read." (The Times, Book of the Year) A faltering war in the middle east. A band of elite warriors determined to fight to the death to protect Christianity's holiest sites. A global financial network unaccountable to any government. A sinister plot founded on a web of lies... In 1119, a small band of knights seeking a purpose in the violent aftermath of the First Crusade set up a new religious order in Jerusalem, which was now in Christian hands. These were the first Knights Templar, elite warriors who swore vows of poverty and chastity and promised to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Over the next 200 years, the Templars would become the most powerful network of the medieval world, speerheading the crusades, pionerring new forms of finance and warfare and deciding the fate of kings. Then, on October 13, 1307, hundreds of brothers were arrested, imprisoned and tortured and the order was disbanded among lurid accusations of sexual misconduct and heresy. But were they heretics or victims of a ruthlessly repressive state? Dan Jones goes back to the sources to bring their dramatic tale, so relevant to our own times, to life in a book that is at once authoritative and compulsively readable.

Using inside sources and extensive field reporting about the secretive, high-stakes world of international diplomacy, Vatican reporter Victor Gaetan takes readers to the Holy See to explicate Pope Francis's diplomacy, show why it works, and to offer readers a startling contrast to the dangerous inadequacies of recent U.S. international decisions.

This scientific research focuses on the Church and society on special youth formation coupled with the essence for the real workable, formidable and systematic orientations for the youth problems, human dignity and Pro-life phenomenon, and prospects in order to get well with their youthful exuberance as the future leaders of tomorrow. Today's youth being in dire need of the active formation and training in the modern world is a great challenge not only to the Church itself but on the whole to be one of the top priorities of the government to prepare some concrete steps for the special care of youth development. The rational, mental or spiritual (soul and body) educational dimensions are more on the adaptability in course of their growth, and acceptance, to practice the Church teachings and being loyal to the State laws and regulations for the common good. The handling of the youth problems requires constant attention with immense interest and zeal on the part of the various families, trainers, counsellors and leaders entrusted with such typical social work to be able to understand them, to listen to them, and to direct and harness their potentialities and enterprising spirit.

Anglican Church Policy, Eighteenth Century Conflict, and the American Episcopate examines how leaders in the Church of England sought to reorganize the colonial church by installing one or two resident bishops at critical moments in the late 1740s, the early 1760s, and the mid 1770s when the British government moved to bring the colonies into closer economic and political alignment with England. Examining Anglican attempts to install bishops into the American colonies within the context of the Anglo-American world provides insight into the difficulties British political and ecclesiastical authorities had in organizing the management of the colonies more efficiently. Although the Church of England sustained wide influence over the population, the failure of the Anglicans' proposal to install bishops into the colonies was symptomatic of the declining influence of the Church on eighteenth century politics. Differing views over political and ecclesiastical authority between the colonists and the Anglicans, and the possibility religious conflict might have on elections, concerned British authorities enough not to act on the Anglicans' proposals for resident bishops for the colonies. The failure also highlights how eighteenth century British government increasingly focused on the political and economic administration of the expanded British Empire rather than its religious administration.

Catholicism has played a central role in Irish society for centuries. It is sometimes perceived in a negative light, being associated with repression, antiquated morality and a warped view of sexuality. However, there are also the positive aspects that Catholicism brought to bear on Irish culture, such as the beauty of its rituals, education and health care, or concern for the poor and the underprivileged. Whatever their experience of Catholicism, writers of a certain generation could not escape its impact on their lives, an impact which is pervasive in the literature they produced. This study, containing twelve chapters written by a range of distinguished literary experts and emerging scholars, explores in a systematic manner the cross-fertilisation between Catholicism and Irish/Irish-American literature written in English. The figures addressed in the book include James Joyce, Maud Gonne, Constance Markievicz, Kate O'Brien, Edwin O'Connor, Brian Moore, John McGahern, Seamus Heaney, Paul Durcan, Vincent Carroll and Brian Friel. This book will serve to underline the complex relationship between creative writers and the once all-powerful religious Establishment.

Discover inspiring, practical ways your board can make its meetings become opportunities for deepening faith, developing leadership, and church renewal. Research included interviews with lay leaders; clergy; and seminary, judicatory, and denominational staff from mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Evangelical Christian faith traditions.

Wills from lower social status shed light on religious, social and cultural history. Lincolnshire has an extensive archive of sixteenth-century probate material, preserved in the registers of the consistory and archdeaconry courts of Lincoln, the peculiar court of the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln Cathedral, and thearchdeaconry court of Stow. Unlike the wills proved by the archiepiscopal probate courts of Canterbury and York, those from Lincolnshire reflect a population of lower social status. The overwhelming majority come from the ranks of husbandmen, yeomen, or tradesmen, rather than the gentry. In this respect the wills offer a valuable source for the cultural and religious preoccupations of the 'middling sort' and those lower in the social spectrum on the eve of the Reformation. Equally, the detailed bequests of property, livestock and land provide an insight into the material culture and prosperity of the testators, as well as extensive genealogical and topographical information of interest to local, regional and family historians.

This book explores the vital, common, yet surprisingly often misunderstood and neglected vocation of people gifted to combine academic and priestly roles in church, church-related, and secular academic contexts. The works of those who unite priestly and academic functions into one vocation have been vital to the Church since its first-century foundations. The Church would have no practically informed theology or liturgy, and arguably no New Testament, if not for individuals who have been as gifted at researching, writing, and teaching as at conventional ministry skills like preaching and pastoral care. With a specific focus on Anglicanism as one useful lens, prominent voices from around the Anglican Communion reflect here on their experiences and expertise in academic-priestly vocation. Including contributions from the UK, USA, and Australia, this book makes a distinctive and timely offering to discussions that must surely continue.

The gospel really is the best news anyone will ever receive. So why do Christians shy away from talking about Jesus outside of church? And, when they do speak of Jesus, why do they often get a disinterested or scornful reponse? Mack Stiles offers a wealth of answers, ideas and stories in this heads-up, hands-on evangelism handbook. His creative strategies for reaching an ethnically, culturally, economically, educationally, geographically and ideologically diverse world with the best news ever are drawn directly from his own work as an evangelist in today's student world. In Speaking of Jesus he shows readers how to keep their eyes open for "divine appointments," how to approach others with a servant spirit, how to cross relational barriers, how to simply tell one's own story of faith, and how to answer questions with honesty and confidence. Speaking of Jesus may well be an Out of the Saltshaker for the 1990s and beyond. With contagious enthusiasm, Stiles stresses that evangelism isn't about exhibiting superhuman courage or perfecting specialized techniques or exercising extraordinary gifts. Instead, he shows that people of faith can use everyday situations and everyday language to pass on the simple--and simply wonderful--news about Jesus.

This title was first published in 2002. This book presents a timely study of a neglected British Christian women's movement. Jenny Daggers charts the inception of the movement in the exciting times of the post-sixties decades, amid new currents generated in the British denominational churches, and the wider current of Women's Liberation. Focusing on Christian women's concern with the position of women in the church, this book identifies a core Christian women's theology which affirms a (rehabilitated) 'new Eve in Christ', and so contrasts with a concurrent paradigm shift taking shape in North American feminist theology. Daggers argues that this divergence is primarily due to the effect of the prolonged Church of England women's ordination debate upon the ethos of the British Christian women's movement.

How did Christianity come to have such an extraordinary influence upon Europe? Beginning with the transmission of Jesus - teaching throughout the Roman world, Gillian Evans shows how Christianity transformed not only the thinking but also the structures of society, in a Christendom that was, until relatively modern times, essentially a "European" phenomenon. She traces Christianity's influence across the centuries, from its earliest days, through the East/West schism, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, to its development in the scientific age of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and its place in the modern world. The History of Christian Europe will appeal to scholars of religion and history who are seeking a fuller understanding of how Christianity helped shape and define Europe and, consequently, the wider world.

Reforms and processes of change have become an increasingly pervasive characteristic of European Protestant churches in the last fifteen to twenty years. Driven by perceptions of crises, such as declining membership rates, dwindling finances, decreasing participation in church rituals, and less support of traditional church doctrine, but also changes of governance of religion more generally, many churches feel compelled to explore new forms of operations, activities, and organisational structures. What is the inner dynamic and nature of these processes? This book explores this question by applying perspectives from organisational studies and bringing them into dialogue with ecclesiological categories, seeking to provide a richer understanding of the field of processes of change in churches. Among the questions asked are: What are the implications - organisationally and ecclesiologically - of viewing reform as a church practice, and how does this relate to much more comprehensive waves of public sector reforms? How is church leadership configured and exercised, how is democratic leadership related to the authority of ordained ministry, and how does leadership take on new forms in the context of churches? And how do churches incorporate organisational practices of planned change and renewal, such as social entrepreneurship?

In our rapidly evolving religious scene, congregations that are open to continuous learning and willing to respond to external and internal change, will be the ones that achieve new vitality and health. Dennis Campbell describes what those congregations will look like and provides four tools to help a congregation shape its community into what God would have it be. Systems thinking, congregational culture, appreciative inquiry, and scenario planning are explained and illustrated, and readers will be shown how to apply the principles to their setting.