Seeing Beyond Church Walls


Book Description

Build bridges of love to your church community...with wisdom from respected Christian leaders. Respected Christian leaders share key action plans and an encouraging vision for seeing beyond church walls created by inward-focus and introversion, to how to penetrate our local communities with the love of Jesus Christ. "In the trenches" church leaders like Steve Sjogren, Dale Galloway, Sally Morgenthaler, and Leonard Sweet give challenging, and passionate, yet intensely practical insights into transforming your church to become lovingly and strategically outwardly-focused. A bridge-building body of Christ that overcomes its own inwardly focused gaze to grip the hearts of those beyond church walls.




Church Beyond Walls


Book Description

Church Beyond Walls tells inspiring, informative and occasionally funny stories of how a group of people took Christian spirituality outside of church buildings to engage a world increasingly uninterested in religion, God and faith. From imaginative and wide-ranging experiments, it draws out principles to inspire local churches to express their faith in their communities, and it shares liturgical and other resources developed for these occasions. Based in Brighton and known as BEYOND, for over ten years this group of dreamers, artists and provocateurs have experimented with public art, created light shows and walking meditations, partnered with retailers to create spiritual shop window trails, celebrated the festivals of the church in secular spaces, used folk traditions and more to introduce people to the Christian faith. Their goal and the aim of this book is to help local churches create opportunities for epiphanies: moments when the divine can break into human experience.




Church Without Walls


Book Description

In Church Without Walls, prominent author Jim Petersen offers an exciting definition of the church that pushes beyond the too-small boundaries we've inherited from the past. This book explores why some church forms impede the gospel in today's postmodern world.




This Is God's Table


Book Description

Can a barren city lot become a church? This is the story of an audacious journey. It’s the story of what happens when people garden, worship, and eat together—and invite anyone and everyone to join them. In This Is God’s Table, writer and pastor Anna Woofenden describes the way that the wealthy and the poor, the aged and the young, the housed and unhoused become a community in this once-empty lot. Together they plant and sustain a thriving urban farm, worship God, and share a weekly meal. Together they craft a shared life and a place of authenticity where all are welcome. Readers of Nadia Bolz-Weber, Sara Miles, and Diana Butler Bass will find here a kindred vision for a church without walls. As churches across the Western world wither, what would it take to find a raw, honest, gritty way of doing church—one rooted in place, nurtured by grace, and grounded in God’s expansive love? What would it take to carry the liturgy outside the gates? What if we were to discover that in feeding others, we are fed? This is God’s table. Come and eat.




Beyond the Walls


Book Description

"The churches of Jerusalem, whether ancient or contemporary, are steeped in that very special aura which surrounds the Holy City. Now, with the publication of Beyond the Walls: Churches of Jerusalem, you can unravel the mysteries which lie underneath each magnificent - or modest - facade. In Beyond the Walls: Churches of Jerusalem, former Jerusalem Post correspondent Aviva Bar-Am offers in-depth narratives, stirring legends, and lively anecdotes which bring 30 of the Holy City's historic churches to life. Among the sanctuaries and sites vividly described in Beyond the Walls: Churches of Jerusalem are the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (including a step-by-step walk-through guide), St. James' Cathedral, the Church of St. John the Baptist in Ein Kerem (and the Church of St. John the Baptist in the Old City of Jerusalem), the Basilica of the Agony at Gethsemane, and Dominus Flevit. The author, Aviva Bar-Am, also introduces the reader to the Ethiopian Church, the Church of the Visitation, Ecce Homo Basilica, St. Andrew's Church, Mary's Tomb (the Church of the Assumption), the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, the Church of the Flagellation, the Church of St. Alexander Nevsky, and more! Beyond the Walls: Churches of Jerusalem is the perfect gift for pilgrims planning to visit the Holy Land, and is a wonderful guidebook and souvenir. Even if you can't make the journey, this wonderful text, with its beautiful, full-color photographs, makes an invaluable addition to any home library, and for the armchair traveler and historian."--Publisher statement




Leading Beyond the Walls


Book Description

How clear are your windows? How biblical is your worldview? Discover Your Windows analyzes how you think about your involvement in the church. The way you see your world drives your behavior. In this dynamic book, Church Doctor Kent Hunter explores ten worldviews (windows) that greatly affect your life and your church. Based on research of over 18,000 church members, Hunter reveals that most tensions in churches are focused on symptoms rather than the issues that lie behind them--conflicting worldviews.




Faith Beyond Church Walls: Finding Freedom In Christ


Book Description

Dan Montgomery invites you to step through the first page of the book and walk with him to the top of a mountain peak. There you talk heart to heart while sharing your favorite drink. This imaginary journey begins a dialogue about the difficulties of being human and how faith in God infuses your life with guidance and companionship. Theologian Gabriel Fackre writes: "Christian teaching about the Trinity becomes up close and personal in this engaging work by a wise counselor. Here is enriching daily guidance from compass therapy for our pilgrimage with the triune God." GUIDEPOSTS Roving Editor Elizabeth Sherrill writes, “I’ve waited a long time for a book like this! Like a caring counselor in private session, Dan Montgomery writes to anyone who thinks being a Christian means conforming to someone else’s pattern. To anyone who believes his current situation is hopeless. To anyone seeking a more intimate walk with Father, Son and Holy Spirit.â€




Behind Sacred Walls


Book Description

When the Roberts family's favorite priest started inviting himself to dine at their dinner table weekly, they were delighted to oblige. Then, when the priest started inviting their teenaged son, Michael, on day trips, they were even more pleased to see their son developing a close friendship with their beloved priest. What the family did not know was that the priest was grooming Robert for what would become years on ongoing sexual abuse. In Behind Sacred Walls, Michael describes how he fell under the control of the priest, who abused him verbally, emotionally, and sexually. It was, the priest told him, God's will that the teenager satisfy the priests human needs. Even though he was riddled with shame and guilt, Michael saw no way out of the continuing abuse. Most of all, he feared the pain it would cause his parents if they found out. In the end, Roberts tells how he was eventually able to extricate himself from the abusive relationship with the priest. He also relates the years of red tape he encountered with the Catholic Church while seeking justice.




Beyond Four Walls


Book Description

The church today is in many places “on the nose.” For many people, it stinks. It has passed its “use-by” date and should be relegated to the dustbins of history, and the sooner, the better. Nevertheless, the contributors to this volume believe that the church, in spite of its somewhat checkered history and its many present failures, remains an integral part of God’s redemptive purposes being worked out in the world, and that God’s call to the church is now what it has always been: to be the faithful people of God, bearing joy-filled witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ in word, worship, and work, in its corporate life, and in the lives of each of its members. Each chapter in this book explores an aspect of what it means to be the church, both with respect to its own life, and with an eye to its presence and mission in the world.




Doors in the Walls of the World


Book Description

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."— Hamlet After William Shakespeare's Horatio sees the ghost of Hamlet's father, and scarcely believes his own eyes, Hamlet tells him that there is more to reality than he can know or imagine, including ghosts. Hamlet's statement suggests that the walls of the material world, which we perceive with our senses and analyze with our intellects, have doors that open into the More beyond them. Philosopher Peter Kreeft explains in this book that the More includes "The Absolute Good, Platonic Forms, God, gods, angels, spirits, ghosts, souls, Brahman, Rta (the Hindu ontological basis for cosmological karma), Nirvana, Tao, 'the will of Heaven', The Meaning of It All, Something that deserves a capital letter." With razor-sharp reasoning and irrepressible joy, Kreeft helps us to find the doors in the walls of the world. Drawing on history, physical science, psychology, religion, philosophy, literature, and art, he invites us to welcome what lies on the other side so that we can begin living the life of Heaven in the here and now.




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