Friends in Christ


Book Description

This text highlights the importance of friendship for human community. Beginning with stories of friendship in biblical accounts and the teachings of the early leaders of the church, Brother John describes friendship as the basis for community throughout the world and at Taizé.




Friends in Christ: Paths to a New Understanding of Church


Book Description

"This book, for both seekers and practicing Christians, highlights the importance of friendship for human community. Beginning with stories of friendship in biblical accounts and the teachings of the early leaders of the church, Brother John describes friendship as the basis for community throughout the world and at Taizé, an international ecumenical community that draws thousands of young people from around the globe together in worship and prayer."--Back cover.




Making Friends for Christ


Book Description

Making Friends for Christ is a guide for learning how to be a real friend. It offers practical, everyday ideas for touching the people God has already put into your life. You will learn how to be a good listener, overcome common barriers, and invest in relationships. You can turn your home into a place of ministry and effectively tell how Christ has changed your life. You can learn to pray in faith for your friends and family and join with other believers for support and encouragement.




Character Matters


Book Description

Pastor, it’s time to turn down the noise and focus on what matters. Today’s pastoral world is packed with books, conferences, and seminars teaching you different techniques for being an all-star pastor, growing your church quickly, and changing the world. But the key to true success is much harder and much simpler. Pastors are called to be faithful, to have exemplary character, and to love Jesus. Without faithfulness, their ministry ends up harming others rather than helping them. Churches need pastors with sound doctrine and a sound life. Character Matters was written to help you slow down, cut through the noise and distractions, and focus on what matters—the fruit of the Spirit. Each chapter is a guided, biblical meditation on one aspect of each piece of the fruit of the Spirit. As you reflect and focus on the simple things that matter, you’ll see your heart change and your ministry follow, slowly, surely, and by the power of the Spirit.




Christian. Muslim. Friend.


Book Description

Winner 2016 “Christianity Today Book Award” for Mission/Global Church catelogry. Can Christians and Muslims be friends? Real friends? Even in an era of intense religious conflict, David Shenk says yes. In Christian. Muslim. Friend., Shenk lays out twelve ways that Christians can form authentic relationships with Muslims—characterized by respect, hospitality, and candid dialogue—while still bearing witness to the Christ-centered commitments of their faith. Rooted in fifty years of friendship with Muslims in Somalia, Kenya, and the United States, this book will inspire readers with astounding stories of the author’s animated conversations with Muslim clerics, visits to countless mosques around the globe, and the pastors and imams who are working for peace. These tried and true paths offer a compelling resource with practical application for mission personnel, Sunday school classes, and Christians who meet people of Islamic faith in their communities. For a radio interview with David Shenk, which aired originally by Paul Ridgeway of KKMC Christian Talk radio, Twin Cities, Minn., click here and scroll to the bottom of the post




Gospel Principles


Book Description

A Study Guide and a Teacher’s Manual Gospel Principles was written both as a personal study guide and as a teacher’s manual. As you study it, seeking the Spirit of the Lord, you can grow in your understanding and testimony of God the Father, Jesus Christand His Atonement, and the Restoration of the gospel. You can find answers to life’s questions, gain an assurance of your purpose and self-worth, and face personal and family challenges with faith.




Towards Friendship-Shaped Communities: A Practical Theology of Friendship


Book Description

A unique and incisive exploration of the place and nature of friendship in both its personal and civic dimensions In Towards Friendship-Shaped Communities: A Practical Theology of Friendship, distinguished theological researcher Anne-Marie Ellithorpe delivers a constructive and insightful exploration of the place and nature of friendship as innate to being human, to the human vocation, and to life within the broader community. Of particular interest to members and leaders of faith communities, this book responds to contemporary concerns regarding relationality and offers a comprehensive theology of friendship. The author provides an inclusive and interdisciplinary study that brings previous traditions and texts into dialogue with contemporary contexts and concerns, including examples from Indigenous and Euro-Western cultures. Readers will reflect on the theology of friendship and the interrelationship between friendship and community, think critically about their own social and theological imagination, and develop an integrative approach to theological reflection that draws on Don Browning’s Fundamental Practical Theology. Integrating philosophical, anthropological, and theological perspectives on the study of friendship, this book presents: A thorough introduction to contemporary questions on friendship and discussions of co-existing friendship worlds Comprehensive explorations of friendship in first and second testament writings, as well as friendship within classical and Christian traditions Practical discussions of theology, friendship, and the social imagination, including explorations of mutuality and spirit-shaped friendships Considerations for outworking friendship ideals within communities of practice, from the perspective of strategic (or fully) practical theology Perfect for graduate and advanced undergraduate students taking courses on friendship or practical theology, Towards Friendship-Shaped Communities: A Practical Theology of Friendship will also earn a place in the libraries of scholars of practical theology and community practitioners, including ministers, priests, pastors, spiritual advisors, and counselors.




Reconsidering Intellectual Disability


Book Description

Drawing on the controversial case of “Ashley X,” a girl with severe developmental disabilities who received interventionist medical treatment to limit her growth and keep her body forever small—a procedure now known as the “Ashley Treatment”—Reconsidering Intellectual Disability explores important questions at the intersection of disability theory, Christian moral theology, and bioethics. What are the biomedical boundaries of acceptable treatment for those not able to give informed consent? Who gets to decide when a patient cannot communicate their desires and needs? Should we accept the dominance of a form of medicine that identifies those with intellectual impairments as pathological objects in need of the normalizing bodily manipulations of technological medicine? In a critical exploration of contemporary disability theory, Jason Reimer Greig contends that L'Arche, a federation of faith communities made up of people with and without intellectual disabilities, provides an alternative response to the predominant bioethical worldview that sees disability as a problem to be solved. Reconsidering Intellectual Disability shows how a focus on Christian theological tradition’s moral thinking and practice of friendship with God offers a way to free not only people with intellectual disabilities but all people from the objectifying gaze of modern medicine. L'Arche draws inspiration from Jesus's solidarity with the "least of these" and a commitment to Christian friendship that sees people with profound cognitive disabilities not as anomalous objects of pity but as fellow friends of God. This vital act of social recognition opens the way to understanding the disabled not as objects to be fixed but as teachers whose lives can transform others and open a new way of being human.




God Has a Name


Book Description

What you believe about God sets the foundation of the person you will become. In God Has a Name, pastor and New York Times bestselling author John Mark Comer invites you to rethink many of the prevalent myths and misconceptions about God and weigh them against what God actually tells us about himself. After all, what you believe about God will ultimately shape the type of person you become. We all live at the mercy of our ideas, and nowhere is this more true than our ideas about God. The problem is many of our ideas about God are wrong. Not all wrong, but wrong enough to form our souls in detrimental and disheartening ways. God Has a Name is a simple yet profound guide to understanding God in a new light--focusing on what God says about himself in the Bible. This one shift has the potential to radically alter how you relate to God, not as a doctrine, but as a relational being who responds to you in an elastic, back-and-forth way. John Mark Comer takes you line by line through Exodus 34:6-8--Yahweh's self-revelation on Mount Sinai, one of the most quoted passages in the Bible. Along the way, Comer addresses some of the most profound questions he came across as he studied these noted lines in Exodus, including: Why do we feel this gap between us and God? Could it be that a lot of what we think about God is wrong? Not all wrong, but wrong enough to mess up how we relate to him? What if our "God" is really a projection of our own identity, ideas, and desires? What if the real God is different, but far better than we could ever imagine? No matter where you are in your spiritual journey, God Has a Name invites you to step into a fresh and biblically rooted vision of who God is that has the potential to alter your life with God and shape who you become.




The New Testament in Color


Book Description

In this one-volume commentary, a multiethnic team of scholars holding orthodox Christian beliefs brings exegetical expertise coupled with a unique interpretive lens to illuminate the ways social location and biblical interpretation work together. These diverse scholars offer a better vantage point for both the academy and the church.