Holy Clarity


Book Description

In Holy Clarity, Sarah Drummond explores the most basic reason leaders of religious organizations conduct evaluations: To find and create God-pleasing clarity regarding the organization's purpose and the impact of its activities. Leadership and evaluation are not separate disciplines, she argues. Effective leaders evaluate because they need to know what is happening in their organizations and how those activities are effecting change. Drummond first describes the way in which our postmodern culture makes clarity difficult to obtain. She then looks at holy clarity from a biblical and theological perspective and make the case that it is a spiritual discipline that can stand on its own theological merits. She presents four approaches to evaluation that can help a leader to guide a community toward greater clarity, both when evaluating or analyzing programs and when planning and starting programs. Finally, she considers the work of clarification as a faith practice, one that can make a pastor or layperson not just a better leader, but a better Christian who is more firmly grounded in God. Each chapter concludes with a fictional case study that provides a jumping-off point for discussion and helps bring her theory to life. Holy Clarity provides an accessible resource as an entry point for those who are eager to learn the best practices of this crucial discipline.




Holy Roar


Book Description

What happens when we praise God? What are the benefits of praising Him? Do you know what praise actually means? In Holy Roar, Chris Tomlin and Darren Whitehead share a fresh perspective from the worship practices of the ancient world. They take readers on a praise journey that answers questions and provides valuable insight. After reading Holy Roar, you will: Grow an understanding of praise with Darren's unique insights. Gain a deeper understanding of how to worship. Be inspired as Chris shares how those insights take shape in the stories behind some of your favorite worship songs, including "How Great Is Our God," "We Fall Down," and "Good Good Father." Holy Roar is for: Readers of all ages interested in growing their faith Pastors, worship leaders, and small group teachers leading believers In the ancient world, something extraordinary happened when God's people gathered to worship Him. It was more than just singing; it was a declaration, a proclamation, a time to fully embody praise to God for who He is and what He has done. In fact, in the Psalms, seven Hebrew words are translated into the English word praise, each of which represents a different aspect of what it means to truly praise God.




Gospel Clarity


Book Description

We pray that in the pages of this book God's people may again hear the gospel message, the good news that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. We are convinced that the most important question that a person can ask is, how can a sinner be in right relationship with a holy and just God? Indeed, we are convinced that this is the central theme of the Bible. Our prayer is that the teaching of God's Word and the truth of salvation and justification in Christ come alive in new and exciting ways, and that instead of confusion God's people may be have clarity, confidence, hope and assurance. The apostle Paul said it best: "Since we have been justified by faith...we rejoice in hope of the glory of God" (Romans 5:1-2).




Spiritual But Not Religious?


Book Description

Can spirituality be separated from "the complications of religious institutions"? Convert and theologian Reid Blackmer Locklin thinks not. Combining personal experience with insights from Hindu and Christian traditions, Locklin offers "Spiritual But Not Religious?," a guide to institutional commitment in a world characterized by religious pluralism.




Accounting and Money for Ministerial Leadership


Book Description

This book will help seminary students and ministers with no training in accounting to expand their core management competency and church leadership skills to include basic issues of finance and accounting. It will also provide pastors/ministers with financial management orientation to become better leaders/managers of their churches and organizations. Specifically, this book is designed to bring pastors, ministers, and seminary students up to speed in the language of accounting and money in contemporary American society. It gives them practical resources for effective (not hands-on) management of church finances. Among others, it will offer training on basic accounting and budgeting, reading of financial reports, and elementary tax and legal issues in order to develop pastors'/students' core competency in stewardship leadership. After going through this book, most students and pastors should be able to read, exegete, and make sense of the financial reports that will be given to them by church accountants (treasurers, finance committees). This book helps pastors to understand and interpret the accounting and monetary issues of their ministries in a professional and theologically sound way.




Preaching Promise withing the Paradoxes of Life


Book Description

Paradoxes have become characteristic of the world we live in - poverty and privilege, empire and oppression, migration and enclaveseeking, war and peace, justice and injustice, reconciliation and revenge. During the 2016 Societas Homiletica annual conference held in South Africa, these paradoxes served as a rediscovery of the calling of preachers to deliver the promise that lies within life's contradictions. A divine promise brought forth by the grace of God and the gospel of Christ - embodied in and through us by the Spirit of Christ. This promise may take many forms and calls for discernment and often interrupts the status quos in surprising, shocking ways. It is a promise that interrupts, in order to comfort.




Scriptural Perspicuity in the Early English Reformation in Historical Theology


Book Description

A consistent, indigenous English doctrine of scriptural perspicuity correlates with a commitment to the availability of the vernacular scriptures in English and supports the English roots of the Early English Reformation (EER). Although political events and figures dominate the EER, its religious component springing from John Wyclif and streaming throughout the tradition must be recognized more widely. This book critically surveys the doctrine of scriptural perspicuity from the beginning of the Church in the first century (noted as early as John Chrysostom) through the seventeenth century, examining its impact on the current debates concerning competing hermeneutical systems, reader response hermeneutics, and the debates in conservative American Presbyterianism and Reformed theology on subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith, the length of «creation days», and other issues.




Heavenly Revelations


Book Description

The human race has been waiting for the revelations that are written in this Holy Book. How to develop a greater understanding and personal relationship with thy Holy Spirit. The Majestic Connection states how our mortal souls connects to the divine intent of God. The following of false religions has created great dismay and has hindered the spiritual awakening in mankind. This book has been received under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I know it will awaken those whom slumber and give them a greater understanding to the Higher Truths.




Confessing God


Book Description

Put together as a companion volume to his earlier volume, Word and Church, in this book John Webster begins to give voice to a reordered conception of the substance of Christian teaching, at the heart of which lies a discovery of the content and consequences of Christian teaching about God's perfection. Webster gives the readers a worked example of 'theological theology', that is, Christian theology which takes its rise in the Christian confession of the gospel which seeks to hear, celebrate and commend. This classic volume from one of the leading theologians in the world remains an important contribution to the field of systematic theology. For this Cornerstones edition Webster has written a new preface in which he sets the work against the current debate and his own current theology.




The Greatest Books of Spiritual Wisdom


Book Description

DigiCat presents to you this unique collection of fundamental religious works presenting the theology, philosophy and spirituality of Christianity: The Philosophy of Religion: The Confessions of St. Augustine (Saint Augustine) On the Incarnation (Athanasius of Alexandria) On the Soul and the Resurrection (Gregory of Nyssa) On the Holy Spirit (Basil the Great) Pastoral Care (Pope Gregory I) An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (John of Damascus) Summa Theologica (Saint Thomas Aquinas) The Imitation of Christ (Thomas à Kempis) A Treatise on Christian Liberty (Martin Luther) The Interior Castle (St. Teresa of Ávila) The Practice of the Presence of God (Brother Lawrence) The Age of Reason (Thomas Paine) The Natural History of Religion (David Hume) Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (David Hume) The Religious Affections (Jonathan Edwards) The Essence of Christianity (Ludwig Feuerbach) Beyond Good and Evil (Friedrich Nietzsche) All of Grace (Charles Spurgeon) Humility: The Journey Toward Holiness (Andrew Murray) Orthodoxy (G. K. Chesterton) The Everlasting Man (G. K. Chesterton) The Sovereignty of God (Arthur Pink) The Kingdom of God Is Within You (Leo Tolstoy) Three Essays on Religion (John Stuart Mill) The Spirituality of a Man: The Conduct of Life (Ralph Waldo Emerson) Lessons in Truth (Emilie Cady) As a Man Thinketh (James Allen) Thoughts are Things (Prentice Mulford) The Game of Life and How to Play It (Florence Scovel Shinn) A New Christ (Wallace D. Wattles) The Swamp Angel (Prentice Mulford)