The Exuberant Church


Book Description

This visionary book from one of the most intriguing and unsettling new voices to have emerged from the churches in recent years finds life and growth in surprising places.Barbara Glasson’s widely discussed first book, I Am Somewhere Else, described ‘the bread church’, the inclusive faith community in Liverpool where people gathered to bake bread and worship God together. She has since worked with lesbian, gay and transgendered Christians, with survivors of childhood sexual abuse, with a group of disabled ministers and with other individuals and groups dealing with trauma and displacement. It is in these ‘prophetic communities’ that she has discovered new ways of understanding the transforming power of the love of God.The ‘Exuberant Church is not a church on a ‘journey’, not an ‘emerging church’, but something more explosive and unpredictable and messy, a church undergoing the strange, frightening but liberating process of ‘coming out’. In The Exuberant Church we are invited to a new way of understanding mission and the church. At a time of meltdown, reorientation and confusion, Barbara Glasson sees hope for the churches in communities sometimes seen as threatening and troubling, and in the process of ‘coming out’ something both profoundly human and deeply of God.




Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope


Book Description

The leading Old Testament theologian reflects on the meaning of the gospel in today's world.These studies on a variety of biblical texts focus deftly on reading, listening to, and proclaiming the gospel in a broken, fragmented, and "post-Christendom" world. Brueggemann explores how these traditions have the potential to continually resonate in our contemporary communities and individual lives.




To Be Silent


Book Description

Here is the first ever book about the place of silence in today's church services. Little real attention is given to silence during corporate worship in most churches, though the Bible is replete with admonitions to be quiet or still or silent before the Lord. Many Christians practice quieting themselves before the Lord in their private devotions but silence seems to have gone missing from corporate worship. It is important to keep things moving along in a church service, so silence can be a tough call for pastors who are trying to lead their congregation into a place of hearing from the Lord. The temptation, freely acknowledged by the author, is to err on the side of maintaining good tempo. Awkward Silence, gently written by a senior pastor, is intended to help church congregations listen for God's "still small voice" (1Kings19:12) without interrupting but enhancing services in a most godly way. Included are "how to do it" suggestions from dozens of other pastors and worship leaders.




Church


Book Description

Acclaimed playwright and director Young Jean Lee transforms her life-long struggle with Christianity into an exuberant church service. Both celebratory and confrontational, CHURCH will test the expectations of religious and non-religious alike—looking deep into why we believe what we believe.




Church


Book Description

Provides a picture of the Church's theological image as expressed in the historical forms it has taken through the centuries from the present day back to its origins. The book uncovers, for both Protestant and Roman Catholic, some lessons about the community to which he or she belongs.




From Times Square to Timbuktu


Book Description

In the last century, amazingly, world Christianity's center of gravity has effectively moved from Europe to a point near Timbuktu in Africa. Never in the history of Christianity has there been such a rapid and dramatic shift in where Christians are located in the world. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson explores the consequences of this shift for congregations in North America, specifically for the efforts to build Christian unity in the face of new and challenging divisions. Centers of religious power, money, and theological capital remain entrenched in the global, secularized North while the Christian majority thrives and rapidly grows in the global South. World Christianity's most decisive twenty-first-century challenge, Granberg-Michaelson argues, is to build meaningful bridges between faithful churches in the global North and the spiritually exuberant churches of the global South. Watch the trailer:




Church of the Wild


Book Description

2024 Nautilus Book Awards Silver Winner in "Religion / Spirituality of Western Thought" CategoryWinner of the Living Now Book Award, Church of the Wild reminds us that once upon a time, humans lived in an intimate relationship with nature. Whether disillusioned by the dominant church or unfulfilled by traditional expressions of faith, many of us long for a deeper spirituality. Victoria Loorz certainly did. Coping with an unraveling vocation, identity, and planet, Loorz turned to the wanderings of spiritual leaders and the sanctuary of the natural world, eventually cofounding the Wild Church Network and Seminary of the Wild. With an ecospiritual lens on biblical narratives and a fresh look at a community larger than our own species, Church of the Wild uncovers the wild roots of faith and helps us deepen our commitment to a suffering earth by falling in love with it--and calling it church. Through mystical encounters with wild deer, whispers from a scrubby oak tree, wordless conversation with a cougar, and more, Loorz helps us connect to a love that literally holds the world together--a love that calls us into communion with all creatures.




The Catholic Revolution


Book Description

"Few scholars in our period have clarified the profound changes that have occurred in American Catholicism as well as Andrew Greeley has. This is a stunning and genuinely new interpretation of those radical shifts in Catholic thought post Vatican II."—David Tracy, University of Chicago "Greeley tackles the big question of how the Roman Catholic Church could be in such deep trouble just a generation removed from its biggest reform. In this timely review of the last forty years, he reveals his mastery of both church politics and popular religious feelings. Once again he shows us why millions of American Catholics trust him to be their voice."—Mike Hout, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley




Heart Wide Open


Book Description

You believe in God. You’re trying to serve Him. But do you know how to truly love Him—and let Him love you? As a Bible-believing churchgoer, author Shellie Tomlinson harbored a secret in her good-girl heart. She longed for something more than routine faith; she wanted to love God with a genuine, all-consuming passion. So she got honest with Him: “I admit it. I don’t love you like I should, but I want to love you. Help me!” In Heart Wide Open, Shellie invites you to answer the call of your restless heart and refuse to settle for anything less than the intimate friendship of God. Through her heartfelt and honest words, you’ll find practical inspiration to help you… · exchange your “just enough Jesus” mindset for an all-out pursuit of Him · put sizzle in your Bible study by asking God to show you the wonder of His Word · trade formulaic devotions for a devoted life Are you ready to stop struggling to make time for God and instead live every moment with God? Discover how to live with your heart wide open.




The Life and Work of Thomas MacGreevy


Book Description

As a poet and literary critic, Thomas MacGreevy is a central force in Irish modernism and a crucial facilitator in the lives of key modernist writers and artists. The extent of his legacy and contribution to modernism is revealed for the first time in The Life and Work of Thomas MacGreevy. Split into four sections, the volume explains how and where MacGreevy made his impact: in his poetry; his role as a literary and art critic; during his time in Dublin, London and Paris and through his relationships with James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Wallace Stevens, Jack B Yeats and WB Yeats. With access to the Thomas MacGreevy Archive, contributors draw on letters, his early poetry, and contributions to art and literary journals, to better understand the first champion of Jack B. Yeats, and Beckett's chief correspondent and closest friend in the 1930s. This much-needed reappraisal of MacGreevy, the linchpin between the main modernist writers, fills missing gaps, not only in the story of Irish modernism, but in the wider history of the movement.