With two in seven American families affected by disability, the body of Christ has a great opportunity. As we’re called to minister to those walking through deep suffering, we need to learn to do so with wisdom and sensitivity.
Joni Eareckson Tada and others with disabilities, as well as seminary professors, ministry leaders, and medical professionals, do more than offer a biblical perspective on suffering and disability; they draw from very personal experiences to explore Christians’ responsibility toward those who suffer—all the while reminding us that as we seek to help the hurting, they will minister to us in return.
'We have such a problem with our boys,' ..is a common refrain in many churches. The probability, though, is that boys are not actually the problem, rather our attitude to them; our ideas of what a boy really is and what he needs in order to connect with God.
Over the last few years, boys have been perceived to have been under-achieving at school, a problem in our society, and disengaged from our churches. It is Carolyn Edwards' heartfelt conviction that this is because we are not meeting boys' spiritual needs. Her experience is that boys are willing to engage in the struggle to make themselves heard and seen as they really are: full of energy, fun, feeling and spirituality.
In this intensely creative and practical book, Carolyn provides ten ways that boys would willingly connect with God, given the opportunity. Prompts and practical ideas help readers apply her findings to the boys they know and work with.
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Don't Call It a Comeback Don't Call It a Comeback: The Old Faith for a New Day
Unites some of today's most promising young evangelicalsin a bold assertion of the stability, relevance, and necessity of Christian orthodoxy, and reasserts the theological nature of evangelicalism.Unites some of today's most promising young evangelicalsin a bold assertion of the stability, relevance, and necessity ofChristian orthodoxy, and reasserts the theological nature ofevangelicalism.Hide
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Almost Christian Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church
Based on the National Study of Youth and Religion--the same invaluable data as its predecessor, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers--Kenda Creasy Dean's compelling new book, Almost Christian, investigates why American teenagers are at once so positive about Christianity and at the same time so apathetic about genuine religious practice.
In Soul Searching, Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton found that American teenagers have embraced a "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism"--a hodgepodge of banal, self-serving, feel-good beliefs that bears little resemblance to traditional Christianity. But far from faulting teens, Dean places the blame for this theological watering down squarely on the churches themselves. Instead of proclaiming a God who calls believers to lives of love, service and sacrifice, churches offer instead a bargain religion, easy to use, easy to forget, offering little and demanding less. But what is to be done? In order to produce ardent young Christians, Dean argues, churches must rediscover their sense of mission and model an understanding of being Christian as not something you do for yourself, but something that calls you to share God's love, in word and deed, with others. Dean found that the most committed young Christians shared four important traits: they could tell a personal and powerful story about God; they belonged to a significant faith community; they exhibited a sense of vocation; and they possessed a profound sense of hope. Based on these findings, Dean proposes an approach to Christian education that places the idea of mission at its core and offers a wealth of concrete suggestions for inspiring teens to live more authentically engaged Christian lives.
Persuasively and accessibly written, Almost Christian is a wake up call no one concerned about the future of Christianity in America can afford to ignore.
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To Change the World To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World
Chosen as one of the Fifteen Outstanding Books of 2010 for Mission Studies by the International Bulletin of Missionary Research
The call to make the world a better place is inherent in the Christian belief and practice. But why have efforts to change the world by Christians so often failed or gone tragically awry? And how might Christians in the 21st century live in ways that have integrity with their traditions and are more truly transformative? In To Change the World, James Davison Hunter offers persuasive——and provocative——answers to these questions.
Hunter begins with a penetrating appraisal of the most popular models of world-changing among Christians today, highlighting the ways they are inherently flawed and therefore incapable of generating the change to which they aspire. Because change implies power, all Christian eventually embrace strategies of political engagement. Hunter offers a trenchant critique of the political theologies of the Christian Right and Left and the Neo-Anabaptists, taking on many respected leaders, from Charles Colson to Jim Wallis and Stanley Hauerwas. Hunter argues that all too often these political theologies worsen the very problems they are designed to solve. What is really needed is a different paradigm of Christian engagement with the world, one that Hunter calls "faithful presence"--an ideal of Christian practice that is not only individual but institutional; a model that plays out not only in all relationships but in our work and all spheres of social life. He offers real-life examples, large and small, of what can be accomplished through the practice of "faithful presence." Such practices will be more fruitful, Hunter argues, more exemplary, and more deeply transfiguring than any more overtly ambitious attempts can ever be.
Written with keen insight, deep faith, and profound historical grasp, To Change the World will forever change the way Christians view and talk about their role in the modern world.