LITMIR.BIZ

What does it mean to be church? Is it spending an hour on Sunday with people who look, think, and act much as we do? Or is it something more incarnational that seeks out those who are different, the ones living on the margins? For centuries Christians have presumed that we are to take the gospel to the poor. Instead, Wendy McCaig invites us to receive the gospel from the poor. Through a series of encounters with incarcerated, homeless, and impoverished individuals, Wendy McCaig experienced the mysterious power of Christian hospitality that turns strangers into family. Her gift for storytelling brings this mysterious transformation to life. Inspired by the dreams of a homeless mother who wanted to help her neighbors, McCaig started a ministry that empowers formerly homeless individuals to live out their dreams. Together these dreamers are transforming their city one person, one community, and one church at a time. Her true stories of the least, the lost, and the forgotten in her community will show you the Good News becoming reality in the midst of injustice in ways that will inspire you and deepen your faith. These twenty stories-within-a-story about what ordinary people can do when they come together across racial, economic, and geographic divides to fight poverty will expand your vision of what it means to be the church. With your eyes opened to the needs and gifts of your neighbors, you too can begin to dream God-sized dreams for a hurting world. And as you pray «thy kingdom come on earth,» you will be inspired to live in such a way as to make it happen in your own community.

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This volume invites readers to walk in Israelite sandals, that is, to take a journey of the imagination, and to immerse themselves in the identity, values, and institutions of first-century CE Israelites with the help of contemporary social-scientific studies and theories. What emerges is that the Israelites did not practice a religion. Rather, they were an ethnos, or as this book describes it, an ethnic identity, who lived out a particular way of life and culture the customs of the fathers. It is to belong to a people who obtained their collective identity, honor, and sense of worth from their socialization and membership in Israel and from the social convention of loyalty to their rich cultural tradition. It was to belong to a «world,» or having a perspective on the world with its own quality of «knowledge,» which, among other things, preferred collectivism over individualism, and orthopraxy over orthodoxy.

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Grief is universal, permeating all avenues of life on planet earth; no one can escape it. Pain and sorrow come in all different shapes and sizes. An Ordinary Story of Extraordinary Hope accepts that life is hard. It explores the full scope of grief issues to proclaim that grace and hope are stronger than the hardness of life; grace and hope are saturated with redemptive power. The book illustrates how those times of heartache result in growth that shapes our character and perspective. It teaches that it's our response to grief that determines whether growth will be positive or negative. An Ordinary Story of Extraordinary Hope provides true-life narrative tied to Scripture to describe God's presence in the midst of painful circumstances. It demonstrates that over time God uses both positive and negative experiences to accomplish his purposes in our lives. Its testimony to perseverance is an encouragement to others on their faith journey.

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Consistently Pro-Life is a book about killing. Specifically, it takes up the question of when and under what circumstances is it morally justifiable for a Christian to take human life. The murder of abortionist Dr. George Tiller on Pentecost Sunday 2009 reignited the national debate over abortion by focusing attention on the seeming hypocrisy of those who would kill to defend life. But many times, those who would condemn the killing of Dr. Tiller would readily justify the killing of human beings in other circumstances. This leads to the question: What basis do we have to judge a specific act of violence as morally good or ethically justifiable in light of the gospel of Jesus Christ?
Rob Arner explores these issues and argues that the deliberate killing of any human being is incompatible with the moral life of a follower of Jesus. Readers will discover in the witness of the ancient Christian church an example of how modern Christians might consistently apply gospel precepts toward questions of the taking of human life. Through a new taxonomy that categorizes the ancient Christian witnesses according to individual issues such as abortion/infanticide, killing in war, and the bloody Roman «games,» Consistently Pro-Life demonstrates that the early church consistently opposed the killing of human persons, and suggests that the discipline and moral clarity of the ancient Christians on issues of violence can show us a new way forward in a time of polarizing culture wars.

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When a boy cries, his father trains him in the way of the ancients. He is taught to «man up,» and rejects anything feminine in his life. Thus he begins the process of becoming a man in the image of his culture. This transformation comes at the expense of his own calling to reflect the image of God. Men and women, however, were both created in this divine image and were meant to live in harmony rather than enmity. Recently, influential Christian writers and leaders have suggested that men have become too feminized and need to return to their calling to be «real men.» Clark believes that this «new masculinity» is in reality a return to the way of the ancients. Drawing from his experiences as a minister, domestic- and sexual- violence prevention advocate, and community leader, Clark suggests that Jesus came to redefine masculinity and resist the cultural view of manhood, power, and oppression.

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Who doesn't want a liberated life? Jesus offers us liberation as we grow in a Christian spiritual life. But first we need to liberate our concept of Christian Spirituality from ideas that relegate it to Church on Sunday, new age self help, devotional or ascetical practices, or fundamentalist aggression. Traditionally, Christian spirituality liberates Jesus' disciples from personal sin and helps them to challenge sin's social consequences so that once liberated, they will work to liberate others. Christian spirituality (living the Gospel) brings good news for the poor, liberty for the captives, recovery of sight for the blind, and freedom for the oppressed. This is what Jesus came to do, and this is what we as his disciples are called to do as we live our Christian callings in the world. Whether we are at home, work, or play we are called to be Christian. Beyond Piety invites readers to grow in their understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Christ. More than a book on Franciscan or Hispanic Spirituality, this book is about the Christian Spirituality all Christians are called to live. It is about our human and Christian identity and the God we believe in. It is about getting to know the Word of God and letting that Word get to know us. It is about worship and religious devotion and moving beyond piety to Christian action. It is about the call to justice and liberation.

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Limbo has traditionally been viewed as a place between heaven, on the one hand, and purgatory and hell, on the other, to which the patriarchs, who lived under the old law, and babies who died before being baptized into the Christian faith have been consigned. Like purgatory, it is a dark place but not deprived of grace. Now that the Roman Catholic Church has declared that limbo is not an official church teaching, the idea of limbo has been freed from ecclesiastical constraints and available for reflection on the human condition on this side of the grave.
Living in Limbo by Donald Capps and Nathan Carlin focuses on the acute limbo situations that are an integral part of human life, including the vicissitudes of growing up, of forming committed relationships, of finding employment and staying employed, of undergoing life-threatening illnesses, and of experiencing dislocation and doubt. Using cases and examples of real-life persons, the book identifies the forms of distress likely to occur throughout the duration of the limbo experience, and it also identifies the internal and external resources that individuals draw upon as they cope with the stresses and uncertainties of living in limbo.
Drawing on the traditional view, especially reflected in Christian art, that Christ descends into limbo to comfort and liberate its occupants, Living in Limbo comes down on the side of hope versus despair. In reading about other limbo dwellers, readers will meet themselves-or someone they love and care about-and will be encouraged by the very fact that they are not alone. Although it is not a pleasant place to be, limbo is not a place of solitary confinement, and one derives strength and resilience from the presence of the others.

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Groans of the Spirit constitutes a rousing challenge to mainline churches and their practice of preaching. In this inventive work, Timothy Slemmons calls preachers beyond the formalism of the New Homiletic, and beyond the ethical proposals that have arisen in the frustrated struggle to transcend it, and toward what the author calls a «penitential» (reformed) homiletic. This new homiletical proposal is distinctive in that it faithfully adheres to the Christological content of preaching, finds its inspiration in the promise of the real presence of Christ, and trusts in the ministry of the Holy Spirit, from whom alone the power for the renewal of the mainline church shall come.
This book includes a thorough reconsideration of the «infinite qualitative difference» between God and humanity in Barth's thought, an important critique of Gadamer's reception of Kierkegaard's concept of contemporaneity, an undelivered lecture on the content of preaching, and two sermons that illustrate Slemmons's important proposals.
Groans of the Spirit is a long-considered, calculated, and overdue break with conventional hermeneutics that proposes a vital homiletical pneumatology, which draws the art of the sermon out of the ghetto of mere rhetoric and presents it as it truly is: as theological reflection of the first order, the church's primary language of faith.

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With the onslaught of books on how to do worship, Dr. David Adams' conversational book, Lifestyle Worship, is a breath of fresh air. Highlighting the current concept of worship, Dr. Adams explains the contrast and similarities of biblical worship within our contemporary definition of worship. Sprinkled with humor, Lifestyle Worship gets to the heart of what true worship is and offers practical suggestions to deepen your walk with God. With years of research behind him, Dr. Adams is quickly garnering attention as one of the leading authorities on worship and cultural theology.

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The Fly in My Eye is a reflection of an illusion. It is the mirror of my creature self declaring itself as real to the eye of the beholder. Yet the human self would fade away into its parent nothingness but for the trance of the image it beholds. Enamored of its own appearance, regardless the truth of the echo, the affair with the dream continues. Narcissus sees himself time after time in the clouded pond and falls for it; hook, line and sinker. He is king in his own mind only. They say it's great to be the king, but of what, I say. If it be a ragged throne in a hellish realm, of what value to the soul is it? I have chosen to stand beside my King, instead of displacing Him. The position is not as exalted by the world, but instead of the king of hell, I claim Prince of the eternal Kingdom. I inherit now, and forever, the gifts of joy, peace, wholeness, and freedom. I relinquish title to the nightmare dream; giving up only pain, guilt, discord, and death. I choose to accept the reality of my eternal being and deny, once and for all time, the temporal, chaotic, and completely insufficient life of the world of man. I will stay for awhile, but only to convince you, my brothers and sisters, to join me and journey to a better reality. Know the fly you see in your eye is but a frail wisp of a dream, destined to fade away into the illusory mysts from whence it sprang, dissolving now as we lean in the direction of truth. Clear the reflecting fly from your eye and see henceforth with the one, eternal Mind that unifies us as brothers in Christ.

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