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A Guide to Worship Ministry centers on four main areas of worship ministry: preparing for worship ministry, leading the worship ministry, preparing for Sunday, and discipling the generations through worship ministry. The book addresses topics such as discerning your call to ministry, working on a church staff, planning and leading worship services, and equipping your worship teams. A Guide to Worship Ministry looks at the day-to-day work of the worship minister, offering insights and personal stories. It is an important book for those getting started in worship ministry and a refresher for those who have years of experience in ministry.

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"Who am I?" If you are unsure of your personal identity, you are not alone. Our postmodern culture multiplies identity-crisis. Identity comes from story–the better our story, the healthier our identity and our behavior. Searching for the Self helps you discover your own story, and discern how cultural narratives shape your behavior. Channeling the ancient wisdom of classic stories–including Christian Scripture viewed as true story–this book offers hope to anyone searching for a better story to live by. Searching for the Self provides a groundbreaking synthesis of narrative psychology, cultural analysis, biblical studies, and English Literature 101–all written in an engaging style and interwoven with revealing personal anecdotes.

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All Scripture is God-breathed, but not every portion of it is embraced by Christians with equal vigor. Tribal lists, specific sacrificial obligations, seemingly endless genealogical records, and apparently gratuitous acts of warfare are readily scanned over. But could the minor prophets be added to that list? Should they be? They certainly seem more difficult to locate for many of us than, say, the books of Moses or the Psalms. The writer is clear in his assessment from the start, positing that our relative ignorance of these twelve books, tucked away at the end of the Old Testament, impinges negatively on the Christian believer's walk.
Covering a period of around four hundred years, each book is revealed through two contextual settings: the historical and that which was personal to the individual pensmith, before a brief overview reveals the main points of that author's writing. The bulk of each chapter is concerned with the «Major Key» of the title. Taking a verse or two from each of the minor prophets, Chris Woodall develops a theme to bring practical application with a potentially positive impact to life as a Christian in the twenty-first century from lessons over two-and-a-half thousand years old.

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Following Rabbi Jesus is a surprising exposure of who the Jesus we find in the Gospels really is, what he teaches those who dare to follow him, and how he models what it means to live God's radical-kingdom way. The reader of the book will discover in this exploration a very different Jesus from the celebrity or hero of much popular church culture, the tame, ineffective Jesus of compromised Christianity, and the inaccessible, conceptual Christ of much academic theology. The reader who takes the chance of honestly engaging the Jesus we meet in the Gospel stories may find an engaging and liberating contrast to the life he is now living. He may even want to make a turn or two, and start over.

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When the earliest Christ-followers were baptized they participated in a politically subversive act. Rejecting the Empire's claim that it had a divine right to rule the world, they pledged their allegiance to a kingdom other than Rome and a king other than Caesar (Acts 17:7). Many books explore baptism from doctrinal or theological perspectives, and focus on issues such as the correct mode of baptism, the proper candidate for baptism, who has the authority to baptize, and whether or not baptism is a symbol or means of grace. By contrast, Caesar and the Sacrament investigates the political nature of baptism. Very few contemporary Christians consider baptism's original purpose or political significance. Only by studying baptism in its historical context, can we discover its impact on first-century believers and the adverse reaction it engendered among Roman and Jewish officials. Since baptism was initially a rite of non-violent resistance, what should its function be today?

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In The End of Divine Truthiness, Paul Joseph Greene confronts stark realities of terrifying theologies that make a mockery out of divine love. With urgent resolve, Greene answers Martin Luther King, Jr.'s pointed challenge to overcome «reckless and abusive . . . power without love,» and «sentimental and anemic . . . love without power.» Too many theologies cast God either as the tyrant whose loveless power lifts up the mighty or the victim whose powerless love sends the poor away empty. Wielding Stephen Colbert's word «truthiness» as a scalpel, Greene slices out one perilous theology after another to restore the wholesome truth that God is love. Supported by three world religions–Buddhism, Christianity, and Taoism–he discovers a remarkably harmonious and revolutionary divine power that is fully aligned with divine love. To reunify love and power here in the world, as King challenges, it is time to abandon ideologies of divine power that devastate divine love and promote atrocities. Greene's call for «the end of divine truthiness» heralds a new day for the God whose love is power and whose power is love.

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As mainstream media cries out that the millennial generation has killed everything from cereal to office jobs, it must also be asked: have millennials killed Christian missions? With the rise of new technologies, social and political movements, and increasing numbers of religious nones, the church as we know it is facing serious turmoil at the hands of this new generation of adults. Here, a millennial and a baby boomer invite the reader into a dialogue about the future of missions and the future of the Western church. From a missiological reading of the Bible to the contemporary debate over Christian social justice and the ethical dilemmas of evangelism, this book plays out the intergenerational tensions within the church, and provides a platform from which to view the present and future of an institution that is so rapidly changing.

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Pauline studies are in a conundrum. The Reformation perspectives championed by great men like Martin Luther and John Calvin have been challenged recently by the rise of the new perspective on Paul. The main point of contention seems to be the place of biblical law in salvation. While the Reformation perspectives, based in part on Paul's apparent attacks on law, assert that salvation is a free gift unmerited by human works, the new perspective suggests the law is an integral part of the work of salvation. It holds that Paul's attacks on the law were focused only on specific aspects of law, the so-called boundary markers. This book, while having points of contact with both outlooks, takes a different view on Paul and the law. Building on Paul's self-identification as a Christian, and Christian views on the covenant, it endeavors to give biblical law its due place in the plan of salvation and the life of the believer.

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This book explores the relationship of clergy to Twelve Step programs. Field research of pastors in the Florida Keys found that they are unsure if addiction is a disease or a sin, and whether the Twelve Steps are based on Christianity. Lessons learned include the validity of both traditional Twelve Step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Christ-centered programs such as Celebrate Recovery, the coherence of sin and disease explanations of addiction, and the significance of modern addiction theory. The specific outcome of this study is the development of a course syllabus for clergy on addiction recovery through Twelve Step philosophy.

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Pastors of smaller membership churches have a huge calling. They are responsible for changing the world! Rather than look at the small number of members in their congregations as a limitation, pastors should view their congregations as an elite force, able to impact their communities for the Kingdom of God.
Small Church, Excellent Ministry is a handbook designed for pastors serving in smaller membership churches. This book will help you to conduct your ministry with excellence. Written by practitioners and professors, the information provided in this book is on the vanguard of pastoral ministry and is useful for training pastors to be leaders of their churches.

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