LITMIR.BIZ

Since the late 1970s complementarian theologians have been arguing that the divine three persons in the Trinity are ordered hierarchically, and that this is the ground for the hierarchical ordering of the sexes. Suddenly and unexpectedly in June 2016 a number of complementarian theologians of confessional Reformed convictions came out and said that to so construe the Trinity is «heresy»; it is a denial of what the creeds and confessions of the church rule is the teaching of Scripture. A civil war among complementarians followed and in a very short time those arguing for hierarchical ordering in the Trinity capitulated. This book tells the story.

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Love in one form or another is the commanding force of this new collection of short fiction. The Servitude of Love holds the revelations of love in different manifestations–love of work, love of another, love of journey, love of mission, love of justice, of foolishness, of duty. These thirteen stories take place along the north/south corridor of the central plains of America, in Afghanistan and Spain. Fictional characters such as Noe in Brownsville, Texas in the first story, and actual historical characters such as Joanna the Mad in 16th century Spain in the last story, speak of the difficulties and demands of love. Noe, subsumed by love for his family and his art, imagines The Maker, El Senor, to be a workman like himself. Joanna, madly in love with her husband, finds she must live without him. Minneola Peavine, in a dull marriage in West Texas, dreams of nightly visits with Genghis Khan. The four daughters of a preacher travel the north shore in Minnesota in search of something other than the cold. A dyslectic boy reverses the letters, p and b. Another boy, Malchas, loses his ear in an accident involving fireworks, and begins to hear the faraway sea. There is an experimental story about land rights told in several voices in several versions. Two brothers serve in Afghanistan. Two other brothers deliver pizza in northwest Kansas once inhabited by Indians and cavalry troops. The historical, Sister Maria Jesus de Agreda, bilocates between 17th century Spain and the Jumano tribe in the American southwest. Most of them are awash in a river of circumstances that could drown them.

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For close to two thousand years, Christian theology has been captivated by a sacrificial rendering of the Gospel that renders God as retributive, arbitrary, and Janus-faced. In the past fifty years a non-sacrificial way of perceiving the Gospel, God, and the mission and message of Jesus has challenged this sacrificial hegemony. Now what began as a trickle in the 1960s has burst the dam and the Gospel is on a collision course with Christianity. What are some of the implications of this moment? What is the integral cohesion in a non-sacrificial theology, ethics, and spirituality? What does Christian doctrine look like if one removes retributive economies of exchange?

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Jesus, the rabbi of Nazareth, was always on the move. Therefore, shadowing him, following in his footsteps, amounts to being engaged in a continual process of becoming, of reinventing oneself, of being born anew every day. This nomadic lifestyle, which fosters simplification and improvisation, is paradoxically also very enriching–to the point of transforming us into pilgrims on the way to the messianic age.

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Twenty-first century Christians live in diaspora, merely one voice among many, without enjoying their once-privileged place in society. This is particularly the case for those who struggle to be a church that mirrors the capaciousness of God's grace. We are assaulted by the venting of pent-up furies, which are stoked by profound anxieties over the loss of a cherished worldview and fear about an unacceptable but unstoppable future. Frequently, we struggle to speak an authentic word of God amidst the cross-talk of many voices. This book–a canonical study of Hosea through Malachi, called collectively The Book of the Twelve–describes a biblical model of faithful speaking under similar circumstances. It guides reaction to this loss toward intense engagement with Scripture and theology in order to sense again the meaning of speaking what is at the heart of faith, God's unalterable commitment to continuing faithfulness with us.

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Take a journey together with others from your local church–a road trip that will help you rediscover your true mission. This newly revised and updated edition of Roadmap to Renewal will serve as a vital resource enabling you to reconnect to your mission area. Use the step-by-step process in a small group to come up with a Ministry Action Plan for your community of faith. Know your community. Know your mission. Know your strengths and challenges. Know where you are going. Reach people with the good news of Jesus Christ!

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God's good gift of sexuality and how to use it for His glory and our good has been corrupted since the creation of the world. Sex between unmarried (fornication), adultery, divorce and remarriage, and homosexuality are accepted as normal in modern society and young people, even Christian young people, are being influenced by this Satanic lie that «if it feels good–do it!» This booklet is sent out with the prayer that it will save many young people from heartache and the curse that these serious sexual sins will bring on them. There is the good way, the biblical or reformed way for living chastely as a single person, finding and courting a mate, and marrying and staying faithful to that mate. This booklet has been a long time since inception to publication! First conceived thirty years ago, very few copies of an older version were produced by Covenant Evangelical Reformed Church for young people in Singapore in 2011. The original has been substantially expanded by quotations from Protestant Reformed Church ministers.

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How does God manage his entire creation? Has he had a plan, a theme, a metanarrative or something else which he follows that gives a unity to all of his efforts? Shepherds describes the relationship between the Creator and his creation, a relationship that is structurally integrated by the very core of who God is.
There is a design within creation that radiates from his personal, unique being. What God created and how he manages it is a marvelous extension of who he is and how he acts. This relationship between God and his creation is not patterned only on his essence or being, but on his powerful and loving will and acts.
Rather than a literary grid to which «theme» and «metanarrative» attempt to subject God's relationship with humanity, Shepherds recognizes that all of creation bears the eternal design emanating from God's very nature. Scripture is not a «story» about Israel or the church; it is not simply a story of redemption; it is a window into the eternal design by which God created reality and will eternally sustain that creation.

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Together: Community as a Means of Grace addresses the concept of community as an avenue to a deeper relationship with God. Using an ecumenical Wesleyan approach, Duggins explores the concept of «God as community» to conclude that bringing people together in almost any setting allows them to grow in God's image. He frames this idea using the historical concept of the «means of grace»: the ordinary ways in which people encounter God. Drawing heavily on the work of the Missional Wisdom Foundation, Duggins begins with a reflection on the community-building aspects of traditional church. He then uses storytelling to introduce four common forms of community: community through work, community through food, community through children's schools and activities, and community through shared recreational activities. Together is intended to help Christian people embrace the freedom to experiment with alternative forms of Christian community. Duggins nudges the missional imagination of people who long for spiritual connection and growth, but for whom traditional church is not the answer. Using a «yes, and» approach, he shows that traditional church can empower and stand alongside new forms of community, each of which can act as a means of grace.

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In a world laced with the lethal threads of racism, sexism, classism, and sexual oppression we need a liberating hope that dismantles these intersecting problems that render us into a stupor of chronic despair. In the United States, where the color of your skin can determine life or death, we need hope that will give us life abundantly. In a country where state laws prohibited mixed-race marriages between white and black people as recent as the year 2000 and black/white mixed-race children were demonized by both whites and blacks, our hope must be inspired by the Holy Spirit, God the Creator and Redeemer at work in the world today. This book offers emancipatory hope as this divine hope. With a focus on black/white mixed-race young women and their troubling relationships with women and girls of all ethnicities, Between Sisters provides a process toward emancipatory hope through forgiveness, femaleship, fortitude, and freedom. The process toward emancipatory hope challenges Christian churches to practice forgiveness, femaleship, fortitude, and freedom in a racist society. While the process is not without struggle, it promises that hope through the power of the Holy Spirit will someday usher in a society of justice, peace, and love.

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