LITMIR.BIZ

"The Korean missions movement is perhaps the most significant story of the Church in the world over the past one hundred years. Today Korea can boast of being the leading sender of missionaries per head of population. Yet this movement has not been well integrated into the global mission community and also this community has at times failed to understand and learn from this tremendous work of God. I am excited that God has brought together a unique body of people to wrestle with these issues. This work will help bring about much needed collaboration and develop each other's strengths in an environment of mutual respect." –MALCOLM L. McGREGOR, SIM International Director
"Accountability in Missions is a remarkable book, exploring the full range of mission accountability issues–strategic, financial, and relational–from both Korean and North American perspectives. This is global missiology made practical and accessible to all missions practitioners. The many articles that penetrate the mysteries of Korean and North American interaction especially make it a must-read book for all Koreans and North Americans working together." –STEVE STRAUSS, Professor of Mission and Intercultural Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary
"This collection of essays provides a biblical and theological basis for accountability and brings voices East and West, demonstrating that accountability–to God and to others–is a universal principle, not linked to one culture or context (i.e., Western). Further, the collection is eminently practical, addressing matters of governance (decision-making), finance, and personal integrity. To all mission leaders I say: read this book! Actually, read it but also find colleagues with whom to discuss and digest these principles and review our mission practices." –GORDON T. SMITH, President, reSource Leadership International

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Today, many evangelicals in the Russian-speaking world emphasize sanctification as a distinctive mark of their Christian faith. This is a unique characteristic, particularly in the European context. Their historic tapestry has been woven from a number of threads that originated in the second half of the nineteenth century. Missionary efforts of the German Baptists, a revival sparked by a British evangelist, and a pietistic awakening among the Mennonites in the South converged to form a tapestry that displays Protestant, Baptist, and Anabaptist heritage.
Ivan Kargel uniquely participated in the formation and ministry of each of these threads. His life spans from Tsarist Russia to the Soviet Union. Kargel refused to adhere to a systematic view of theology. Instead, he urged believers to go to Scripture and draw from the riches of a life united with Christ. Kargel's influence today is keenly felt across the Russian-speaking evangelical world as they seek to identify the roots of their spiritual identity. This book examines the influences on Ivan Kargel and offers insights into how his life and work are expressed in the tapestry of Russian evangelical spirituality.

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This book is about the names given to Jesus by those followers responsible for putting his words and deeds into writing-the earliest «Christian scribes.»
In the first-century Mediterranean world, the first name of male person was his proper name. The second name indicated the family or clan to which he belonged, whereas the third name was an «honorary title» bestowed on him because of some achievement, good fortune, physical attribute, or «special excellence.»
Honorary titles were bestowed on Jesus mostly after his death. Such titles were often given to sages. The titles could either amplify Jesus' wisdom and empower people, or serve as instruments of power.
This book aims to demonstrate the ideological and political mystification of Jesus in the transmission of the tradition about him. It illustrates the relevance of
–The social history of formative Christianity; –The evolution of the Jesus traditions; –The genre of the gospels as biography; and –The institutionalization of charismatic authority.

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Spiritually there is a great hunger today for contemplative and more satisfying experiences with God. Puritanism might seem to be an unlikely source for this, yet few groups in the history of Christian spirituality have written more extensively or wisely on the subject. Isaac Ambrose (1604-64), a relatively forgotten English Puritan, developed a theological foundation for the spiritual life based upon the Christian's intimate union with Christ, which the Puritans often called «spiritual marriage.» Schwanda demonstrates that this vibrant relationship of union and communion with Jesus, inspired by the Holy Spirit, was manifested in a deep contemplative piety of gazing lovingly and gratefully upon God. At the same time, Ambrose did not neglect loving his neighbors. This study reveals how heavenly meditation was one of the significant practices engaged by Ambrose to cultivate spiritual intimacy and enjoyment of God. Further, his experiential reading of Scripture, in particular the Song of Songs, provided him with a language of ravishment and delight in God. This book provides a distinctively Protestant foundation for recovering the contemplative life while recognizing the significant contributions of the Western Catholic tradition.

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Apologetic methodology has been the subject of intense debate in Reformed circles. This book argues that we can test Reformed apologetic methods for consistency using two linchpin theological topics: the doctrine of the resurrection and the doctrine of Scripture. Should apologetics move from establishing theism to the resurrection and then to Scripture? Or should theism, the resurrection, and the doctrine of Scripture be accepted on the testimony of the Holy Spirit as basic beliefs? Alternatively, do these doctrines need to be presupposed and incorporated into a transcendental defense of the faith? After analyzing classical apologetics, historical evidentialism, Reformed epistemology, and presuppositionalism for their apologetic cogency, Steven D. West contends that any method used by Reformed apologists should be able to argue successfully for a high view of Scripture, the source of the doctrine of the resurrection. The book will be useful to everyone interested in the relationship between theology, philosophy, and apologetics.

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Liang Fa holds a unique place in the history of Christianity in China. Baptized and ordained by the first Protestant missionaries to China, Liang aided the first two generations of missionaries and conducted his own work as an evangelist and writer. Liang alone in the first generation wrote and published under his name, and his most famous tract is believed to have influenced the Taiping Rebellion. While George McNeur's biography of Liang has been republished regularly in Chinese, this is the first republication in English since the 1930s. It remains the best work on an influential but little-studied figure. Annotated and with a critical introduction, this work seeks to revive scholarship on Liang as we approach the two-hundredth anniversary of his baptism.

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How Jews and Christians Interpret Their Sacred Texts is a comparative textual study that demonstrates the connections between the Hebrew Scriptures, sacred to both Judaism and Christianity, and the Jewish Talmud and Christian New Testament, which respectively became the bases for all modern systems of the two faiths. Even as official interpretations changed from «plain sense» to more elaborate explications, commentators in both faith systems continued to hold to the position that their conclusions were not only based firmly upon the initial authoritative text, but were in fact the natural extension and continuation of it. To describe these classical and early post-classical appropriations, Isbell discusses the «transvaluation» of texts, or efforts to retain the core values of authoritative sacred texts that are bound to specific times and situations while seeking to extrapolate from these ancient documents meanings that are relevant to current faith and praxis. As Isbell shows, transvaluation presupposes both the freedom and the necessity of reinterpreting perceived timeless teachings in light of historical, theological, sociological, and political developments that occurred long after the composition of the texts themselves.

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Is the Abrahamic blessing of Genesis 12:1-3 still active in the world today? Does God still extend his blessing to the nations through his people? The author found the answer to these questions in one of the most isolated regions of the world, Papua New Guinea. In this book Sarita D. Gallagher compares the missional nature of the Abrahamic blessing motif in Scripture to a national revival that took place in Papua New Guinea. By identifying the shared missional patterns, she illustrates the continued fulfillment of the Abrahamic blessing through the Old and New Testaments and the contemporary Papua New Guinean Church. The significance of this research is multifaceted: the text contributes new insights to the global Church's understanding of the missio Dei, records an unexplored chapter of Melanesian indigenous mission history, and impacts the foundational motivations and methodology of contemporary mission praxis.

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Eighty years ago, Walter Bauer promulgated a bold and provocative thesis about early Christianity. He argued that many forms of Christianity started the race, but one competitor pushed aside the others, until this powerful «orthodox» version won the day. The victors re-wrote history, marginalizing all other perspectives and silencing their voices, even though the alternatives possessed equal right to the title of normative Christianity. Bauer's influence still casts a long shadow on early Christian scholarship. Were heretical movements the original forms of Christianity? Did the heretics outnumber the orthodox? Did orthodox heresiologists accurately portray their opponents? And more fundamentally, how can one make any objective distinction between «heresy» and «orthodoxy»? Is such labeling merely the product of socially situated power? Did numerous, valid forms of Christianity exist without any validating norms of Christianity? This collection of essays, each written by a relevant authority, tackles such questions with scholarly acumen and careful attention to historical, cultural-geographical, and socio-rhetorical detail. Although recognizing the importance of Bauer's critical insights, innovative methodologies, and fruitful suggestions, the contributors expose numerous claims of the Bauer thesis (in both original and recent manifestations) that fall short of the historical evidence.
With contributions from:
Rodney Decker Carl Smith William Varner Rex Butler Bryan Litfin Brian Shelton David Alexander Edward Smither Glen Thompson

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Kagawa Toyohiko was one of the best-known evangelists and social reformers of the twentieth century. Founder of several religious, educational, social welfare, medical, financial, labor, and agricultural cooperatives, he was nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in Literature (1947 and 1948), and four times for the Nobel Peace Prize (1954, 1955, 1956, and 1960).
Appealing to the masses who had little knowledge of Christianity, Kagawa believed that a positive interpretation of nature was a key missiological issue in Japan. He reasoned that a faith, which is rooted in the «downward movement» of Christ's incarnation, must support the scientific quest and meditate on the purpose or «upward movement» implicit in scientific findings. Through an anti-reductionist methodological pluralism that strives to «sees all things whole,» this «scientific mystic» employed a wide range of Japanese and Western cultural resources to assert a complementary role for science and religion in modern society.

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