LITMIR.BIZ

Half of the population of the world lives in cities of one million or more. If we don't reach and disciple from these masses, our future missionary and pastoral force will be diminished. The book Urban Impact is a trumpet call to muster our forces but also deals with the philosophy and practical principles that make any ministry in the city successful. Brandishing a practical writing style coupled with real life experiences, John Thompson helps the reader understand the problems, burdens, joys, and powerful impact cities have on the rest of society. Helping the city pastor or missionary develop an effective ministry, Thompson elaborates on seven critical principles necessary for an effective urban ministry. Following this discussion the book turns to two of the leading challenges of great cities. The first being how to reach the disenfranchised–those from minority groups, people who have substance abuse problems, and the homeless, to name but a few. The second challenge deals with one of the greatest foundational problems in our cities and in all of society: the plight of the Absent Father. Other chapters address urban discipleship as the most effective approach to promote life transformation, planting churches in the difficult urban environment, and a topic rarely discussed in urban books, raising a family in the city.

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This study is the first comprehensive history of the impact of the modern missionary movement on the understanding of and work toward Christian unity. It tells stories from all branches of the church: Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant in its many types (conciliar, evangelical, Pentecostal, and independent).
Part 1, «Historical,» highlights the contribution of modern missions to Christian unity, from William Carey and his antecedents and peers to present-day missions.
Part 2, «Ten Models of Unity,» takes an inductive approach to history, asking not «how should Christians cooperate?» but «how has the missionary movement helped Christians to work together at the local, national, regional, and global level?»
Part 3, «Wider Ecumenism,» broadens the evidence to include how the missions movement has helped not only institutional churches but also broader society to have concern for the unity of the entire human family. Included here is the story of how the Protestant missionary movement influenced the forming of the United Nations as well as the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The study also covers the movement's impact on Christian attitudes toward, and relations with, persons of other faiths.
Mission and Unity is the standard reference work in the field for persons studying modern history, modern church history, missions, and ecumenics.

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The Flood, Noah, angels, demons, dinosaurs, monsters, archaeology, ancient history, epic fantasy, John Stringer brings us a fearsome, captivating, ultimately redemptive and realistic glimpse at the war in heaven and the pre-Flood earth, where terrible nephaliim stalk the ground. Mankind suffers, and Unos works to redeem all things against a backdrop of angelic rebellion and war. Vitruvius Affluveum is a frustrated archaeologist who makes an incredible discovery near his exhausted excavation site at Nemrut Dag, Turkey, a discovery that captivates the world . . . In the skies above, the melody of heaven sang beneath the wings of the giant pterosaurs and was heard deep in the veins of the earth where rock flowed like liquid gold nursing the world and warming her skin. But archangels clashed, the Watchers came, and nephaliim were spawned. The earth groans in a travesty of darkness, death, and dread. Lost in the tide, One, God's precious, created man is lured away and abandons his one true hope. But the Throne has a plan . . .

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Of all the famous books ever written, The Song of Songs has been designated as the finest ever produced or ever to be read on the subject of finding love, developing relationships, and experiencing life. Its title, The Song of Songs, is a superlative, an almost exaggerated expression of praise, which insists that this book is «the best of the best.» Designed to be read over fifty days, As Good as It Gets takes the reader through this greatest of love songs, delighting in its beauty and exploring its passion while discovering its insights into aspects of love and life such as praise, intimacy, affirmation, identity, insecurity, community, friendship, transformation, disruption, resolution, restlessness, rapture, confidence, dignity, disclosure, and freedom. In the end the reader will discover much more than a manual on relationships or even what it takes to live a passionate and purposeful life. While remaining entirely honest about the realities of life, love, and relationships, The Song retains the remarkable ability to bring us into a life that is filled with joy and grace, beauty, and poetry.

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Virtues are values underlying human practices. We are at the dawn of a new era, an era of global ethics requiring some core virtues. These core virtues are hospitality, co-living, respect, tolerance, and communality. Book 1 treats the virtue of hospitality that is a right and a duty of all, and which is still to be discovered and practiced unconditionally. Book 2 deals with the virtues of co-living, respect, and tolerance, which are important virtues if the peoples of the earth are to live together in peace in our common home, the planet Earth. Finally, Book 3 deals with the virtue of communality; this is a very important virtue because a large part of humanity experiences hunger and thirst, which is something scandalous in this day and age, and which demonstrates a lack of humanity, because we possess the technical means and political framework to resolve this situation. If these core virtues become a reality, they will transform human practices into something beneficial both to human beings and to the planet Earth, our common home.

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In The Truth Is the Way, Christopher Ben Simpson presents Kierkegaard's work as a theologia viatorum, a theology to guide one on life's way. This truth that is the way is at once existential, metaphysical, and theological – the highest truth is a living in accord with reality that is revealed to us and enabled in us by Jesus Christ. This picture of Kierkegaard's thought, drawing on the whole of his published corpus, presents his perspectives (by way of prolegomena) on the nature of truth, of communication and of faith and (more substantially) his guiding vision of the world, God, humanity, and Christ, culminating in Kierkegaard's understanding of the manner of life lived in light of this vision – of a journey walked in the virtues of patience, faith, hope, and love toward a life of joy in the midst of suffering, of communion with oneself, with God, with others.

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From the polling place to the pulpit, The Romance of Innocent Sexuality investigates the passions that are enacted in debates about same-sex marriage. In a critique that is at once humorous and unrelenting, Geoffrey Rees argues that sexual desire is fundamentally a desire to make sense of oneself as a whole person. Through a constructive engagement with the writings of Saint Augustine on original sin, Rees turns on its head the conventional wisdom regarding the goodness of sexual relationship, arguing that sin, not innocence, is the starting point in pursing justice in sexual ethics. To that end Rees boldly reclaims the wisdom of the most disreputable teachings of the Augustinian tradition: that original sin is a literal inheritance of all humanity of the singular disobedience of Adam and Eve in Eden, and the inherent sinfulness of all human sexuality. This work also engages theological readings of nineteenth-century fiction and literary readings of contemporary theological writings. In so doing Rees shows that debates about same-sex marriage are so compelling because the participants are all telling a common story in which they seek to establish the innocence of their own preferred forms of self-understanding as defined against some other persons' sinful selves. In contrast to this, Rees argues for the acceptance of responsibility for the sinful exclusions that make possible finding the meaning of embodied personal identity through marriage between any two persons.

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Vincent Donovan is best known as the author of the influential bestseller, Christianity Rediscovered (1978). This new book contains the monthly letters he wrote home from Tanzania between 1957 and 1973.
These letters give us previously unknown stories: how Donovan met Julius Nyerere, first prime minister of Tanzania; how a group of Protestants attempted to kill him; of his early disastrous attempt to hear confession in Swahili; of the relationship between Donovan's work and Vatican II; and much about the mysterious Sonjo tribe, among whom Donovan spent his last years in Tanzania. They also give insights, from the hilarious to the poignant, into Donovan the man in relationship to his family, his missionary colleagues, and the Maasai. Copies of original photographs are also included.
Most significantly, the letters show Donovan's evolution over the years from a young missionary who was passionate about acquiring land for church buildings, into a mature visionary convinced that the only job of the missionary is to preach the gospel.
A concluding essay looks at the legacy of Donovan, thirty-five years later, with contributions from three Spiritan missionaries who continue to live out his legacy in Tanzania and elsewhere today. Finally, the essay looks at Donovan's continuing influence on contemporary renewal movements in North America and in Britain.
Those who have been inspired by Christianity Rediscovered–missiologists, church renewal leaders, and students of Gospel and culture–will find much here to delight and to challenge.

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Who is the God in whom Christians believe? Is he just a figment of the human mind as critics of religion claimed in the nineteenth century and as crusading atheists assert again today? Since the beginnings of rational thought the brightest minds among humanity have attempted to assert that God does indeed exist. But even the so-called proofs for God's existence always started with the assumption that there is someone to prove. As soon as we move beyond that which is within space and time mere proofs or disproofs no longer suffice. Both believers and unbelievers live to a certain degree by faith. Yet religion is inextricably connected with human history.
When we journey through the landscape of religion and witness its gradual unfolding we soon realize that not all religions are equal. Though they may be witnesses of the same God, the way they talk about God is so different that this not only leads to very different concepts of God but also to different approaches to life on this earth. At the end of this long journey we finally arrive at the Judeo-Christian tradition which witnesses to the God in whom Christians believe. This book seeks to show how this belief matured and what difference this belief still makes today.

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Some time ago, Ralph Winter brilliantly identified three eras of modern missions: Era 1: William Carey focused on the coastlands; Era 2: Hudson Taylor focused on the inlands; Era 3: Donald McGavran and Cameron Townsend focused on unreached peoples. With all the fast and furious changes swirling around us today in twenty-first century missions, have we entered a Fourth Era? If so, who are the people primarily involved? How are they selected? How are they trained? How long do they serve? Has the Third Era ministry focus–reaching the unreached–changed? If so, to what? Are there any successful case studies out there? Have McGavran and Townsend passed the baton to a new leader(s)? If so, to whom? This book seeks to answer these and related questions.
Contributors include:
Dr. Ben Beckner 
Dr. Monroe Brewer
Dr. Don Finley
Mike Griffis
Dr. Gary Hipp, MD
Jerry Hogshead
Kaikou Maisu 
Judy Manna Kenn Oke 
Dr. A. Sue Russell
Dr. Robert Strauss 
Peter Swann 
Bryan Thomas
Diane Thomas 
Dr. Mike Wilson
Dr. Sherwood G. Lingenfelter

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