MREADZ.COM - много разных книг на любой вкус
Скачивание или чтение онлайн электронных книг.Evidence of Hope
Social issues shape the news. Yet pulpit and pews maintain an awkward silence about them. One layperson said, «I have been a member here for twenty-five years, but I have no idea what any member thinks about any social issue.» Op-ed pages and sound bites cause people to wonder if friends are «red» or «blue» on social issues, but in this book, content dips below the surface where the water is a bipartisan calm. Here is one example: for genuine competition to occur, the sides have to be fairly even. We do this in sports. Another example question is, why is health care so high when the healing is free? Hope is implicit in «Thy kingdom come . . . on earth,» recited by many churchgoers on a weekly basis as part of the Lord's Prayer. Hope becomes explicit when practical theology and applied sociology are joined, because they point to the same Source: «the hidden pressure for justice and peace at work in the world.» This Source allows grace and truth to be discovered in social issues. Indeed, the grace of God generates compassion, a prerequisite for multifaceted social justice. Wrath has no capacity to foster anything but fear of being left behind. There are single-issue books of three-hundred-plus pages, but there are no books that speak to a variety of social issues. This one does speak to a variety of social issues with clarity, readability, and economy.
The Use of Classical Spiritual Disciplines in Evangelical Devotional Life
This is a presentation of a research project on the effect of classical spiritual disciplines on the spiritual and psychological well-being of participants. Eighteen persons studied and practiced thirteen different spiritual disciplines over a period of sixth months. Pretests and posttests measured the resultant change. Foundational chapters survey the literature of the disciplines and discuss the potential benefits and dangers of the spiritual practices considered. Substantial appendices contain the lessons presented on the disciplines themselves, as well as the test instruments used to measure results. A narrative relating the progress of the project from inception to completion is included.
Though None Go With Me
Though None Go With Me is a series of observations and challenges as seen through the eyes of a Maine pastor on his first trip to India. Barry Blackstone taught for forty days at a Bible college in Kerala State in India. Here he shares his insights on the cross-cultural adventure that has forever changed the way he sees missions and the support of native works in other lands. This book includes flashbacks to youthful days. (Rural India takes the pastor back to his own boyhood in northern Maine.) In India Blackstone faced challenges with language and food, and even a broken tooth. Here each story Blackstone offers is a devotional that brings to light deeper spiritual meaning and insights–more than the actual experience itself. This book also tells of the impact the pastor's trip on people of his own church in Ellsworth, Maine, and of what they did to forge a link between a small church on the coast of Maine and a small church in the hills of southern India!
Welcome as a Way of Life
This book is about the theology of Jean Vanier. Drawing from Vanier's writings, it situates Vanier's theological thinking on community, care, and what it means to be and become human in the context of «welcome.» This book draws attention to how welcome, for Vanier, is a visible expression of genuine hospitality, friendship, and human growth, offering an alternative way of conceiving and naming the social forming dynamics within Christian community, with special attention given to how welcome occurs within the communities of L'Arche. At a deeper level, this book assesses Vanier's thinking on the place and role both the self and community play in welcoming the truth of reality as it is revealed and given within community in order to prepare the way for exploring how welcome is a sign of community life, the visible expression of individual and communal trust in God's providence, and a conduit of God's presence in the world.
Confronting a Controlling God
Christianity has lost control of its brand. That matters even for nonbelievers because Christian symbolism permeates Western culture. It shapes the source code for how we think about ourselves and what we expect from one another. If God is all-controlling, then human control is divinely sanctioned. Our efforts to control one another have cosmic legitimacy–the legitimacy claimed by fundamentalists pursuing a political agenda that has nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth. But if God is defined as compassion and loving-kindness, then Christianity calls the faithful to compassion and radical hospitality. Wallace traces the backstory of this vitally important tension all the way back to competing translations of Moses's argument with the burning bush, arguing for a «Copernican turn» in which the spiritual encounter with compassionate Presence lies at the heart of Christianity.
Stepping Out in Faith
This is the amazing story of Rancho Sordo Mudo, a free home and school for deaf children in Mexico. Founded in 1969 by Ed and Margaret Everett, the Ranch has challenged and changed thousands of lives–including the Everetts'! Through fire and restoration, triumph and devastation, the family has never lost faith in God's divine plan. As a result, their unwavering persistence and devotion transformed 500 acres of unoccupied land into a blessed ministry that has provided hope and a future for deaf children (and people of all ages–hopefully even you!) for nearly forty years.
Holy Spirit, My Love!
This book is a biography rather than a doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Focusing on the Holy Spirit as a person, the author portrays the Spirit as the one who has done and is doing every work of the creation and re-creation. The Holy Spirit is the most important and basic substance, binding together the three persons of the divine Trinity into one. The name of the Holy Spirit as well as of God the Father is «Jesus,» and it is strongly recommended to baptize «in the name of Jesus Christ» instead of «in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Spirit.» The Holy Spirit would like to be acknowledged as true God and true Lord by all his servants all over the world.
Christian and Humanist Foundations for Statistical Inference
The Philosophy of the Law Idea (PLI) analyzes the manner in which religious beliefs control scientific theorizing. Religious beliefs control philosophical overviews of reality. Overviews of reality, also called ontologies, try to discover and disclose the essential nature of reality. They are concerned with what kinds of things exist and with the connections between the various types of properties and laws in human experience. Among such overviews are the biblically consistent overview provided by the PLI and certain humanist «mathematicist» and «subjectivist» overviews.
The science of statistical inference seeks to evaluate the credibility of scientific hypotheses given empirical data. This essay reviews various popular paradigms, or systems of theories, concerning the ways that credibility may be evaluated, and identifies some ways that these religiously controlled overviews of reality have, in turn, controlled statistical paradigms. In particular, one paradigm harmonizes with the PLI's overview; another, with the subjectivist overview; and two others, with the mathematicist overview.
Pastoral Letter to Theo
A Pastoral Letter to Theo addresses some of the fundamental concerns of recent research into biblical interpretation by Adele Berlin and Kenneth Archer. It also takes into account the communicative literary and rhetorical techniques that were prominent in the Greco-Roman world when the New Testament documents were composed. Elbert suggests that attention to levels of context, plot, repetition, and characterization or personification comprise a proper method for understanding a New Testament writer's original meaning and intent.
Generally, the potentially groundbreaking thesis in much of Elbert's work is for a literary link between the «Spirit» language in Paul's letters and the later narrative of Luke-Acts. Specifically, A Pastoral Letter to Theo reflects heartfelt, pastoral concerns based on detailed contextual study of early Christianity and Christian experience. The book contextually examines in detail several passages pertaining to the ministry of women in missionary-minded early Christianity and concludes that this ministry was thought to be vital for the evangelistic enterprise.
Poems for the Pastor
As a pastor, have you ever had a loss of words during those many trying moments in your ministry, when you found it difficult to express your true feelings? All of us have! Maybe the loneliness of being a pastor has, at times, simply overwhelmed you and you search for someone, anyone to offer you words of comfort and encouragement. Possibly, you've been without words to comfort those who are grieving or experiencing a deep hurt. Many times it could have been your own grief or deep hurt. Pastor Phipps, like any other pastor, has been there many times and he has a deep burden for all of you facing the many challenges of the pastorate. He wrote Poems for the Pastor to offer you special words of encouragement, words of hope, words of healing, and words you can share with others within your flock who need them the most. May these simple lines of verse, uniquely interwoven through Scripture, be a blessing to you, your family, and those under your tender care.