Written by nationally and internationally known homileticians and preachers, this book offers a fascinating survey of the significant developments in preaching, beginning with the Old Testament, moving through the history of preaching, and concluding with a look into the future, all while offering practical suggestions for meeting the challenges that lie ahead. In a unique way, it addresses both the academic issues raised during each period and the practical implications for preaching today and in the future.
Wednesday, November 9, 2016 is the day that changed America. A Republican business mogul and reality television host who once proclaimed that if women didn't accept the intimate advancements of men, then men were could simply grab these women by a particularly sensitive extremity below their stomachs, snatched the electoral collegiate vote and since then has worked tirelessly on reversing President Barack Obama's progressive policies and pushing immigration legislation backwards.
This vital resource guide incorporates the basic understandings of spiritual care with the current social, emotional, existential and spiritual needs of African Americans simply surviving in Trump's violent America. It's one-of-a-kind, offering specific spiritual care strategies and interventions for African Americans dealing with particular physical, social and emotional health challenges in the midst of rising statistics of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia leading to violence in the United States.
Intended for anyone in academia or the helping professions, this comprehensive work benefits those seeking to provide spiritual care to African American hospital patients, counseling clients, church congregants and parishioners, military veterans, or returning service members. The contributors to this anthology are experts in their respective fields who offer a new, refreshing, and energizing perspective on important issues impacting African Americans.
Eight different historical-theological studies are assembled here under the title Respect for the Jews. They focus primarily on positive Catholic attitudes toward Jews during the turbulent years of the first half of the sixteenth century. The number of authors and texts are relatively small, but need to be brought out into the open. For the first time, a speech in praise of the language of the Jews by the early ecumenist, Georg Witzel (1501-1573), is made available in English. Other Catholic Hebraists who are featured include Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522), Matthaeus Adrianus (ca. 1470-1521), Robert Wakefield (died 1537), and Nicolaus Winmann (ca. 1500-1550). Their brilliant works are presented in front of the sinister backdrop of the vicious attacks against the Jews by the well-educated Catholic convert of Jewish descent, Johann Pfefferkorn (ca. 1469-1521), a self-appointed Catholic missionary to the Jews, and also against the background of the scandalous outbursts of the Grobian Reformer, Martin Luther (1483-1546). Volume 4 of the author's Collected Works fosters the idea that Jews and Christians are «study partners,» rather than antagonists–as visualized in the new statue «Synagogue and Church in Our Time» (as shown on the cover).
Virtually all churches aim to invest meaningfully in the faith development of the younger generations who have been entrusted into their care. Some churches have a longstanding track record of faithfulness in living out this commitment. Some lose sight of this priority over time and allow their intentionality to fade. This book makes a distinctive contribution to our understanding of children's, youth, and young adult ministries by appropriating Erik Erikson's concept of generativity («the interest in establishing and guiding the next generation») as a way of exploring congregational life. Eleven accomplished authors representing five different countries provide diverse theological and cultural perspectives on key aspects of what it means for churches to invest intentionally in the faith development of the members of emerging generations. Their chapters challenge us to think about the intergenerational dynamics of our churches, the crucial partnership between church and parents, and what it means to involve young people meaningfully in the life of the church. The intriguing topics explored by this group of authors–and the diverse contexts from which they write–promise to broaden and enrich our thinking about caring for children, youth, and young adults as a vital responsibility shared by the entire congregation.
Lukan narrative takes its readers into God's story: how his salvation plan in Jesus began on the slopes of Judea and at the Sea of Galilee, ending on the hill of Calvary and the Mount of Olives, yet moving on and telling how the Spirit descended onto the Temple Mount empowering God's people, who then began to fulfill the given mandate in the presence of the Spirit. Yet, readers of Luke-Acts, throughout the centuries, have had a meandering journey as they have tried to understand the narrative's persuasion and Spirit-references. This book seeks to bring awareness to these challenges by some of the most respected Pentecostal biblical scholars and systematicians. Here their vigorous labor with the questions of hermeneutics and theology in relation to Lukan writings have come to fruition. These contributions have been collected as a Festschrift in honor and celebration of the career of Roger Stronstad, a Pentecostal biblical scholar whose contribution to Lukan studies have moved Pentecostal scholarship from shadows into daylight. The editor of this volume invites the readers of Lukan narrative to journey together on the road to Emmaus, as we continue to ponder the events in the past, the present, and the future.
This volume's essays are an ecumenical ensemble of the best scholars and leading practitioners in the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements from all four corners of the world. The contributors bring together various denominational perspectives and dialogue for understanding the present momentum of these Spirit movements in the world church. Their diverse methodologies transverse the traditional and new approaches to studying these movements. Pointing the way forward, the authors highlight some of the lessons learned in their scholarly engagement with Spirit movements. These lessons offer significant insight and viewpoints for the academy in the historical analysis of these movements. They also serve as a good guide for pastoral discernment and accompaniment for God's people in their daily lives, as well as for social ministries in the world church. This volume addresses questions of salvation and eschatology, health and healing, prosperity and poverty, suffering and death, fear and faith, despair and hope. Other topics include the conflict between charism and institution and the tension between cultic clericalism and the affirmation and use of the gifts and talents of lay members of Christ's faithful in the church.
There is no papal document that has generated as much interest, controversy, and debate in recent times as Pope Francis's Amoris Laetitia. This document, which came out of two very divisive synods of Catholic bishops and leaders in Rome in 2014 and 2015, will probably be the most discussed document ever produced by a pope in modern Catholicism on marriage and family life. This volume has gathered seminal commentaries on Amoris Laetitia by African Catholic theologians, social scientists, and pastoral workers. They offer African theological and pastoral responses to the principles and practices proposed by Pope Francis and the Synod on the family on such contested issues as same-sex relations, divorce and remarriage, and reception and denial of Holy Communion in the church, among other divisive issues. These important essays and commentaries show the strengths and weaknesses of this papal commentary and point out the missing link in the global conversation on marriage, family, and same-sex relations. Their argument for the inclusion of African perspectives and moral traditions in the search for a third way in finding an inclusive and integrated pastoral art of accompaniment is very compelling. The authors here also call for the inclusion of Africa's own unique challenges–like polygamy, childless marriages, and the impact of migration, civil conflict, diseases, ecological and population crises, and the rights of African women–in the global discussion on marriage and family life. They also challenge uncritical cliches in world Christianity that Africa's opposition to same-sex marriages (or Western propaganda about population or birth control and contraception) are conservative, while showing diverse African conversations on these topics in the search for abundant life on this beautiful continent.
Hanserd Knollys was an important and leading figure of the early Calvinistic Baptist movement in Great Britain in the seventeenth century. His spiritual and pastoral journey began with the Church of England, followed by a brief time in Congregationalism, and finally landing with the Particular Baptists. Knollys was an educated Baptist clergyman, having graduated from Cambridge University, who published over twenty-five works in his lifetime. Zealous for the Lord, previously published by Barry Howson and Dennis Bustin, allows the reader to get a glimpse of the man and his thought. This book, Christ Exalted, allows the reader to penetrate deeper into his thought by reading some of his more pastoral works. In addition, Knollys was taken up with the signs of the times and eschatology. Consequently, the final chapter of this book includes a chapter on his eschatological thought taken from six of his works that address this subject.
What does Jesus have to do with Buddha? What does Muhammad have to do with Krishna? One of the most important tasks for theology in the twenty-first century is interreligious dialogue. Given the rapid process of globalization and the surge of information via the Internet, travel, and library networking today, interreligious dialogue has become a necessary element within Christian theology that no longer can be avoided. Evangelization as Interreligious Dialogue features eleven essays, plus an extensive introduction, that exercise a live conversation between religious others. Divided into four thematic sections–(1) Catholic approaches to interreligious dialogue, (2) dialogues between Judaism and Christianity, (3) dialogues between Islam and Christianity, and (4) dialogues between Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity–this volume conducts a sustained theological reflection on the current state of interreligious dialogue by signaling its hopeful promises and unrelenting challenges. The reader will be invited to encounter the religious other firsthand and put his or her most cherished theological assumptions to the test. This book aims to provoke an expansion of horizons for theological imagination as it exposes the basic dialectic of identity and difference as played out in the interaction between diverse religious beliefs, practices, and experiences.
All Christian colleges and universities hail the integration of faith and learning as a premier mission objective. There is less agreement as to what the integration of faith and learning should look like in pedagogical and cross-disciplinary terms. This volume proposes that faith and learning are interrelated from the start. Discovery of truth within the academic disciplines cultivates discipline-specific wisdom that both accords with all reality and complements the whole counsel of God. Where Wisdom May Be Found brings together a faculty of twenty-seven accomplished voices from across curricula to celebrate each field's capacity for revealing wisdom from all corners of God's creative design. In synthesis, these voices declare the depth and richness of the wisdom and knowledge of God for the educational advancement and holistic equipping of the corporate people of God.