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A daily devotional spanning the four weeks of Advent exploring how faith's daring stories of risk, birth, and radical trust can revitalize our connection to faith, community, and personal transformation. Advent gives us the opportunity each year to consider the stories we know as part of our faith: stories of risk, stories of birth, stories of trying again, and above all, stories of a mutual, radical trust between God and God’s people. That trust is manifested when God sends Jesus to us. Daring to Connect shares contemporary versions of these stories, experienced in pastor Dawn Darwin Weaks’ ministry to a revitalized congregation focused on mission in their community and personal transformation. Beginning with the first Sunday of Advent, each day's devotion includes an Advent scripture, reflection, and prayer. Candle-lighting moments for each Sunday and Christmas make Daring to Connect an engaging Advent experience.
The last 30 years of American church life have played a familiar refrain: “The church is old, out of touch, dying, and it’s too late.” Why bother? What if the church is not old enough, not out of touch enough, and not dying enough? When survival-rooted panic is supplanted with calm, spirited creativity, that may be exactly the moment your church was made for, that your community was hoping for— and that God is waiting for. First Christian Church of Odessa, Texas made a radical choice and was reborn as Connection Christian Church, with a new view on ministry and new energy. Breakthrough: Trusting God for Big Change in Your Church tells the story of what happened when this church dared to place their desperate, dying selves into the hands of a God whose middle name is “Surprise!” — and hints how readers might find that audacity in their own congregations.
It has been one of the major news stories in religion and culture of the past twenty-five years. From 1979 to 1995, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was rocked by assaults on its leadership by fundamentalists, who used questionable tactics to gain top positions and then used their power to purge Baptist seminary presidents and professors, church pastors, lay leaders, and women from positions of responsibility. America's largest Christian, non-Catholic denomination is firmly locked in a holy war to secure its churches and membership for a never-ending struggle against a liberal culture. Exiled: Voices of the Southern Baptist Convention Holy War is a compilation of first-person narratives...
Pastors are busy. This collection of fully integrated resources will help your church work and pray through the Unbinding the Gospel Series. Included are step-by-step planning tools as well as worship resources to allow you--the pastor--to spend time on prayer, teaching, and working directly with others in your church. The planning tools include calendars, checklists for church staff, weekly scripture tie-ins, sample church newsletter campaigns, diagrams, simple to elaborate E-vent planning suggestions, web site ideas, specific lesson plans, and much much more. Worship resources include sermons, prayers, and forms that have been placed on the Web for FREE with easy access and downloads. Change Habits, Not Just Minds. From the Unbinding the Gospel Series.
This helpful one-volume commentary resource provides brief preaching commentaries and prayers for worship for the first Sunday in Advent through Epiphany of the Lord (Years A, B, and C). This book includes: lectionary readings for each Sunday and Holy Day in the season; three sermon briefs for each Sunday in Advent and the Sunday after Christmas; sermon briefs for Christmas, Christmas Eve, and the Day of Epiphany; creative prayers for each Sunday and Holy Day in the season; scripture index.
NEXT in the Unbinding the Gospel Series. With 40 day personal prayer journal. For small groups ready to invite... Unbinding Your Soul is the "unbinding" model for actual, invitational evangelism. Typical mainline churches get ready for the Unbinding Your Soul small group study with Unbinding the Gospel/Unbinding Your Heart "pre-evangelism." SOUL helps them invite unchurched friends or recent visitors to try an "experiment" (some churches call it a "test drive") of Christian faith and community. Many people who aren't connected with a church would love to try a no-obligation "experiment" of substantial spiritual discussion, prayer, and community. Unbinding Your Soul prepares church members to...
When the unexpected comes and you can't find the words to pray, 99 Prayers Your Church Needs (But Doesn't Know It Yet) will provide the starting point that will help lead you to the prayer your congregation or pastor needs. From prayers for a family who has lost a loved one to addiction, to a prayer for the new pastor in a new congregation, these 99 prayers will help you respond to a multitude of unexpected prayer requests -- whether celebratory or grieving, or somewhere in between -- in the course of your congregation's life.
The status of women in the church is one of the most hotly debated issues of our time. Some Protestant churches have either abandoned or radically modified their interpretations of Biblical passages to allow women to take leadership roles and to accommodate social change; for others, the Old and New Testament passages forbid women to take leadership roles, even though equality between the sexes was taught by Jesus Christ and demonstrated in the early Christian community. The current fervor concerning women in the church is examined in this book, which also traces the status of women through 2,000 years of church history. Chapters are devoted to women in the life and ministry of Jesus, women in the earliest Christian community, solutions to transitional problems, the church's reversion to patriarchal models, Alexander Campbell and the American Restoration Movement in the 19th century, the antislavery movement and modern feminism, and the differing stances taken by churches concerning women in leadership roles.
Seeking God’s Design honors the 50th anniversary of The Design. It is focused around a series of audiotaped interviews that Disciples of Christ Historical Society President James Seale conducted from 1989 to 1993 with Disciples leaders who played important roles in Restructure. It provides historical context and offers a series of reflections from key Disciples leaders today, as we honor and critically evaluate the work of our predecessors while looking ahead to the next 50 years of our life as a church. Seeking God’s Design is the first volume of the James and Mary Dudley Seale Series on Disciples and Public Engagement, a partnership between the Disciples of Christ Historical Society and Chalice Press.
Unbinding Your Heart: 40 Days of Prayer & Faith Sharing is a brilliant book -- witty, engaging, and grounded in a four-year Lilly Endowment study. Unbinding Your Heart is a six-week individual and small-group study for your entire congregation. Part of the Unbinding the Gospel Series, by author, researcher, pastor and attorney Martha Grace Reese. Church leaders should first study Unbinding the Gospel (the church leaders' study) that was selected by The Christian Century as a featured Take and Read" book in its 2007 Book Issue. Then use Unbinding Your Heart as a study and devotional for the whole congregation. The third book in the series, Unbinding Your Church (the pastor's guide), will help you plan, teach, pray and organize your all-church study. The Unbinding Series has been enthusiastically endorsed by eight heads of denominations, Brian McLaren, George Hunter, Becky Garrison, Richard Peace, and countless pastors and church leaders. Important Note: Order a copy of Unbinding Your Heart for each person participating in the study. From the Unbinding the Gospel Series.