This book was born out of necessity and desire of the author to learn about proper church music in regards to melody, harmony, lyrics, instrumentation, and rhythm. The necessity is for clearer guidelines for pastors and musicians since there are many debates and divisions over worship music. The author desired a deeper understanding since he is a professional musician who was criticized for his choice of instruments, style, and ...
In the face of apparently rampant individualism, there has been a steady call for a return to community and tradition, particularly in religious communities and in recent Christian theology and ethics. The form of contemporary life upheld by modern ideals like freedom and universalism, the story goes, turns out to divide people from each other and from the communal sources of our traditionally moral values. But the call to community too often co ...
Baptism may be more important than you think. Virtually every Christian tradition practices baptism, but with diverse understandings of its form and meaning. Baptists (and similar traditions) have emphasized the restriction of baptism to confessing believers and immersion as the mode, and they have usually interpreted baptism as a post-conversion act of human obedience, rather than a sacramental means of grace. In this book, a Baptist theologian ...
Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a celebrated and enigmatic figure in theology. Though he is known for advocating a concrete and worldly Christianity, Justin Mandela Roberts argues that his theology is in continuity with a participatory ontology, especially as seen in the ressourcement movement and Radical Orthodoxy. While critical of such «metaphysical speculation,» Bonhoeffer displays similar inclinations that situate Truth, Goodness, and Beauty as tran ...
You're hired to be our new senior minister! Consider what you might be asking yourself: Where would you even begin? What changes will need to be addressed? How would you approach the beginning of your ministry? New Wine into Old Wineskins seeks to answer these very questions. New Wine into Old Wineskins takes you on a journey of visiting, or revisiting, the biblical mission of the church and keeping this fundamental principal in a c ...
The times they are a-changin'. As such, our theology needs to adapt–to be responsive to the changing landscape. The idea for Embracing the Past–Forging the Future: A New Generation of Wesleyan Theology came from our assessment that Wesleyan theology has yet to fully adapt to this changing landscape, and that the future of Wesleyan theology requires the bringing together of old and new voices. The difficult task of balancing between ...
In this book, Jacob H. Sawyer explores the concept of hiddenness as a means to unlock the intriguing, and oft misunderstood, authorship of Soren Kierkegaard. By understanding the melancholy man as first and foremost a Christian thinker, this work gives special attention to how the form of Kierkegaard's authorial task complements its content, giving particular attention to his use of pseudonyms. The first part of the book addresses ...
God is Queer. In a world of normative paradigms, God will never fit in and nor should we. That twitching and itching for something more will consistently be present until we step out of our closets and into the Queer. The Courage to Be Queer is about the wildness and beauty of an indescribable and uncontainable God. What is the Queer calling us to be? We are to be the ones shouting for justice. We are to be the ones dancing for freedom. We are t ...
Our Lives Matter uses the tenor of the 2014 national protests that emerged as a response to excessive police force against Black people to frame the book as following the discursive tradition of liberation theologies broadly speaking and womanist theology specifically. Using a womanist methodological approach, Pamela R. Lightsey helps readers explore the impact of oppression against Black LBTQ women while introducing them to the emergent intelle ...