The story of Paul's visit to the city of Athens with its speech delivered before the Areopagus council is one of the best-known and most-celebrated passages of the Acts of the Apostles. Being the only complete example of an apostolic address to «pure pagans» recorded, it has consistently attracted the attention of historians, biblical scholars, theologians, missionaries, apologists, artists, and believers over the centuries. Interpretation ...
How many ways can your church's worship equip the congregation for its mission? Worship changes through the seasons, from Christmas, through Lent and Easter, and beyond. The way worship relates to your church's mission should change, too. This book explores those seasonal changes by examining both worship and mission as aspects of union with Christ. Just as we are to follow Christ through the various stages of his life and work in wors ...
An increase in secularization throughout the Western world has resulted in Christian communities finding themselves in a new context: emerging as a minority group. What does this changing landscape mean for existing Christian communities? Are there biblical or historical precedents for this situation? What should we expect in the future? These were the issues taken up by the speakers at the 2016 conference, «The Emerging Christian Minority,» spo ...
Hymns and songs have long been the most frequent and characteristic expression of communal beliefs, particularly among faith traditions that lack authoritarian or rigidly codified doctrinal statements. Even among Christian traditions that do include a strong focus on creeds, catechism and liturgy, it is hymnody, more than anything else, that sustains their lay theology. The hymns of Moshe Walsalam Sastriyar (1847-1916) and Sadhu Kochukunju Upa ...
In August 1996 Tamara Puffer was a young, newly married violinist-turned-pastor serving a large suburban church. Her growing work with people living on Atlanta's streets was beginning to reshape her theology and her calling, but a serious car accident derailed her carefully planned career path. Forgetting the Former Things is a rare tapestry of first-person faith journey woven with gritty theological reflection and persistent hope. Puffer w ...
Jonathan Edwards' (1703-58) ideas are among the most significant to the development of Reformed Theology in America. However brief the life of his intellection tradition, Edwards' ideas and their reception remain an integral part of contemporary theological dialogue. Hitherto no work has appeared that sheds as much systematic light on the reception of Edwards' ideas than Maltby Gelston's (1766-1865) Systematic Collection of Q ...
Since the 1980s, renewal scholars have given considerable attention to the role of the believing community in the interpretive process. A broad consensus has emerged that a triad involving Scripture, the Spirit, and the believing community forms a cooperative relationship resulting in theological development, followed by commensurate action–identified in this research as theological creativity. In the context of this research, to be creative wit ...
The publication of William J. Abraham's The Logic of Evangelism in 1989 marked a turning point in the field and practice of evangelism. Almost thirty years later the book still provokes discussion as it stimulates both theorists and practitioners to comprehend evangelism as initiation into God's reign. Combining theological insight and historical analysis, Abraham's groundbreaking work remains the primary text to set the stage for ...
Secularization, as a movement away from a religious orientation to life, is strong in Canada and has influence worldwide. In this volume, missiologists and practitioners across Canada consider how an agenda of Christian mission and evangelism can be advanced in a secularizing environment. How can believers be «curious and engaged rather than defensive and fearful»? What changes are required from the evangelical community so that there is product ...
