How do ethnic and cultural diversity affect spiritual formation? The authors of A Many Colored Kingdom explore Christian formation and teaching in the church, with a particular focus on intercultural and interethnic relationships. Well-qualified to speak on issues of diversity, the authors describe relevant aspects of their own personal journeys; key issues emerging from their studies and teaching germane to race, culture, and ethnicity; and teaching implications that bring right practice to bear on church ministry. A final chapter contains a conversation among the authors responding to one another's insights and concerns. This book will be required reading for those engaged in as well as those preparing for a life of teaching and ministry in our increasingly multicultural world.

A Many Colored Kingdom explores Christian formation and teaching in the church, with a particular focus on intercultural and interethnic relationships.

In the year 2034, Theo Quderian, a French physicist, made an amusing but impractical discovery: the means to use a one-way, fixed-focus time warp that opened into a place in the Rhone River valley during the idyllic Pliocene Epoch, six million years ago. But, as time went on, a certain usefulness developed. The misfits and mavericks of the future—many of them brilliant people—began to seek this exit door to a mysterious past. In 2110, a particularly strange and interesting group was preparing to make the journey—a starship captain, a girl athlete, a paleontologist, a woman priest, and others who had reason to flee the technological perfection of twenty-second-century life. Thus begins this dazzling fantasy novel that invites comparisons with the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ursula Le Quin. It opens up a whole world of wonder, not in far-flung galaxies but in our own distant past on Earth—a world that will captivate not only science-fiction and fantasy fans but also those who enjoy literate thrillers. The group that passes through the time-portal finds an unforeseen strangeness on the other side. Far from being uninhabited, Pliocene Europe is the home of two warring races from another planet. There is the knightly race of the Tanu—handsome, arrogant, and possessing vast powers of psychokinesis and telepathy. And there is the outcast race of Firvulag—dwarfish, malev-o olent, and gifted with their own supernormal skills. Taken captive by the Tanu and transported through the primordial European landscape, the humans manage to break free, join in an uneasy alliance with the forest-dwelling Firvulag, and, finally, launch an attack against the Tanu city of light on the banks of a river that, eons later, would be called the Rhine. Myth and legend, wit and violence, speculative science and breathtaking imagination mingle in this romantic fantasy, which is the first volume in a series about the exile world. The sequel, titled The Golden Torc, will follow soon.

Planting a church is one of the most exciting adventures you’ll ever embark on. It’s also one of the hardest. It requires initiative, leadership, strategy, systems, and a lot of prayer. In this second edition of Planting Missional Churches, not only will you find a completely redesigned book with new content in every single chapter, but you will also find several new chapters on topics such as church multiplication, residencies, multi-ethnic ministry, multisite, denominations and networks, and spiritual leadership. So if you’re planting a church, be prepared. Use this book as a guide to build the needed ministry areas so that you can multiply over and over again. For additional resources visit www.newchurches.com/PMC.

The task of this book is to examine the biblical and theological meaning of the city and our mission within it. It starts with the premise that the garden is lost, and we are headed toward the New Jerusalem, the city of God. In the meanwhile, we dwell in earthly cities that need to be adjusted to God's city: "[T]he fall has conditioned us to fear the city . . . though, historically, God intended it to provide safety, even refuge. . . . We have to band together and act to take back our communities if we are to help God in the divine task of reconciling the world to Godself by assisting God in adjusting our communities to God's New Jerusalem, rebuilding our own cities of Enoch on the blueprints of Christ . . . to go into all the world and share his good news, building the Christian community along the lines of the New Jerusalem, a city of light in which God is revealed." (from the Introduction by William David Spencer) Toward achieving this goal, this single, accessible volume brings together the biblical, the systematic, and the practical aspects of urban ministry by various contributors who are urban practitioners and theologians themselves, and have taught at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Boston Campus.

With the decline of traditional Sunday school and education programs in recent years, many Christians have not learned the fundamental doctrinal content of the faith. In this text Gary Parrett and Steve Kang set forth a thoroughly biblical vision for intentional teaching of the Christian faith that attends to both the content and process of educational and formational ministries.

Cultural and ethnic diversity is the reality of our world, and much more so in this age of heightened globalization. Yet, do our ways of doing theological education match with our current reality and hopes for a colorful and just tomorrow? How shall we do theological formation so it helps give birth to a culturally diverse, racially just, and hospitable world? This edited volume gathers the voices of minoritized scholars and their white allies in the profession in response to the above questions. More particularly, this volume gathers the responses of these scholars to the questions: What is the plight of theological education? Who are the teachers? Who are our students? What shall we teach? How shall we teach? How shall we form and lead theological institutions? It is the hope of this volume to contribute to the making of theological education that is hospitably just to difference/s and welcoming of our diverse population, which is our only viable future. When we embody this vision in our daily educational practices, particularly in the training of our future religious leaders, we may help usher in a new, colorful, and just world.