Short-term mission trips are commonplace in American church life. Yet their growth and practice have largely been divorced from theological education, seminary training, and mission studies. Consuming Mission takes important steps in offering a theological assessment of the practice of STM and tools for subsequent mission training. Using relevant academic studies and original focus-group interviews, Haynes offers important insights into this ubiquitous practice. While carefully examining the biblical and historical foundations for mission, Consuming Mission engages more contemporary movements like the Missio Dei, Fresh Expressions, the Emergent Church, and Third-Wave Mission movements that have helped shape mission. The unique role of United Methodist mission is illustrated through its historical roots and contemporary expression in the ubiquitous STM movement in the United States. Haynes uses original field research data to gather the implicit and explicit theologies of lay and clergy participants. Cultural influences are significantly influencing STM participants as they use their time, money, sacrifice, and service, applied in the name of mission, to purchase a personal growth experience commonly sought by pilgrims. The resulting tensions from mixing mission, pilgrimage, and tourism creates are explored. Haynes offers important steps to move the practice away from using mission for personal edification.

Short-term mission trips are commonplace in American church life. Yet their growth and practice have largely been divorced from theological education, seminary training, and mission studies. Consuming Mission takes important steps in offering a theological assessment of the practice of STM and tools for subsequent mission training. Using relevant academic studies and original focus-group interviews, Haynes offers important insights into this ubiquitous practice. While carefully examining the biblical and historical foundations for mission, Consuming Mission engages more contemporary movements like the Missio Dei, Fresh Expressions, the Emergent Church, and Third-Wave Mission movements that have helped shape mission. The unique role of United Methodist mission is illustrated through its historical roots and contemporary expression in the ubiquitous STM movement in the United States. Haynes uses original field research data to gather the implicit and explicit theologies of lay and clergy participants. Cultural influences are significantly influencing STM participants as they use their time, money, sacrifice, and service, applied in the name of mission, to purchase a personal growth experience commonly sought by pilgrims. The resulting tensions from mixing mission, pilgrimage, and tourism creates are explored. Haynes offers important steps to move the practice away from using mission for personal edification.

“In a feat of razor-sharp journalism, Zimberoff asks all the right questions about Silicon Valley’s hunger for a tech-driven food system. If you, like me, suspect they’re selling the sizzle more than the steak, read Technically Food for the real story.” —Dan Barber, the chef and co-owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns Eating a veggie burger used to mean consuming a mushy, flavorless patty that you would never confuse with a beef burger. But now products from companies like Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, Eat Just, and others that were once fringe players in the food space are dominating the media, menus in restaurants, and the refrigerated sections of our grocery stores. With the help of scientists working in futuristic labs––making milk without cows and eggs without chickens––start-ups are creating wholly new food categories. Real food is being replaced by high-tech. Technically Food: Inside Silicon Valley’s Mission to Change What We Eat by investigative reporter Larissa Zimberoff is the first comprehensive survey of the food companies at the forefront of this booming business. Zimberoff pokes holes in the mania behind today’s changing food landscape to uncover the origins of these mysterious foods and demystify them. These sometimes ultraprocessed and secretly produced foods are cheered by consumers and investors because many are plant-based—often vegan—and help address societal issues like climate change, animal rights, and our planet’s dwindling natural resources. But are these products good for our personal health? Through news-breaking revelations, Technically Food examines the trade-offs of replacing real food with technology-driven approximations. Chapters go into detail about algae, fungi, pea protein, cultured milk and eggs, upcycled foods, plant-based burgers, vertical farms, cultured meat, and marketing methods. In the final chapter Zimberoff talks to industry voices––including Dan Barber, Mark Cuban, Marion Nestle, and Paul Shapiro––to learn where they see food in 20 years. As our food system leaps ahead to a sterilized lab of the future, we think we know more about our food than we ever did. But because so much is happening so rapidly, we actually know less about the food we are eating. Until now.

For Spiritual communication with mankind the only thing of importance is that the message get through in tact, without being altered by belief, attitude or even intellectual certainty. Spiritual living, and the kind of vision that comes with it, is often opposed to that which the mind believes is logical. This dictionary gives the meanings of images and ideas when they come from a purely Spiritual source. Definitions in this dictionary are based on the Essential Function of the person, place or thing relative to those other persons, places and things that surround and come into contact with the original. With this work, it is possible to find out what dreams mean, should they be communication from spirit. But that is not its primary intention, for this Dictionary has the main purpose of assisting students of Mystic Traditions, primarily Ankahr Muse apprentices.

Delay- and Disruption Tolerant Networks (DTNs) are networks subject to arbitrarily long-lived disruptions in connectivity and therefore cannot guarantee end-to-end connectivity at all times. Consequently DTNs called for novel core networking protocols since most existing Internet protocols rely on the network’s ability to maintain end-to-end communication between participating nodes. This book presents the fundamental principles that underline DTNs. It explains the state-of-the-art on DTNs, their architecture, protocols, and applications. It also explores DTN’s future technological trends and applications. Its main goal is to serve as a reference for researchers and practitioners.

We live in the most anxious, depressed, sleep-deprived, addicted, overweight, divorce-prone, and angry generation ever. Those of us who embrace the good news of Jesus Christ are different, right? Unfortunately, no. All too often, believers find themselves in the same sad condition as those they want to save. In an inspirational guide, Stephen Moore shares scripture, personal experiences, and a glimpse into societal temptations while illuminating an enlightening path that leads believers through a transformative and introspective process to shun temptation and outside influences and shine the beautiful and peaceful light of Christ onto the world. As he challenges previous misconceptions we may believe about God, society, and ourselves, Moore shares insight on how to overcome the incessant fears and programing of a strong culture to become the people God says we are, and affirms why the world needs more courageous, selfless, bold, loving, and grace-filled superheroes now to accomplish the purposes of Christ. Superhero outlines the path to becoming who God says we are—and changing the world in the process.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, Xiamen’s pursuit of World Heritage Site designation from UNESCO stimulated considerable interest in the city’s Christian past. History enthusiasts, both Christian and non-Christian, devoted themselves to reinterpreting the legacy of missionaries and challenged official narratives of Christianity’s troubled associations with Western imperialism. In this book, Jifeng Liu documents the tension that has inevitably emerged between the established official history and these popular efforts. This volume elucidates the ways in which Christianity has become an integral part of Xiamen, a Chinese city profoundly influenced by Western missionaries. Drawing on extensive interviews, locally produced histories, and observations of historical celebrations, Liu provides an intimate portrait of the people who navigate ideological issues to reconstruct a Christian past, reproduce religious histories, and redefine local power structures in the shadow of the state. Liu makes a compelling argument that a Christian past is being constructed that combines official frameworks, unofficial practices, and nostalgia into social memory, a realm of dynamic negotiation that is neither dominated by the authoritarian state nor characterized by popular resistance. In this way, Negotiating the Christian Past in China illustrates the complexities of memory and missions in shaping the city’s cultural landscape, church-state dynamics, and global aspirations. This groundbreaking study assumes a perspective of globalization and localization, in both the past and the present, to better understand Chinese Christianity in a local, national, and global context. It will be welcomed by scholars of religious studies and world Christianity, and by those interested in the church-state relationship in China.