By exploring the Episcopal Church’s mission and precepts in the context of 21st century and its challenges, this thoughtful book deepens the Church’s relationship with its people and makes the faith more relevant. Society and culture are constantly evolving so must religion and its mission to remain meaningful. The legacies of establishment, benefactor approaches to mission, and the ‘national church’ ideal are no longer adequate for the challenges and opportunities facing the 21st century church. But if the Episcopal Church is no longer the Church of the Establishment and the benefactor model of church is dead, what is the heart of Episcopal mission and identity? Scholar and Episcopal priest Dwight Zscheile draws on multiple streams of Anglican thought and practice, plus contemporary experience to craft a vision for mission that addresses the church’s post-establishment, post-colonial context. With stories, practices and concrete illustrations, Zscheile engages readers in re-envisioning what it means to be Anglican in America today and sends readers out to build new relationships within their local contexts.

Shares the experiences of Asian North American Christians as they claim their identity and are shaped by their rich Asian religious and cultural heritage.

New York Times Bestseller! Kathie Lee Gifford and Rabbi Jason Sobel the authors of the New York Times best seller The Rock, the Road, and the Rabbi bring you an exciting new life-changing message that will help you read the Bible with new eyes and take you into the heart of God's people in Scripture – from Abraham to Ruth to Jesus and His early followers. In The God of the Way, Rabbi Jason shares wisdom from his Jewish heritage and helps us read Scripture in the cultural context of biblical times. Kathie Lee adds personal stories and reflections from her spiritual journey and studies, serving as a companion as you go deeper in your own relationship with God. You will experience: The God of the How and When: When you don't know the details…God does. The God of His Word: When you can't see God…trust His heart and the promises in His Word. The God Who Sees: When you feel abandoned and forgotten…God knows and cares about you. The God of the Other Side: When you feel overwhelmed and unworthy…God never passes by but crosses over and brings freedom. Journey into God's word, from the creation of the world through the desert and empty places, the Hebrew nation, and meet Jesus, the disciples, and his followers. As you do, you will see how you are part of God's epic story of redemption – a radiant testimony to the truth that belief in God's promises is never wasted.

In this comprehensive exposition, a leading New Testament scholar explores the unfolding theological unity of the entire Bible from the vantage point of the New Testament. G. K. Beale, coeditor of the award-winning Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, examines how the New Testament storyline relates to and develops the Old Testament storyline. Beale argues that every major concept of the New Testament is a development of a concept from the Old and is to be understood as a facet of the inauguration of the latter-day new creation and kingdom. Offering extensive interaction between the two testaments, this volume helps readers see the unifying conceptual threads of the Old Testament and how those threads are woven together in Christ. This major work will be valued by students of the New Testament and pastors alike.

This book invites its readers to an exploration of some of the greatest theologians in Christian history through the lens of disability theology in order to understand how the Christian Church is intended to deal with the ever-evolving concept and reality that is the disabled human experience. This books brings together an account of the history of disability civil rights, beginning in the early twentieth century and evolving to the present day. It takes a look at some of the foremost theologians in Christian history as seen through the lens of disability theology, in order to help the reader gain an understanding of a diverse, unique, and ever-evolving culture. According to the CDC, as of 2015 approximately 53 million Americans live with some form of disability. This book attempts to offer a new way forward for the church to engage with this incredibly diverse, unique, and wonderful culture by offering first a brief introduction to the history of disability civil rights to allow the reader to understand and experience how many of the trends and forces that shape civil rights on a broad national level were present from the very beginning within the disabled community and the movement towards the ADA. Then, by exploring some of the greatest theologians in the history of the church, this book hopes to illuminate the ways in which the church has served those with disabilities well, and in many cases not so well, throughout its history. Finally, the book will close with a hopeful, optimistic, and yet practical way forward rooted in the concepts of hospitality, community, and mutuality that we call the Julian Way.

Caring for People God's Way presents Christian counseling in a systematic, step-by-step manner that outlines the process as practically as possible. It then applies the process to the most common issues faced by Christian counselors: personal and emotional issues, trauma, grief, loss, and suicide.

In a work that is as much about the present as the past, Brad Gregory identifies the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation and traces the way it shaped the modern condition over the course of the following five centuries. A hyperpluralism of religious and secular beliefs, an absence of any substantive common good, the triumph of capitalism and its driver, consumerism—all these, Gregory argues, were long-term effects of a movement that marked the end of more than a millennium during which Christianity provided a framework for shared intellectual, social, and moral life in the West. Before the Protestant Reformation, Western Christianity was an institutionalized worldview laden with expectations of security for earthly societies and hopes of eternal salvation for individuals. The Reformation’s protagonists sought to advance the realization of this vision, not disrupt it. But a complex web of rejections, retentions, and transformations of medieval Christianity gradually replaced the religious fabric that bound societies together in the West. Today, what we are left with are fragments: intellectual disagreements that splinter into ever finer fractals of specialized discourse; a notion that modern science—as the source of all truth—necessarily undermines religious belief; a pervasive resort to a therapeutic vision of religion; a set of smuggled moral values with which we try to fertilize a sterile liberalism; and the institutionalized assumption that only secular universities can pursue knowledge. The Unintended Reformation asks what propelled the West into this trajectory of pluralism and polarization, and finds answers deep in our medieval Christian past.