The formative power of a congregation serves as a primary catalyst for human development. A congregation also forms a person’s life. Congregations are often well-versed in matters of Christian formation and spiritual maturation. But what about how human beings develop as people? Insights from human development, also known as developmental psychology, provide an additional lens through which one can understand how humans are formed throughout life. Working with 30 congregations, the authors developed learning experiences, presented here as case studies, so that participants designed experiences that support human development at the intersection of congregational practices and various aspects of life (parenting, social justice, vocation, the arts, and more). Participating congregations extended beyond the volunteer-based organization to be one of the primary places where people learned to be more human using the simple yet multi-dimensioned phrase. The Formative Power of Your Congregation is written for clergy and laity who long for a congregation that supports human flourishing as much or more than the growth or existence of the church. We will introduce you to a framework of how congregations participate in the development of human beings. Furthermore, you will be introduced to particular congregations that, applying the framework, support participant growth in eight markers that support the flourishing of a person’s life. Moving churches from a loose volunteer association, you will learn how your congregation can form people in lives of meaning and purpose.

Taking up the challenge of Saba Mahmood to feminist studies in religion, that there is a liberalist understanding of agency and a tendency to mix the feminist political project with the analytical, the authors of this anthology discuss the relations between pieties and politics, pieties and methodologies, virtuous masculinities, and symbolic gender representations. Several articles discuss highly controversial questions: Muslim piety, religion in the European Union between the Vatican and the Muslim populations, the religiously motivated abstinence policies of the US. Furthermore, there is an interesting section about religious masculinities in a historical and contemporary perspective.

This is a print on demand book and is therefore non- returnable. After showing that today's evangelicals have not fared well in the crucible of modern pluralism, Lints argues that in order to regain spiritual wholeness, evangelicals must relearn how to think and live theologically. This book highlights several cultural and theological impediments to doing theology from an evangelical perspective, interacts with postmodernism as a theological method, and provides a provocative new outline for the construction of a truly "transformative" evangelical theology in the modern age.

CSCL 2: Carrying Forward the Conversation is a thorough and up-to-date survey of recent developments in Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, one of the fastest growing areas of research in the learning sciences. A follow-up to CSCL: Theory and Practice of an Emerging Paradigm (1996), this volume both documents how the field has grown and fosters a meaningful discussion of how the research program might be advanced in substantive ways. Recognizing the long-standing traditions of CSCL work in Europe and Japan, the editors sought to broaden and expand the conversation both geographically and topically. The 45 participating authors represent a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including anthropology, communication studies, computer science, education, psychology, and philosophy, and offer international perspectives on the field. For each chapter, the goal was not only to show how it connects to past and future work in CSCL, but also how it contributes to the interests of other research communities. Toward this end, the volume features a "conversational structure" consisting of target chapters, invited commentaries, and author responses. The commentaries on each chapter were solicited from a diverse collection of writers, including prominent scholars in anthropology of education, social studies of science, CSCW, argumentation, activity theory, language and social interaction, ecological psychology, and other areas. The volume is divided into three sections: *Part I explores four case studies of technology transfer involving CSILE, one of the most prominent CSCL projects. *Part II focuses on empirical studies of learning in collaborative settings. *Part III describes novel CSCL technologies and the theories underlying their design. Historically, there has been a certain amount of controversy as to what the second "C" in CSCL should represent. The conventional meaning is "collaborative" but there are many C-words that can be seen as relevant. With the publication of this volume, "conversational" might be added to the list and, in this spirit, the book might be viewed as an invitation to join a conversation in progress and to carry it forward.

Provides a comprehensive introduction to all aspects of religious education and pastoral ministry and gives an in-depth inquiry into the philosophical, educational and theological theories for sharing faith.

In Care-full Preaching, G. Lee Ramsey, Jr., offers a new vision for how sermons can energize all members of a congregation to care for one another. Using fresh images and sermons from Fred Craddock, James Forbes, Gina Stewart, Barbara Brown Taylor, and himself, Ramsey demonstrates in practical ways how sermons can create a caring community.

The author approaches the phenomenon 'religious experience' through a qualitative study in which young, urban people from Europe and the USA are empirically examined. It becomes clear that individuals themselves are constructive agents of experience and theology. Religious experience manifests itself as a transformative perspective of hope in the lives of young people. The study ends with a plea for a theology from below, based on liberation theology and feminist theories, in which contextual perspectives are central to practical theological theorising.