DISCOVER AND LIVE YOUR PURPOSE IN LIFE THROUGH YOUR LAY VOCATION! The Church's mission is to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to everyone. As lay disciples of the Savior, our shared mission is to bring the message of His saving life, death and resurrection to all men and women through our words and deeds. Your personal lay vocation is even more focused: God has created you for a unique purpose only you can accomplish for Him! As you read this book you will discover the intensely interesting history and theology of the lay vocation and how our Church's reemphasis on the role of the laity in our day is meant to help awaken this "sleeping giant." But this is not simply a book of history and theology-it's about your mission in life and your eternal destiny. Russell Shaw's insightful work makes a direct connection between the teachings of the Bible, Vatican II, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis I and your everyday life as a lay follower of Jesus. Here you will learn how to begin discerning your unique personal lay vocation and how to establish, deepen and maintain your friendship with Jesus while you live out your lay vocation in the "real world." Jesus told us: I have come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly." Read this book and find that life through your lay vocation!

Prayers for use by the laity in waging spiritual warfare from the public domain and the Church's treasury.

Every church has far more work than any one person can do. Even a team of professionals is not enough. The New Testament solution was for every member to be a minister. Though the priesthood of all believers was a key idea in the Reformation, it is little practised today. Following secular models, churches usually organize around the clergy, who are paid by the laity to do the ministry. Paul Stevens argues that, according to Scripture, the primary task of a Christian leader is not to do the work but to equip the saints to do it. Exploring new options for pastors, tentmakers and laypeople, this book provides structures and strategies to best equip all the saints for ministry.

Presents essays on the medieval European Catholic Church

Experts on congregational life tell us that ministry in the next century will depend more on called, trained, and committed lay leadership than it has since the days of the early church. But how will congregations recruit these lay leaders? How will they develop new models for training and equipping them for all the ministries of the church? What will the role of clergy be in adopting this new partnership that Leonard Sweet calls "ancient-future ministry"? Equipping the Saints seeks to help congregational leaders answer these and other questions related to mobilizing lay ministry in the years ahead. The chapters include: "Shall We Abolish the Clergy or the Laity?" by Michael Christensen; "Team Building Through Spiritual Gifts" by Brian Bauknight; "The Loss and Recovery of the Biblical Basis for Ministry" by Russell Moy; "Out of the Pew, Into the World" by Jessica Moffat; "The Seeker Service in the Mainline Church" by Eric Park; "Circuit Riding in the 21st Century" by Rob Duncan; and, "Life Together: Reclaiming the Ministry of Small Groups" by Christine Anderson. Key Features: - Responds to emerging trends that promise to be determinative of the shape of ministry in the next century - Addresses an important practical need in congregations - Offers help in formulating new models for congregational ministry Key Benefits: - Readers will understand the important emerging need for called, trained, and committed laypersons to engage in ministry - Readers will learn how to recruit and train lay leaders - Readers will identify a new model of clergy/lay ministry partnership

Best Theology Book 2004 - Catholic Press Assocation The present crisis in the American Catholic Church stems from a two-fold source: lay people are powerless while the bishops are accountable to no one but the pope and the curia. While the number of lay people exercising ministries in the church has grown enormously over the past thirty years (largely due to the shortage of priests), there has been little or no theological reflection till now on the genuine role of the laity. It is only from such reflection that structural reform of the church will come.The first half of The Liberation of the Laity concentrates on the fortunes of the laity, theologically speaking, between Vatican I (1870) and Vatican II (1962-65). It examines the growth of the "new theology" in France in the 1940s and 1950s and shows how in the work of one of its leading practitioners, Yves Congar, much of the vision of the laity expressed at Vatican II was anticipated. Seeing the years after the council as decades of missed opportunities to recognize the role of the laity, the book then turns to a series of constructive proposals for the liberation of the laity, and thus the liberation of the church. It discusses the importance of "secularity," the need for a "lay liberation theology," and the centrality of the struggles against global capitalism in the mission of the church. It ends with a chapter envisioning dramatic changes in ministry and governing structures, in which accountability will be central, "servant leaders" will include women and married people, and both ecclesiastical careerism and the College of Cardinals will be history.