How can we enter fruitfully into the seasons of the Church's year? Why have the seasons become shaped as they have and what can we do to make them good? As Mark Oakley explains in the hugely enjoyable, earthy and wide-ranging introduction to this exceptional volume, we can experience them in stimulating company! Here are reflections by the most senior pastors and teachers in the Church today: SARAH MULLALLY, Bishop of Crediton, on A Good Advent, a season 'pregnant with hope', when our waiting...
Becoming Colleagues provides a powerful rationale for personal reflection and change, a call for systemic reform, and specific guidance for implementing change in the faith-based workplace. Through stories of mixed-gender teams in religiously affiliated settings-including congregations, agencies, educational institutions, and other faith-based nonprofit organizations-this book explores nine change factors critical to ensuring that men and women work together in mutually supportive ways. The prov...
Reading Theologically (Foundations for Learning)
Reading is one of the basic skills a student needs. But reading is not just an activity of the eyes and the brain. Reading Theologically, edited by Eric D. Barreto, brings together eight seminary educators from a variety of backgrounds to explore what it means to be a reader in a seminary context-to read theologically. Reading theologically involves a specific mindset and posture towards texts and ideas, people and communities alike. Reading theologically is not just about academic skill buildin...
Catholic Press Association Award Winner!Reports indicate that many newly ordained men are feeling demoralized and some are resigning. The accounts raised many questions. How widespread is the problem? What difficulties are the recently ordained priests facing? Is the problem due to changes in lay attitudes or to changes in the ordained themselves? Is the situation different from what it was ten or twenty years ago? The First Five Years of the Priesthood is a collaborative work of the National Fe...
This book explores models for youth ministry from the life and ministry of Christ. This area of study has become fossilised because youth workers rely too heavily on the notion of 'incarnational' or 'relational' youth ministry. This leads them to believe that they must spend huge amounts of time with young people in order to 'earn the right' to share the gospel with them. The author argues that this foundation for youth ministry is inadequate and impractical and that it is not how Jesus himself...
Using Christian Contemplative Practice with Children
by Sonia Mainstone-Cotton
This Bible reading resource offers four months of in-depth study written by leading scholars. Contributors are drawn from around the world, as well as the UK, and represent a stimulating and thought-provoking breadth of Christian tradition. Instead of the usual dated daily readings, "Guidelines" provides weekly units, broken into at least six sections, plus an introduction giving context for the passage, and a final section of points for thought and prayer. On any day you can read as many or as...
Grounded in the Faith (Ministry and Discipleship Guides, #1)
by Todd a Scacewater
The difference between going into the ministry at the age of 20 or 30, rather than 40 or 50, might simply be that someone asked sooner rather than later, 'Have you thought of being ordained' Especially when we are young, it is easy to feel that we might be inadequate for the job, but the Bible is encouragingly littered with stories of individuals who didn't feel up to what God called them to be! Hearing the Call stresses that our very humanness, our sense of inadequacy, can be a gift in ministry...
Is your church facing a period of change? Are you overwhelmed with too much to do? Or are you searching for a new vision? If you are looking to take your church in a new direction, then How to Develop Your Local Church can help you decide which path to follow. Written by an experienced practitioner, it will help you to understand your congregation better: how it operates, what its members take for granted, what their priorities are and what the 'character' of the congregation is. The book then e...