Showing results for "Churches" in Protestantism

While many denominations claim to be growing, the largest group in American religious life is the disillusioned—people who have been involved in the church yet see few similarities between the church's life and the person of Jesus. In the midst of elaborate programming, professional worship...

The Church Cracked Open invites us to surrender privilege and redefine church, not just for the sake of others, but for our own salvation and liberation.

From its inception in the early 1900s, The United Church of Canada set out to become the national church of Canada. This book recounts and analyzes the history of the church of Canada’s largest Protestant denomination and its engagement with issues of social and private morality, evangelistic campaigns, and its response to the restructuring of religion in the 1960s.

Is your church a rowboat church or a sailboat church? Rowboat churches depend largely on human effort. When church budgets shrink and membership declines, rowboat churches frantically row harder against a current. Sailboat churches, on the other hand, take up the oars, hoist sails, and rely on the Holy Spirit to guide them. Arguing that churches should be "sailboats," Joan S. Gray encourages listeners to shift concern from the many daily, practical concerns of their local church to fresh ideas that can be found using the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

In this, one of Martin Luther’s most impactful works, he brings together the similarities between the exile and captivity of the Israelites and the state of the Catholic church, in their destructive servitude to the papacy. He goes through each of the seven sacraments—questioning, analyzing, and applying the Biblical understandings he had reached. He rejects many of the practices, calling out the issues of control and misrepresentation of true Christian faith and repentance.

Robin Meyers, a rising star of liberal Christianity, restores the true mission of the faith that captures the heart of Jesus's concern for people over "right belief." Saving Jesus from the Church will resonate deeply with those who enjoy the works of John Shelby Spong, Marcus Borg, and John Dominic Crossan.

The church reached a turning point in the 16th century. Worship had become a spectacle, the gospel was distorted, the sacraments were replaced by superstition, and ministers lived in immorality. To restore the church to the teachings of Christ, the Reformers cried out for a return to God’s authoritative word. In this classic treatise, John Calvin presents four areas of the church’s life and doctrine that must be carefully guarded and guided by scripture. This timeless call for biblical faithfulness beckons us today. How will we respond?

In The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church, Geerhardus Vos (1862-1949), Professor of Biblical Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, describes the Messianic work of Jesus as the realization of Old Testament revelation. Vos says the kingdom of God was inaugurated by the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, but that it awaits consummation at the end of the world. Vos concludes that religion alone can act as the supreme unifying factor in the life of man, leading it to its final goal in the service of God.

John Calvin describes the Catholic Church as “very miserable, and almost desperate” in this 1543 work. He appeals directly to Holy Roman Emperor King Charles V, pointing out the failures of the church and demanding change. On behalf of the reformers, Calvin details his proposed solution.

Francis Grimké's life left a significant mark on American Christianity at the turn of the 20th century. Born enslaved in South Carolina, Grimké dedicated his life to teaching and preaching the gospel and confronting the racism and injustice of his time. For 50 years, he served as a Presbyterian pastor in Washington, DC, emerging as a prominent leader in the early civil rights movement. This audiobook explores Grimké's vision of the Christian life, emphasizing his beliefs on personal piety, family, the mission of the church, and the relationship between faith and politics.

From the Azusa Street Revival, which began in 1906, a movement has grown to bring more people to Jesus than any other movement in history. While secularism continues to be on the rise in today's society, many areas of the world still experience church growth, thanks to Pentecostal-Charismatic Christians. But the Pentecostal-Charismatic church is also plagued with sexual immorality, financial corruption, doctrinal error, personal flakiness, spiritual gullibility, prophetic abuse, and more. In many ways the state of the church today is not too different from how it was long ago.

In this definitive and long-awaited biography, Jonathan Edwards emerges as both a great American and a brilliant Christian. George Marsden evokes the world of colonial New England in which Edwards was reared - a frontier civilization at the center of a conflict between Native Americans, French Catholics, and English Protestants. Drawing on newly available sources, Marsden demonstrates how these cultural and religious battles shaped Edwards' life and thought.

The Church is very good at saying all the right things about racial equality. But the reality is that the institution has utterly failed to back up these good intentions with demonstrable efforts to reform. It is a long way from being a place of Black flourishing.

People in Glass Houses tells how a small church in a suburban Australian school hall became a multimillion-dollar tax-free enterprise and a powerful international force. Providing memorable portraits of charismatic leaders Brian and Bobbie Houston, this is a powerful, personal, and at times very funny exploration of an all-singing, all-swaying mega church. The church is more than a faith—it’s a brand. And one fraught with scandal.

Church congregations all across the United States are searching for the magic bullet, the secret to attracting people, growing their membership and their cultural relevance. They are looking for the right program, or the right environment, or the right features to help bring people back into the pews. With all of this searching for the right answer, they're missing what's right in front of them: Word and Sacrament.

The gift of prophecy is an awesome gift. Paul instructed us to covet to prophesy. The focus of this book is to bring clarity to the gift of prophecy, prophetic operations, and to the pitfalls associated with prophetic ministry. This information will help individuals to rediscover the purpose of the prophetic gift in the Church.

A Shepherd's Letter is Bo Giertz distilled and served neat. He wrote this book to introduce his theological agenda for the Diocese of Gothenburg to which he was elected bishop in 1949. Here, he takes a straightforward approach to the theological themes that guided his writing of The Hammer of God, Faith Alone: The Heart of Everything, and With My Own Eyes. What he wrote for the sheep of the Gothenburg diocese, has applicability for all Christians everywhere even today, and will enrich their understanding of the "faith once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3).

The year 2017 is the 500th-year anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany - the event that marked the beginning of the Reformation and the end of unified Christianity. For Catholics, it was an unjustified rebellion by the heterodox; for Protestants, the release of true and purified Christianity from centuries-old enslavement to corruption, idolatry, and error. Benjamin Wiker's account rejects the common distortions of Catholic, Protestant, Marxist, Freudian, or secularist retellings of this world-changing event.

Discover what Jesus meant when he said, "Follow me." And what happens when you do. Only Jesus—from John MacArthur, author of the classic bestseller The Gospel According to Jesus —examines the gospel as Christ himself proclaimed it. And each chapter is now updated with extensive scriptural...