Sentences with phrase «congregational life»

Dual Relationships Within Congregational Life About the Author: Barney Self, Ed.D. is a clinical member of AAMFT, serves as Pastoral Counseling Minister at Forest Hills Baptist Church, and is an adjunct teacher in Trevecca's Family Therapy program.

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Those individuals were respondents in the 2001 U.S. Congregational Life Survey, a national sample of U.S. congregations and their attendees.

Using data from the U.S. Congregational Life Survey, a national sample of religious congregations and members, Stroope and his team, composed of two researchers from Hope College and Baylor University, measured the dependent variable of college completion and the independent variables of individual biblical literalism and congregational biblical literalism.

The nucleus is hardly enough to sustain congregational life unless other people in the community can he attracted.

The most important twist in congregational life is its mission.

Story expresses the intricacy of congregational life.

It is rare, I believe, for one theologian to be able to give us general priorities for congregational life.

Not only does narrative convey the experience of corporate existence, it also characterizes the continuing form of symbolic interchange among members.14 The rich discourse that constitutes congregational life occurs almost entirely in story form.

Local ecumenism serves as a model where congregations can become involved, feel the strength of genuine participation, see significant change in their own congregational life, and then also be better able to conceive of the significance of worldwide ecumenism.

Taking the categories of a traditional systematic approach, I'll begin by exploring the implications of several of our affirmations for congregational life and health.

In preaching, teaching, congregational life, and sometimes in liturgy, they have pursued a course of accommodation to secularism.

Instead, the preacher might concentrate upon a mythic aspect of the congregational life in the previous month — the spirit, hero, or creature that seems to have been inhabiting the place — and wrestle with the way the gospel both emerges in that aspect and transforms it.

The two areas are our approaches to congregational life and to scripture.

Jean Haldane's interviews with Episcopal parishioners suggested that their faith journeys flowed along private streams fed by many springs, quite separate from the busy mainstream of congregational life (Religious Pilgrimage [Alban Institute, 1975], p. 10).

This association apparently arises from the fact that Browning's interest in social dynamics primarily concerns not processes internal to congregational life, but rather the operations of the larger society within which congregations are located.

Yes, there are «evangelically catholic centers of Lutheran congregational life, and some that are deeply so,» he writes.

Not only nonattenders but staunch church supporters see their private faiths as distinct from, and at least as important as, their participation in congregational life.

The fact that such irregular events as aid to Hispanic refugees can be typified as actions of plot gives evidence that congregational life possesses a larger coherence than its sequence of liturgies and standard programs by themselves suggest.

Constrained by a market that demands immediate results, consultants concentrate upon features of agony that are insoluble and responsive to treatment and tend to ignore the deeper and abiding dialectic of congregational life that stirs up the fights.

The major aspects of parish story already examined, setting and characterization, depict features of congregational life that — though by no means immutable — usually remain the same over long periods of time.

In the turbulence of contemporary congregational life diverse definitions of behavior, attitudes and interests exist.

Writing in 1982, after a decade in which the church as a whole had pursued the inner mechanisms of congregations, several sociologists reported as follows: «We share the conviction that in recent years congregational analysis has over-emphasized the internal dynamics of congregational life and has failed to sufficiently account for the influence of the social and ecological context of the church's inner life.

Has the advent of the Internet and computer led congregations toward the «virtual technology church,» undermining the face - to - face relationships that have long characterized congregational life?

The Reformers» theological convictions about the nature and purpose of the church led them to stress the importance of baptismal catechesis in congregational life.

Conference planners had hoped to get across the notion that the use of more than one disciplinary lens provided a much more mteresting and useful picture of the multiple facets of congregational life — and by all accounts, they succeeded.

The vast majority of congregations using and experimenting with computer technology and the Internet are not promoting aberrations of Christian or congregational life.

It didn't take him long to realize just how inadequate this view was for understanding congregational life.

The other Reformers followed Luther's lead, writing their own catechisms and making catechetical instruction an important part of congregational life in virtually every part of the reform movement.

His own concentrated study of the dynamics of small churches and churches in changing communities has made him increasingly in demand around the country as a perceptive observer of the dynamics of congregational life.

It is quite clear to him that «the way in which we have tried to hear the church has been shaped by patterns of convenience, rather than the much more difficult commitment to ascertain what's going on through close analysis of congregational life.

Members of a church may identify the focus of their common hope with the phenomenon of warmth20 and point to specific occurrences of warmth in places or phases of congregational life.21 Members of Corinth Methodist experienced warmth at various physical and temporal thresholds that bound its life to its larger neighborhood.

In fact, Christian education has twice the impact that other factors have in congregational life.

faith maturity — in which Christian education is the center of congregational life, influencing the church's worship and outreach.

There was a period for perhaps two hundred years after the Reformation during which Lutherans largely did keep to the confessions in parish practice and congregational life: weekly communion, private confession — the whole deal.

Presenting the research findings at a conference in late March, project director and Search president Peter L. Benson explained that the study posited that «the primary aim of congregational life, is to nurture a vibrant, life - changing faith.»

The second category — Congregational Christians — is similar to the first group, except these individuals at least have some connection to congregational life.

The terms charismatic and Pentecostal have become virtually interchangeable, and both labels tend to be avoided by mainstream Christians who have incorporated various «Spirit - filled» beliefs or styles into personal and congregational life.

Observers of congregational life today are more often chagrined than impressed: too often congregations deviate substantially from ideal concepts of Christian community.

In part, local church people's lack of responsiveness to immediate issues such as the Indochina war represents an earlier failure to provide for social issues in the dynamics of congregational life.

There are three further reasons why I and other students of congregational life invite a wider probe of the idiomatic local expression of church life.

The opportunity for learning about the church's responsibility in society can be structured into the dynamics of congregational life.

A more organic concept of congregational life would do wonders for recasting the way we think about worship.

Like everyone involved in congregational life, I have memories of less - than - positive conversations and encounters at church.

We might almost call them the commandments of congregational life.

No aspect of congregational life is outside the realm of the holy scripture that says to us, «I took you to see a child in a manger a few day ago.

But reconciliation in the New Testament means primarily reconciliation to God and transformation of persons who then work for transformation in the world - not carte blanche provision for whatever views and life - styles members bring to congregational life.

As it enters its third decade of life, COCU is working consciously to foster such togetherness, in theological agreement, in ministry and mission and in congregational life.

We have lowered expectations, and have done a poor job of connecting education in the classical disciplines with practical theological reflection focused on nurturing excellence in congregational life.

The evidence strongly suggests that today's theological students are steered toward seminary as a result of post-college involvement in congregational life rather than by persons or studies in the college milieu.