Sentences with phrase «study of congregations»

Edited by James P. Wind and James W. Lewis University of Chicago Press Volume 1: Portraits of Twelve Religious Communities, 736 pages, $ 34.95 Volume 2: Perspectives in the Study of Congregations, 288 pages, $ 22.50 These two volumes are the result of a project, housed from....

Edited by James P. Wind and James W. Lewis University of Chicago Press Volume 1: Portraits of Twelve Religious Communities, 736 pages, $ 34.95 Volume 2: Perspectives in the Study of Congregations, 288 pages, $ 22.50

However, the point is that given our working description of Christian congregations, theological schooling focused by study of congregations would welcome and endorse the most vigorous and detailed exposé of the cultural captivity and ideological functioning of congregations and their practices.

Indeed, it is by comparative study of congregations that one can see how different construals of the Christian thing make real differences in the ways persons» lives are shaped and empowered.

Biblical studies oriented to theological questions about the nature and criteria of adequacy of congregations» common life are central to study of congregations as characterized by distinctive social space.

It is precisely by raising these controversies in the context of the comparative study of congregations that the full meaning and importance of contested theological views are best grasped.

Only when we can identify these matters will we be in a position to respond to objections to the very suggestion that a theological school focus on the study of congregations.

We need to identify the methods of inquiry that should be used in the study of congregations.

It would need to attend to the more broadly shared features of a congregation's practice of worship by comparative study of congregations in the same culture and cross-culturally (synchronically) and through history (diachronically).

A study of congregations with effective Christian education programs suggests there is strong evidence that congregations consisting of adults who do not rely on one another can not adequately minister to one another.

Their Field Guide, a slim but fact - filled volume, is modeled after an exhaustive study of congregations in Australia.

She has identified several areas now characterized by division where things might be pulled together around the study of the congregation.

Organic studies of the congregation instead begin with the disparity of parts; they acknowledge breakdown; they embrace the perplexities of modern association.

Similar priority is placed on matters of style and fellowship in organic studies of the congregation.

We have social - psychological theories about meaning and belonging that help us understand what is happening in the first instance, demographic models for the second case, and studies of congregations and leadership roles for the third.

On the other hand, a purely theological study of a congregation or of «the church» that ignores its social space and social form ought to be subject to equally vigorous objection in theological schooling.

Not exact matches

New Praise and Word of Faith are two of 24 Christian congregations that rent empty storefront spaces in the moribund mall for Sunday worship and weekday Bible studies.

The most comprehensive study of its kind, it provides detailed county - by - county information on congregations, members, adherents and attendance for 236 different faiths groups.

In his conclusion, he calls for additional studies of other orders and congregations in the church: the Benedictines, Dominicans, Franciscans, Pallotines, Ursulines, and others with similarly proud stories of heroism and resistance yet to be told.

The Hartford Institute for Religion Research released the study's findings Saturday in a report titled «A Decade of Change in American Congregations, 2000 — 2010» authored by David A. Roozen.

At a church we once attended, we were assigned a new pastor, a middle aged man who had not pastored before, but felt his experience in leading home bible study groups well - qualified him to lead our church, a congregation of about 80.

Church attendance rates by Christians in the United States have stayed largely steady since the 1970s, but there have been some significant changes in the makeup of the congregations in the pews during that time, a recently released study says.

Through this study our team has discovered the shared core commitments of congregations that are not aging and shrinking, but are growing and growing young.

Another congregation in our study lived out this vision of neighboring well by taking on a different local struggle in southern California: neighbors navigating the US immigration system.

In studying those topics they learn about many a congregation's life, and they learn too that there are alternatives to the merely contemporary and local stories of a church.

The document is called «Effective Christian Education: A National Study of Protestant Congregations.»

Mark Frees himself was once a pastor of a non-denominational church, but came to the conclusion that the one - pastor system isn't Biblical while doing a study of the church in order to teach it to the congregation.

Current studies from within the church address themselves to the role of the congregation as active participants in the church's preaching.

In this chapter, the author refines the thesis that a theological school is a community of persons trying to understand God more truly by focusing its study within the horizon of questions about Christian congregations.

In fact, the capacity of a contemporary congregation to sustain any unified, sharply defined world view has been more frequently questioned than confirmed in recent studies of church life.

The fullest and most satisfying way to study the culture of a congregation is to live within its fellowship and learn directly how it interprets its experience and generates its behavior.

My proposal is that what unifies this set of practices, making them genuinely «theological» practices and providing criteria of excellence, is that they are all done in service of one end: To understand God more truly by focusing on study about, against, and for Christian congregations.

In this chapter the author proposes courses of study unified by designing every course to address the overarching interest of a theological school and pluralistically adequate by designing every course to focus on questions about congregations.

In no congregation studied so far are world views of members so diverse that one could consider that church a mere aggregate of miscellaneous believers.

I first became aware of the structure of the narratives that express world view several years before the discovery of my cancer, when I began during my sabbatical year to study congregations systematically.

Our first sideways step was to refine our thesis by making it more concrete: The overarching end is to try to understand God more truly by focusing on study through the lens of questions about Christian congregations.

One of the most helpful ways a congregation can engage in pastoral care is by studying issues that might create moral dilemmas before they are brought to the church in the form of real, live, human beings.

The relation between the two, however, and in particular the meaning of the proposal that a theological school's study be focused through the lens of questions about Christian congregations, will not be developed until the next two chapters.

And character, Hopewell provocatively proposed, is best grasped if studied in counterpoint with some mythic tale that «matches» a congregation's style, tone, and moral posture, the features of its character.

Clearly, if a theological school is going to focus its study through the lens of questions about congregations as the way to truer understanding of God, it is dependent on there being congregations to study and refer to.

Clearly, the proposal that a theological school's study be focused through the lens of questions about congregations does not mean that somehow congregations become the sole or even the central subject of disciplined inquiry.

Thus, rather than fragmenting a theological course of study, the three basic theological questions can serve to unify it precisely when it is focused on a genuine pluralism of concrete Christian congregations.

• that the process of developing a sermon extends over enough time to allow for careful study of the text (s), theological reflection beyond the text (s), and direct influence from the life of the world and from the life of the congregation.

That is why the effort to understand God Christianly, which must in the nature of the case proceed indirectly, might best proceed indirectly by way of study of the Christian thing in and as Christian congregations.

To the contrary, the proposal urges that the best way to affirm any school's theological identity is through study focused on as a wide theological and social - cultural diversity of Christian congregations as possible.

If your present congregation does not permit honest, open study of the Bible and does not find its unity in Jesus Christ, his saving work for us, and his Spirit in us, I encourage you to look elsewhere.

To get down to cases, just which types of congregations ought to be selected as the variety of construals of the Christian thing by reference to which the course of study can be unified and made adequate to pluralism?

To the collective gasps of their congregations, pastors are misrepresenting the study's findings by making claims like, «most Americans are universalists» or «a majority of evangelical Christians no longer believe Jesus is the only way to eternal life» or «most Christians think all paths lead to God.»

On the pluralism side, the proposal here is, quite simply, that a theological course of study would be much more adequate to the «pluralism of pluralisms» characterizing the Christian thing if every course in it were deliberately and explicitly designed to address one of the three questions invited by Christian congregations and the array of types of congregations were broad and rich.

The three questions can serve as horizons within which to conduct rigorous inquiry into any of the array of subject matters implied by the nature of congregations, disciplined by any relevant scholarly method, in such a way that attention is focused on the theological significance of what is studied: