Sentences with phrase «world of the congregation»

The preacher is summoned by the gospel to present an imaginative Word that lives «out beyond» and challenges the taken - for - granted world of the congregation.

Perhaps the apparent indifference is because the social world of the congregation just does not interrelate in an integral way with the social realities of the world's poor.

The objection assumes that attention to the common life of congregations would tend to disengage theological schooling from serious attention to the broader world of the congregation's host culture and its global setting.

Not exact matches

But of the dozens of annual economic congregations, three stand out for their longevity and influential attendees: the World Economic Forum, the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission.

A very odd, very sad incident at the Miracle Faith World Outreach Church in Bridgeport, Conn. has left a congregation grieving the loss of their pastor Bishop Bobby Davis, who confessed to an affair from the pulpit and fell dead immediately thereafter.

Christianity today — in the US; I think the mileage varies in much of the rest of the world — is largely driven by the Christian Right; they are the ones who seem to make up most of the congregations.

«This important research affirms that church leaders broadly agree our faith compels us to care sacrificially for refugees, but also finds that relatively few congregations are actively engaged in doing so,» said Stephan Bauman, president of World Relief.

Thousands of congregations around the world — from Lutherans to Anglicans, to Presbyterians, to members of the United Church of Christ and other denominations — stick with this calendar as a way of pulling the days» focus around a common theme.

A vicar who gave # 10 notes to members of his congregation and asked them to invest it has raised more than # 10,000 - and attracted media interest from around the world.

Both the number and size of congregations can be striking for people accustomed to a Catholic world that has only in recent decades been broken by a Pentecostal beachhead.

Rather, the setting of my story and the congregation's portrays my own body and that of the local church essentially in human terms, but my factual portrait of the world is darkly shaded by the tragic inevitability of God's inexorable plan.

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.

When he or she grasps the difference between a richly textured communal spirit and mere social togetherness that is the result of sharing the same street address, the possibilities for that congregation's service to the world rise exponentially.

These theological convictions about how God works in the world through particular communities that contain in their narrative life the seeds of their own — and the world's — redemption were the first source of Hopewell's interest in 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.

In every instance, however, whatever cast its story takes, a congregation derives its world view from the struggle of the entire field of human interpretation.

A differentiation among the world views of various congregations such as I have laid out here is not widely employed.

The intricate world views and belief systems of congregations constitute the setting of their corporate narrative, while their traditional histories, the sequences of past events selected for retelling, correspond to plot.

One's perception of a congregation's world view gained from participant observation and guided interviews can be verified by a relatively simple device, a questionnaire that poses questions similar to those asked in the interviews.

Telling the story develops the identity and mission of a congregation by establishing the setting of the story of a local church, its picture of the world; narrative proclaims corporate nature.

Because the canonic and gnostic sides function both conceptually and statistically» as opposites, as do the charismatic and empiric sides, it is possible to display the world view pattern of a congregation in graphic form according to the x and y axes of a coordinate system.

A congregation, undeniably Christian, nevertheless uses forms and stories common to a larger world treasury to create its own local religion of outlooks, action patterns, and values.

• 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.

It promises to move the ministry of the congregation out beyond the boundaries of the institution to the world Christ longs to contact through his body, the church.

Certain correlations appear between a member's world view position and other church activities: a. Constant attendees highly correlate with the mean orientation of the congregation.

If I had decided to chime in I would have recommended reading Ian Bradley's fine book Abide With Me: The World of Victorian Hymns (1997), where he details the heated debates in 19th century England over whether to have choirs, and if so, if they should be kept at the rear of the sanctuary in order to «back up» the congregation in its worship rather than being a visual distraction in the front.

Because much of a congregation's expression is already familiar to its churchgoing observer, the contrast between the patterns of two churches may lend a deeper appreciation of the variables in world view that each employs.

It is imperative that preachers and congregations, who together have the responsibility of representing the gospel in the world, should help each other with their defensive reactions to anxiety in order that they may become more open in their communications with one another and with the world and thus more perfect instruments for the diffusion of the Word of God.

(It was one of the great curiosities of my childhood that so few people outside of my family and congregation understood the centrality of the fate of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod to world - historical development.)

Do we model and encourage within the life of the congregation (not to mention the wider world) ways of dealing with conflict, with enemies, that neither shy away from addressing problems forthrightly nor simply cut off or separate those with whom we disagree?

[20] The Church for Others and the Church for the World: A Quest for Structures of Missionary Congregations (Geneva: WCC, 1968), 20.

Third, add a later view of preacher and congregation all going out into the world, to serve its needs and to communicate the Christian gospel to it.

I had a hunch, based on my own work with local congregations, that in the «mainline» Protestant world that I know best, lots of laypeople really do want to think seriously about their faith, and somehow they aren't getting enough help in doing that well.

Congregations that recognize the value of that work, emphasizing the denomination's service in the world, are more likely to describe themselves as strongly shaped by the denominational tradition.

Catholic bishops around the world have been told to make mass more «solemn» by stopping the congregation kissing during the traditional handshake and sign of peace.

Will a focus on the congregation come at the expense of the church's role in a world mission (Letty Russell and John B. Cobb)?

While the SBC and several of its entities nearly folded during the depression years, the denomination experienced its greatest growth after World War II as evangelistic efforts, the postwar religious revival, and the baby boom swelled the membership rolls of most congregations.

In my three years in that parish, I never met anyone who was going someplace as the world measures mobility or advancement, but the entire congregation was rife with a sense of journey, and most accounted their life a great adventure.

It is also one of the fastest - growing Lutheran church bodies in the world; in 2016, they counted about 4 million members, and they are opening a new congregation every week.

Christian patriarchy (a variation of which is called complementarianism) relies on the strange contradiction that God created gender complementarity for His glory and for the good of the world, but that such complementarity must be dispensed of when it comes to the life of the church, where men hold exclusive and total authority over the congregation.

Paul was a newly minted seminary graduate and not much acquainted with the ways of the world when he arrived at his congregation just in time to conduct the wedding of one of the parish's leading daughters.

All the hoopla about online chat aside, there might be some opportunities for enlivening discourse among seminary students and faculty, within congregations, across denominations and perhaps even between different Christian groups around the world, Here's a cosmic thesis: the most interactive technologies, and the most dialogic uses of technologies, offer the greatest potential for both evangelism and community.

The last stage of the worship liturgy clothes the congregation in the practices of faith so that its members make the whole world a Eucharist.

When the Christian world view consistently informs each sermon, and when the whole of its life is shaped by the Christian world view, then the congregation will be likely to live Out of that view.

If members of a congregation can begin to see that their work is a way of expressing love to God and neighbor, it could very well transform their way of looking at the world.

My own view is that the Bible contains so many verses about judging people in the congregation, outside of the congregation (the world), etc., that each Christian has to pick and choose whom to judge and why.

A congregation's appreciation of its own labor of embodiment, its recognition of its own attempt to fuse its many actions, can also, as I have said, deepen its sense of commonality with efforts of human societies throughout the world to gain their own shalom.

Later chapters will explore ways of analyzing the expressive nature of the congregation: how it views itself and the world, how it behaves symbolically, and how it communicates its character.

Words, images, and ideas must be evaluated from the perspective of the congregation in order to know what social world they will evoke.