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God's New Community
New Testament Patterns for Today's Church
Graham Beynon
When someone uses the word 'church', what comes into your mind? A building where a congregation meets? A room inside such a building? The main Sunday meeting? A denomination?
Graham Beynon shows that when the Bible talks about 'church', it is always only referring to people, and a particular sort of people at that. From a range of key passages in the New Testament, he explains what church is, what it is for, how it is to work, how it is to be led, and what it means to belong to God's new community in Christ.
Homegroups: The Authentic Guide
Steve & Mandy Briars
Whether you are a homegroup or church leader this book is for you. It's a straightforward, easy-to-read guide which provides you with practical tips and guidelines on setting up and improving your own homegroup ministry. The authors draw on their own experiences throughout to help illuminate the principles of homegroup leadership.
Homegroups: The Authentic Guide is indispensable - dealing with everything from the problems of an over-amorous dog during the prayer time to how to be an effective listener; caring for your homegroup; dealing with difficult people; overall organisation; choosing leaders; worship and prayer.
The Heretical Imperative
How Then Shall We Live? Booklet, Northumbria Community
Trevor Miller
Heresy is a powerful word. It has often been used to make severe condemnations of those who lead others astray - possibly to their eternal destruction. So is it not startling to find a group of Christians who 'embrace the responsibility of taking the heretical imperative'? If we look back through history we find that the accusation of heresy was made against many Christian leaders - most notably against Jesus himself, who made it clear that to speak out God's truth you must sometimes refute what is taught by those who regard themselves as guardians of orthodoxy.
The Responsive Church
Listening to Our World, Listening to God
Nick Spencer and Graham Tomlin
Most Christians think they know what makes people tick. But do they? If the truth be told, this is often more anecdotal than factual. Consider the following:
* Are the unchurched hostile, ill-informed or simply disengaged?
* Is it God, Christianity, Christians or the church that puts people off?
* Is it people's beliefs, opinions or lifestyles that prevent them from exploring Christianity?
The Responsive Church aims to find out the answers to these questions and more. Drawing upon research from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, Nick Spencer explores the landscape of twenty-first century religious and spiritual beliefs. His findings are fascinating. But it doesn't end there. While listening closely and critically to what people are saying, Graham Tomlin listens to what God is saying through his Word and Holy Spirit. Sometimes listening to critics of the church helps us to see things we have never noticed before. And if the voices from outside tell us where we are, we can expect God to point us to where we need to go from here.
Soulfriendship
How Then Shall We Live? Booklet, Northumbria Community
'Anyone without a soulfriend is like a body without a head', saying attributed to St Brigid of Kildare. Brigid was one of the great Irish saints of the 6th century and St Columba's contemporary. Clearly soulfriendship was considered extremely important at that time. As the Northumbria Community has looked at 'the old paths' (following the instruction of Jeremiah 6:16) for inspiration in seeking God, soulfriendship has emerged as a key subject that demands the attention of today's pilgrim. But what did the Celtic church actually mean by 'soulfriendship'? And how should we apply their practice to the very different circumstances of the 21st century? If we should adopt the practice, in what ways does it differ from spiritual direction? Or from mentoring? Or from counselling?
Tales of Two Cities
Christianity and Politics
Stephen Clark, David Field, Paul Helm, David McKay, David Smith, Gordon Wenham, Steve Wilmshurst
Christians believe in a God who is 'the eternal Spirit', in a Saviour who is 'the same yesterday, today and forever', and that 'the Word of the Lord endures forever'. How should they be faithful to these convictions, as God's people in a kaleidoscopic, rapidly changing world? How should they relate to their society, and to its political life, in the midst of pluralism? When a government commits the country's armed forces to war? At times of international unrest, or terrorist attacks? When there is an election? When social policies conflict with Christian teaching?
Such questions, of course, are not new. They were faced by Old Testament characters such as Daniel, by the early Christian church in the Roman Empire, and at different times throughout church history.
This stimulating volume explores what light is shed by the Bible on political principles and issues, and what lessons may be learned from history for contemporary Christian living.
Contagious Holiness
Jesus' Meals with Sinners
Craig L Blomberg
One of humanity's most basic and common practices - eating meals - was transformed by Jesus into an occasion of divine encounter. In sharing food and drink with his companions, he invited them to share in the grace of God. His redemptive mission was revealed in his eating with sinners, repentant and unrepentant alike.
Jesus' 'table fellowship' with sinners in the Gospels has been widely agreed to be historically reliable. However, this consensus has recently been challenged, for example, by the claim that the meals in which Jesus participated took the form of Greco-Roman symposia - or that the 'sinners' involved were the most flagrantly wicked within Israel's society, not merely the ritually impure or those who did not satisfy strict Pharisaic standards of holiness.
In this excellent and thorough study, Craig Blomberg engages with the debate and opens us the significance of the topic. He surveys meals in the Old Testament and the intertestamental period, examines all the Gospel texts relevant to Jesus' eating with sinners, and concludes with some contemporary applications.
Knowing the Holy Spirit Through the Old Testament
Christopher J H Wright
The Lord and Giver of Life.
He is the Spirit who breathed in Creation and sustains all life on earth. He is the Spirit who empowered the mighty acts of those who served God over many generations.
He is the Spirit who spoke through the prophets, inspiring their commitment to speak the truth and to stand for justice. He is the Spirit who anointed the kings, and ultimately anointed Christ the Servant-King.
He is the Spirit whose coming in power was anticipated in words of almost unimaginable cosmic transformation. And he is the Spirit through whom the whole creation will finally be renewed in, through, and for Christ.
Do we know him? Do we know what we ask for when we ask to receive him?
Chris Wright has already argued, in Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament, that we cannot fully know Jesus without the Scriptures that shaped his identity and mission. In this book he makes the same claim for the Holy Spirit. We could not, of course, know the Holy Spirit clearly apart from Christ and the New Testament. But we can know him in all his mighty, biblical, divine fullness only through tracing his presence and power in the Old Testament as well.
