From generation-to-generation there has been an anguished cry from preachers about preaching – there is no imagination! The Scriptures present the wondrous hope and vision of “Kingdom Come” and yet contemporary preaching can often be mute and blind by comparison. This book explores what is possible when the Scripture to be preached is prayed through the agency of two ancient prayer disciplines: lectio divina and Ignatian Gospel Contemplation. Through the experiences of eight vocational pastor-preachers this study tracks the difficulties, discoveries and delights as they commit to utilizing these prayer disciplines as part of their regular sermon preparation.
Nothing is more important than hearing, understanding and obeying God’s Word. Our lives and local churches depend on this for their life, health and growth. John Stott is well known worldwide for the commitment he had to the Bible, both in his preaching and in his living. In this persuasive book, Stott concisely demonstrates the power, authority and relevance of the Bible for every Christian – in every culture and generation. What is the purpose of God’s Word? How does it point us to Christ? What is its relationship to the Holy Spirit? How does it shape the church? And what does it mean for Christian discipleship?
The Seed and the Soil explores the power of the Bible that brings about God’s transforming and liberating purposes, as well as its power as an often oppressively misused text. Characterised by a wide variety of storytelling, this book is accessible to all that read it.
This volume is a meticulously researched text on pneumatology which puts the major pneumatologically issues together without confine to the traditional way of dealing with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Although pneumatology has been a neglected field in theological discussions of the past, there is a renewal of interest among theologians on pneumatology today. This renewal of interest has led to the formation of this work on the role of the Holy Spirit in the Protestant Systematic Theology.
Those who long to walk close to God are often keenly aware of their shortcomings. This was as true for the apostles as it is for today’s Christian leaders and Christian students. In this book, the author sets out to answer the following questions: What lies behind these inner conflicts? What are the implications of such conflicts for Christians? How does one successfully handle these conflicts? How useful is a rational mind to the Holy Spirit? This book offers deep spiritual insights interlaced with down-to-earth illustrations that make it easily accessible and relevant.
Misconceptions about what the Bible actually says can breed confusion and false ideas about God and the Christian life. Therefore, it is critically important that you know how to interpret Scripture carefully. Dr. Michael Kyomya explains what interpretation is, why it is important, how to do it, and the pitfalls to avoid. Dr. Kyomya makes it clear that interpretation is not just something for scholars, but also is useful when preparing a sermon or a Sunday school lesson, as well as in your own personal study of the Bible.
Decolonizing Ecotheology: Indigenous and Subaltern Challenges is a pioneering attempt to contest the politics of conquest, commodification, and homogenization in mainstream Ecotheology, informed by the voices of Indigenous and subaltern communities from around the world. The book marshals a robust polyphony of reportage, wonder, analysis, and acumen seeking to open the door to a different prospect for a planet under grave duress and a different self-assessment for our own species in the mix.
This book offers readings by native biblical critics from the South Pacific (Pasifika). An essay from editor Jione Havea introduces the volume by locating these essays within islander criticism and by explaining the flow of the book. Essays offer readings that twist, like a whirlpool, biblical texts around insights of Pasifika novelists, composers, poets, and sages.
Several of the ways and cultures that the Bible privileges or denounces slip by unnoticed. When those–the privileged and the denounced–are not examined, they fade into and hide in the blind spots of the Bible. This collection of essays engages some of the subjects who face dispersion (physical displacement that sparks ideological bias) and othering (ideologies that manifest in social distancing and political displacement). These include, among others, the builders of Babel, Samaritans, Melchizedek, Jezebel, Judith, Gomer, Ruth, slaves, and mothers.
Despite the fact that 99 percent of us work for a living and although work shapes us to the core, class and labor are topics that are underrepresented in the work of scholars of religion, theology, and the Bible. With this volume, an international group of scholars and activists from nine different countries is bringing issues of religion, class, and labor back into conversation.
What does believing mean in the face of empire and militarization? These essays articulate the critical and liberating consciousness shared by oppressed peoples across the world, arising from a faith in the God of the oppressed, expressed in radically diverse ways, and resisting the imperialist deities of materialism (read: economic growth), racism, and militarization that falsely appear as the saviors of humanity.
Responses to the recent pandemic have been driven by fear, with social distancing and locking down of communities and borders as the most effective tactics. Out of fear and strategies that separate and isolate, emerges what has been described as the “new normal” (which seems to mutate daily). Truly global in scope, with contributors from across the world, this collection revisits four old responses to crises – assure, protest, trick, amend – to explore if/how those might still be relevant and effective and/or how they might be mutated during and after a global pandemic.
In American seminaries today, there is a very limited amount of time available to most students for language study. And yet, a working knowledge of the original language of the New Testament is imperative for informed exegesis of the biblical texts. Written with this difficult situation in mind, Read It in Greek offers a concise, one-semester introduction to the Greek language of the New Testament.
The book discusses in detail the why and the how of our call to transform faith communities into eco-justice communities in the context of climate injustice. The discernment that climate change is the consequence of the prevailing socio-economic and ecological relations challenges us to be in solidarity with the climate refugees and climate victims and to be informed by their knowledge, ethics, politics and spirituality.
The book tries to initiate discussions on the imperial desires and designs deployed in Christian doctrines in the early period of the church to this day. It tries to discuss the need to reshape Christian theologies and doctrines in a postcolonial sensibility.
In this collection the authors focus on contextual, cultural, and postcolonial criticisms. This work seeks to move beyond simply reacting to, rejecting, or recasting biblical interpretations that misunderstand or mischaracterize island space. Instead, it serves as an entry point to thinking biblically through the island.
‘Koyama’s relaxed confidence, extending from the chapter titles to the homely to-ing and fro-ing between the author’s own world and the deepest themes of theology make this is truly stimulating book … One of the rare books of theology one can unreservedly recommend with full sincerity.’ What The Tablet said about Waterbuffalo Theology is even more true of Three Mile an Hour God – which is perhaps a still better book. Its setting is the world of South-East Asia – and beyond.
This short and highly readable text opens up what will be a completely new and inviting way of understanding God and approaching the task of theology from a unique perspective – the deep understanding of and identification with the ocean of the people of the Pacific. Surrounded by the vastness of the ocean which governs every aspect of their lives, it is unsurprising that they have a profound belief in the ocean’s rich symbolism and religious significance.
This essential volume explores intersections of imperialism and research – specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as ‘regimes of truth.’ Concepts such as ‘discovery’ and ‘claiming’ are discussed and an argument presented that the decolonization of research methods will help to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being.
This collection engages the challenges and opportunities for doing theology in the context or age of media. The intersection of media with theology is reciprocating: media boosts theology in its functions to inform, connect and educate; theology humbles the globalizing media with a reminder – media is in mediation but not in domination.