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Missional Youth Ministry: Moving from Gathering Teenagers to Scattering Disciples
by Jacob Thorne Brian KirkThe mainline church in the past few decades has witnessed a ghettoization of youth within the church, segregating them off to a particular room, perhaps in the basement, where they engage in ministry in isolation from the rest of the congregation. They are assigned a “youth minister” or “youth director,” often the staff person with the least experience, freeing up the “real” ministers to serve the adults in the church. They seldom serve on church boards or governing bodies in anything other than a cursory manner. Their leadership in worship is limited to one special Sunday a year; their activities seen more as programming than ministry, and their place often described as “the church of the future” rather than the body of Christ in the here-and-now. For decades, youth ministry in mainline churches has been program-driven, assuming that the primary function of youth ministry was to use activities and events to attract young people to church and keep them occupied until they were ready to be adult members in the faith. In recent years, it has become increasingly obvious that this paradigm has failed to develop youth as life-long participants in the Christian church and in the Christian faith. The result of such a model of ministry is that youth come to see church only as those segregated activities reserved for teenagers, most of which bear little resemblance to the practices of the rest of church life. Consequently, when youth graduate from high school and youth group, they perceive that their most meaningful church experiences are ended. Mainline congregations are now seeing the evidence of the real lack of impact of their youth ministries as the population of young adults in churches continues to shrink – even those young adults who were once regular participants in church youth group programs. In short, the program-driven model of youth ministry has failed to help youth find their place within the mission of the Church. Rethinking Youth Ministry critiques this older paradigm and invites the reader into a dialogue to help rethink many of the deepest assumptions of youth ministry in the mainline church. We challenge the consumerist goal of judging a youth ministry’s success by the number of its participants. We push back against the notion that a youth ministry is the sum total of the events on the calendar. We rethink the place of volunteers and parents, calling for a greater role of adults as spiritual mentors in the lives of church youth. We send out a call for greater understanding of modern methods of teaching and the impact of brain research on the intellectual and spiritual development of youth and we re-imagine a new role for mission within youth ministry which calls youth to see mission not as isolated activities but as the very heart of their faith journey. Rethinking Youth Ministry serves as a theological companion and practical guide for all those “working in the trenches” of youth ministry who are seeking to offer students a deeper, more consequential, and active life-long relationship with God through the ministry of Jesus Christ.
Missional: Joining God In The Neighborhood (Allelon Missional Series)
by Alan J. RoxburghWell-known missional expert helps church leaders grapple with our changing world and equips them to impact their local communities.
Missional: Joining God In The Neighborhood (Allelon Missional Series)
by Alan J. RoxburghWell-known missional expert helps church leaders grapple with our changing world and equips them to impact their local communities.
Missionaries in the Golden Age of Hollywood: Race, Gender, and Spirituality on the Big Screen (Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media)
by Douglas Carl AbramsThis book examines major British and American missionary films during the Golden Age of Hollywood to explore the significance of race, gender, and spirituality in relation to the lives of the missionaries portrayed in film during the middle third of the twentieth century. Film both influences and reflects culture, and racial, gender, and religious identities are some of the most debated issues globally today. In the movies explored in this book, missionary interactions with various people groups reflect the historical changes which took place during this time.
Missionaries, Converts, and Rabbis: The Evangelical Alexander McCaul and Jewish-Christian Debate in the Nineteenth Century (Jewish Culture and Contexts)
by David B. RudermanAn examination of the life and work of Alexander McCaul and his impact on Jewish-Christian relationsIn Missionaries, Converts, and Rabbis, David B. Ruderman considers the life and works of prominent evangelical missionary Alexander McCaul (1799-1863), who was sent to Warsaw by the London Society for the Promotion of Christianity Amongst the Jews. He and his family resided there for nearly a decade, which afforded him the opportunity to become a scholar of Hebrew and rabbinic texts. Returning to England, he quickly rose up through the ranks of missionaries to become a leading figure and educator in the organization and eventually a professor of post-biblical studies at Kings College, London. In 1837, McCaul published The Old Paths, a powerful critique of rabbinic Judaism that, once translated into Hebrew and other languages, provoked controversy among Jews and Christians alike.Ruderman first examines McCaul in his complexity as a Hebraist affectionately supportive of Jews while opposing the rabbis. He then focuses his attention on a larger network of his associates, both allies and foes, who interacted with him and his ideas: two converts who came under his influence but eventually broke from him; two evangelical colleagues who challenged his aggressive proselytizing among the Jews; and, lastly, three Jewish thinkers—two well-known scholars from Eastern Europe and a rabbi from Syria—who refuted his charges against the rabbis and constructed their own justifications for Judaism in the mid-nineteenth century.Missionaries, Converts, and Rabbis reconstructs a broad transnational conversation between Christians, Jews, and those in between, opening a new vista for understanding Jewish and Christian thought and the entanglements between the two faith communities that persist in the modern era. Extending the geographical and chronological reach of his previous books, Ruderman continues his exploration of the impact of Jewish-Christian relations on Jewish self-reflection and the phenomenon of mingled identities in early modern and modern Europe.
Missionary Adventures in the South Pacific
by Leona Crawford David Livingston CrawfordBesides providing a wealth of contemporary factual information, diligently researched and presented in a remarkably lucid manner, this book is full of human interest: the braving of incredible dangers, the enduring of great hardships, and devastating storms; contacts with cannibals, beachcombers, and avaricious traders; polygamy, debauchery, and tribal wars, all portrayed with "you-were-there" vividness.
Missionary Daddy
by Linda GoodnightTo: Ashley From: Samantha Re: Sis, I've seen him again! Remember the handsome missionary I met during the modeling shoot? Well, his name's Eric Pellegrino--he's the new assistant director at the adoption agency here in Chestnut Grove! He's trying to find homes for the world's orphans, including two he's crazy about. International adoption isn't easy, especially with Tiny Blessings rocked by scandal--something we Harcourts unfortunately know all about. Eric wants a house full of kids, only I'm afraid my secret will keep us apart. Maybe with faith and a couple of matchmaking teens, the four of us can become a family!
Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations
by Emily Conroy-KrutzMissionary Diplomacy illuminates the crucial place of religion in nineteenth-century American diplomacy. From the 1810s through the 1920s, Protestant missionaries positioned themselves as key experts in the development of American relations in Asia, Africa, the Pacific, and the Middle East. Missionaries served as consuls, translators, and occasional trouble-makers who forced the State Department to take actions it otherwise would have avoided. Yet as decades passed, more Americans began to question the propriety of missionaries' power. Were missionaries serving the interests of American diplomacy? Or were they creating unnecessary problems? As Emily Conroy-Krutz demonstrates, they were doing both. Across the century, missionaries forced the government to articulate new conceptions of the rights of US citizens abroad and of the role of the US as an engine of humanitarianism and religious freedom. By the time the US entered the first world war, missionary diplomacy had for nearly a century created the conditions for some Americans to embrace a vision of their country as an internationally engaged world power. Missionary Diplomacy exposes the longstanding influence of evangelical missions on the shape of American foreign relations.
Missionary Discourses of Difference
by Esme CleallMissionary Discourse examines missionary writings from India and southern Africa to explore colonial discourses about race, religion, gender and culture. The book is organised around three themes: family, sickness and violence, which were key areas of missionary concern, and important axes around which colonial difference was forged.
Missionary Interests: Protestant and Mormon Missions of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
by Edited by David Golding and Christopher Cannon JonesIn Missionary Interests, David Golding and Christopher Cannon Jones bring together works about Protestant and Mormon missionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, charting new directions for the historical study of these zealous evangelists for their faith. Despite their sectarian differences, both groups of missionaries shared notions of dividing the world categorically along the lines of race, status, and relative exoticism, and both employed humanitarian outreach with designs to proselytize.American missionaries occupied liminal spaces: between proselytizer and proselytized, feminine and masculine, colonizer and colonized. Taken together, the chapters in Missionary Interests dismantle easy characterizations of missions and conversion and offer an overlooked juxtaposition between Mormon and Protestant missionary efforts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Missionary Lives: Papua, 1874-1914 (Pacific Islands Monograph Series, No. #6)
by Diane LangmoreIn the modern historiography of the Pacific, missionaries have been accorded a prominent place. Even general histories have recognized their significance as one of the earliest and most influential agents of change throughout the Pacific.
Missionary Masculinity, 1870–1930
by Kristin Fjelde TjelleWhat kind of men were missionaries? What kind of masculinity did they represent, in ideology as well as in practice? Presupposing masculinity to be a cluster of cultural ideas and social practices that change over time and space, and not a stable entity with a natural, inherent meaning, Kristin Fjelde Tjelle seeks to answer such questions.
Missionary Methods: St. Paul's or Ours?
by Roland AllenThis classic study of Paul's missionary work focuses not on the apostle's doctrine or character but on the method by which he accomplished his task. Throughout, Allen compares Paul's methods to modern missionary methods; he concludes by suggesting some ways the apostolic method might be usefully employed today.
Missionary Mom: Embracing the Mission Field Right Under Your Roof
by Shontell BrewerMission work is not for the faint of heart. We admire those brave souls who leave behind the comforts of home and go to foreign fields to bring the love of Christ to people in need. And sometimes it feels uninspiring to be stuck at home in the day-to-day of parenting when others are out there changing the world, soul by soul.Shontell Brewer has a message to renew the spirits of everyday moms: they too have a critical calling as the very first missionaries their children meet. In her informal, funny voice, Brewer points out the many unexpected parallels: A missionary may need to learn a foreign language and new customs to understand and communicate with those around her. A missionary has to follow the path God puts before her, sacrificing sleep, comfort, time, and toilets. Sound like any moms you know?Brewer tackles common challenges from mom-guilt to the temptation to be a martyr to those days when it feels like only a box of cookies and a Netflix binge can restore a sense of peace. But through it all, she shares the truth that there's more to parenting than potty training and orthodontist appointments. Mothers make the love of Christ tangible and understandable to their children. With determination and a few purposeful steps, moms can embrace their own mission field, leading their families--heart, soul, mind, and strength--to Christ.
Missionary Stories With The Millers (Miller Family series)
by Mildred A. MartinMartin tells of real people in real places. Sometimes, as she tells these stories, she imagines some of the details. She also includes biographical sketches of each missionary whom she portrays. This is a fascinating and exciting book to read. Other books in this series are available from Bookshare.
Missionary Stories and the Formation of the Syriac Churches
by Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-LaurentMissionary Stories and the Formation of the Syriac Churches analyzes the hagiographic traditions of seven missionary saints in the Syriac heritage during late antiquity: Thomas, Addai, Mari, John of Ephesus, Simeon of Beth Arsham, Jacob Baradaeus, and Ahudemmeh. Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent studies a body of legends about the missionaries' voyages in the Syrian Orient to illustrate their shared symbols and motifs. Revealing how these texts encapsulated the concerns of the communities that produced them, she draws attention to the role of hagiography as a malleable genre that was well-suited for the idealized presentation of the beginnings of Christian communities. Hagiographers, through their reworking of missionary themes, asserted autonomy, orthodoxy, and apostolicity for their individual civic and monastic communities, positioning themselves in relationship to the rulers of their empires and to competing forms of Christianity. Saint-Laurent argues that missionary hagiography is an important and neglected source for understanding the development of the East and West Syriac ecclesiastical bodies: the Syrian Orthodox Church and the Church of the East. Given that many of these Syriac-speaking churches remain today in the Middle East and India, with diaspora communities in Europe and North America, this work opens the door for further study of the role of saints and stories as symbolic links between ancient and modern traditions.
Missionary Strategies in the New World, 1610-1690: An Intellectual History (Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World)
by Catherine BallériauxThe study is an intellectual and comparative history of French, Spanish, and English missions to the native peoples of America in the seventeenth century, c. 1610–1690. It shows that missions are ideal case studies to properly understand the relationship between religion and politics in early modern Catholic and Calvinist thought. <P><P>The book aims to analyse the intellectual roots of fundamental ideas in Catholic and Calvinist missionary writings—among others idolatry, conversion, civility, and police—by examining the classical, Augustinian, neo-thomist, reformed Protestant, and contemporary European influences on their writings. Missionaries’ insistence on the necessity of reform, emphasising an experiential, practical vision of Christianity, led them to elaborate conversion strategies that encompassed not only religious, but also political and social changes. It was at the margins of empire that the essentials of Calvinist and Catholic soteriologies and political thought could be enacted and crystallised. By a careful analysis of these missiologies, the study thus argues that missionaries’ common strategies—habituation, segregation, social and political regulations—stem from a shared intellectual heritage, classical, humanist, and above all concerned with the Erasmian ideal of a reformation of manners.
Missions Begin with Blood: Suffering and Salvation in the Borderlands of New Spain (Catholic Practice in North America)
by Brandon BayneWinner, 2022 Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer PrizeWhile the idea that successful missions needed Indigenous revolts and missionary deaths seems counterintuitive, this book illustrates how it became a central logic of frontier colonization in Spanish North America. Missions Begin with Blood argues that martyrdom acted as a ceremony of possession that helped Jesuits understand violence, disease, and death as ways that God inevitably worked to advance Christendom. Whether petitioning superiors for support, preparing to extirpate Native “idolatries,” or protecting their conversions from critics, Jesuits found power in their persecution and victory in their victimization. This book correlates these tales of sacrifice to deep genealogies of redemptive death in Catholic discourse and explains how martyrological idioms worked to rationalize early modern colonialism. Specifically, missionaries invoked an agricultural metaphor that reconfigured suffering into seed that, when watered by sweat and blood, would one day bring a rich harvest of Indigenous Christianity.
Missions of Mercy: Out Of Control (Missions of Mercy #2)
by Susan May WarrenEnjoy the three enthralling romantic suspense novels in the Missions of Mercy series by Susan May Warren!POINT OF NO RETURNAn American boy and a warlord’s engaged daughter have disappeared—together—in an Eastern European border country. Only one man can find them in time to prevent an international meltdown—Chet Stryker. But Chet is taken aback when he realizes the boy is the nephew of Mae Lund, Chet’s former flame. When Mae insists on rescuing her relative herself, Chet knows he has to protect her from the enemy on their trail. Yet can he protect himself from falling for Mae again?MISSION: OUT OF CONTROLBrody “Wick” Wickham is a former Green Beret turned security agent—with a 100 percent mission success rate. No way is his new assignment changing that. Even if it’s protecting a diva American rock star while she’s on tour in Europe. Except Veronica “Vonya” Wagner isn’t just a beautiful celebrity used to having her way—she’s the daughter of a U.S. Senator. And she’s hiding a dangerous secret. When Wick discovers what’s at stake, how far over the line will he go to keep them both alive?UNDERCOVER PURSUITThe only way to get security agent Luke Dekker to a wedding? An undercover mission as groomsman. He’ll bust the groom, a drug cartel heir, before anyone can say “I do.” Then Luke can escape all this love and romance nonsense—and the too pretty bridesmaid/agent assigned as his “fiancée” for the weekend. Until Luke discovers that sweet, vulnerable Scarlett Hanson isn’t his contact. Isn’t an agent. Isn’t trained for the high-stakes mission now trapping them both. And worse, Luke’s falling for her—which is not part of the assignment.Originally published in 2011
Missions to the Gaels: Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Ulster and the Highlands and Islands of Scotland 1560–1760
by Fiona A. MacDonaldThis book is an extended study, in the Post-Reformation period, of the impact of the Gaels in the west of Scotland and the north of Ireland on each other’s religious heritage. Beginning half a century before the plantation of Ulster, Missions to the Gaels illuminates the origins of the sectarian divisions in Northern Ireland. The research deals with both Protestants and Catholics, rather than treating only one denomination in isolation. The author explores the intriguing situation whereby Scottish Gaelic-speaking ministers laid the foundations of the embryonic Protestant Church in Ireland, while at the same time Irish-speaking priests were almost exclusively responsible for the reintroduction of Catholicism to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. The range of this book extends beyond narrow ecclesiastical issues: it reveals the broader political and cultural forces that determined the Gaels’ choice of religious alignment and traces the effects of these over two centuries of turbulent change in Gaelic society.
Missions, States, and European Expansion in Africa (African Studies)
by Raphael Chijioke Njoku Chima J. KoriehMissions, States, and European Expansion in Africa aims to explore the ways Christianity and colonialism acted as hegemonic or counter hegemonic forces in the making of African societies. As Western interventionist forces, Christianity and colonialism were crucial in establishing and maintaining political, cultural, and economic domination. Indeed, both elements of Africa’s encounter with the West played pivotal roles in shaping African societies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This volume uses a wide range of perspectives to address the intersection between missions, evangelism, and colonial expansion across Africa. The contributors address several issues, including missionary collaboration with the colonizing effort of European powers; disagreements between missionaries and colonizing agents; the ways in which missionaries and colonial officials used language, imagery, and European epistemology to legitimize relations of inequality with Africans; and the ways in which both groups collaborated to transform African societies. Thus, Missions, States, and European Expansion in Africa transcends the narrow boundaries that often separate the role of these two elements of European encounter to argue that missionary endeavours and official colonial actions could all be conceptualized as hegemonic institutions, in which both pursued the same civilizing mission, even if they adopted different strategies in their encounter with African societies.
Missions: Biblical Foundations and Contemporary Strategies
by Gailyn Van Rheenen“In a rapidly changing world,… the central missionary vision of the church must be constantly renewed, lest its foundations become lost in the confusion of change or its practices trapped in missionary models of the past.” In this second edition of Missions, long-time missionary Gailyn Van Rheenen revises and updates his classic text on Christian missions, laying sound theological and strategic foundations for the missionary of today and tomorrow.Van Rheenen helps renew the missionary vision by discussing areas such as:The history of Christian mission, and how it affects where we are todaySpiritual formation for God’s missionThe missionary cycleCross-cultural communicationThe character and calling of missionariesTypes of missionariesChurch maturationSelecting mission fieldsThe role of money in missionsFour levels of involvement in missionsBut Missions is more than blackboard theory. Written by a long-time missionary, it carries the conviction and insights of one who has lived his subject. Accessible to students, practitioners, and laypeople alike, Missions provides a primary go-to resource for understanding and becoming involved in the dynamic activity of world missions.
Mississippi Praying: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1975
by Carolyn Renée DupontWinner of the 2013 Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize presented by the American Society of Church HistoryMississippi Praying examines the faith communities at ground-zero of the racial revolution that rocked America. This religious history of white Mississippians in the civil rights era shows how Mississippians’ intense religious commitments played critical, rather than incidental, roles in their response to the movement for black equality. During the civil rights movement and since, it has perplexed many Americans that unabashedly Christian Mississippi could also unapologetically oppress its black population. Yet, as Carolyn Renée Dupont richly details, white southerners’ evangelical religion gave them no conceptual tools for understanding segregation as a moral evil, and many believed that God had ordained the racial hierarchy. Challenging previous scholarship that depicts southern religious support for segregation as weak, Dupont shows how people of faith in Mississippi rejected the religious argument for black equality and actively supported the effort to thwart the civil rights movement. At the same time, faith motivated a small number of white Mississippians to challenge the methods and tactics of do-or-die segregationists. Racial turmoil profoundly destabilized Mississippi’s religious communities and turned them into battlegrounds over the issue of black equality. Though Mississippi’s evangelicals lost the battle to preserve segregation, they won important struggles to preserve the theology that had sustained the racial hierarchy. Ultimately, this history sheds light on the eventual rise of the religious right by elaborating the connections between the pre- and post-civil rights South.
Mist of Midnight: A Novel (The Daughters of Hampshire #1)
by Sandra ByrdIn the first of a brand-new series set in Victorian England, a young woman returns home from India after the death of her family to discover her identity and inheritance are challenged by the man who holds her future in his hands.Rebecca Ravenshaw, daughter of missionaries, spent most of her life in India. Following the death of her family in the Indian Mutiny, Rebecca returns to claim her family estate in Hampshire, England. Upon her return, people are surprised to see her...and highly suspicious. Less than a year earlier, an imposter had arrived with an Indian servant and assumed not only Rebecca's name, but her home and incomes. That pretender died within months of her arrival; the servant fled to London as the young woman was hastily buried at midnight. The locals believe that perhaps she, Rebecca, is the real imposter. Her home and her father's investments reverted to a distant relative, the darkly charming Captain Luke Whitfield, who quickly took over. Against her best intentions, Rebecca begins to fall in love with Luke, but she is forced to question his motives--does he love her or does he just want Headbourne House? If Luke is simply after the property, as everyone suspects, will she suffer a similar fate as the first "Rebecca"? A captivating Gothic love story set against a backdrop of intrigue and danger, Mist of Midnight will leave you breathless.
Mistaken Bride (Irish Brides #2)
by Renee RyanSecond in the series of three Irish sisters who travel to America for adventure—and love—from the author of The Wedding Journey and A Baby Between Them.When William Black’s mail-order bride fails to appear at the Boston docks, he’s relieved when beautiful, vibrant Bridget Murphy steps in. However, she has a surprise in store. She will be a temporary nanny to his young twins . . . but she will not marry without love.Faith Glen, Massachusetts, is worlds away from the poverty Bridget knew in Ireland. And William Black couldn’t be more different from her faithless ex-fiancé. Yet that integrity Bridget so admires binds William to a promise that could keep them apart forever. In this new land of opportunity, does she dare to wish for a happy ending?