In Their Own Words Stories Of Healing Practices For The Church

The purpose of this project was twofold: 1) to research how the church community can be a place of healing in people's lives, and 2) to suggest practices that when enacted would help a church to be a place of healing. Church life was differentiated into three levels: Pastorally, Relationally, and Congregationally. A group of people were interviewed who had received some type of healing and their lives and were asked to share how the church community helped in the healing process. Based off of the information gathered in the interviews, practices were suggested for the church at each of the three levels of church life.

Explores the practice of eating together as Christian worship The gospel story is filled with meals. It opens in a garden and ends in a feast. Records of the early church suggest that believers met for worship primarily through eating meals. Over time, though, churches have lost focus on the centrality of food— and with it a powerful tool for unifying Christ’s diverse body. But today a new movement is under way, bringing Christians of every denomination, age, race, and sexual orientation together around dinner tables. Men and women nervous about stepping through church doors are finding God in new ways as they eat together. Kendall Vanderslice shares stories of churches worshiping around the table, introducing readers to the rising contem­porary dinner-church movement. We Will Feast provides vision and inspiration to readers longing to experience community in a real, physical way.

An Ethos of Compassion and the Integrity of Creation addresses how to reconcile the lawful order seen in the world, which the Institute for Christian Studies takes as given by God, with the need for human compassion, also called for by God. The Institute sponsored this book in celebration of their twenty-fifth anniversary. An Ethos of Compassion and the Integrity of Creation opens with a study of parables relevant to today and closes with a meditation by Langdon Gilkey on the ideas brought forth in this book. A study of the history of the idea of 'creation order', central to the Institute's philosophical tradition, is followed by a controversial challenge suggesting how that philosophical tradition can be changed to give centrality to the viewpoint of compassion toward vulnerable people and the physical environment. Medical ethics, the environment, and gender chauvinism serve as case studies for issues of compassion and created order. Contributors: Atie Th. Bruggemann-Kruijff, Adrienne Chaplin, Jonathan Chaplin, John Cooper, Calvin B. DeWitt, Harry Fernhout, Langdon Gilkey, Sander Griffioen, Caroll Guen Hart, John E. Hare, Hendrik Hart, Sylvia C. Keesmaat, J. Richard Middleton, James Olthius, Elaine Storkey, Johan van der Hoeven, Allen D. Verhey, Brian J. Walsh, Albert M. Wolters, Nicholas Wolterstorff. Copublished with the Institute for Christian Studies.

"Style: A Queer Cosmology considers artists and critics whose work defines style as that which eludes paraphrase or social scientific categorization; rather, they show style to be the attributes that make us all more like ourselves and less like each other"--

A moving story of father-son reconciliation told by a charismatic aboriginal star When his father was given a diagnosis of terminal cancer, Winnipeg broadcaster and musician Wab Kinew decided to spend a year reconnecting with the accomplished but distant aboriginal man who’d raised him. The Reason You Walk spans that 2012 year, chronicling painful moments in the past and celebrating renewed hopes and dreams for the future. As Kinew revisits his own childhood in Winnipeg and on a reserve in Northern Ontario, he learns more about his father's traumatic childhood at residential school. An intriguing doubleness marks The Reason You Walk, itself a reference to an Anishinaabe ceremonial song. Born to an Anishinaabe father and a non-native mother, he has a foot in both cultures. He is a Sundancer, an academic, a former rapper, a hereditary chief and an urban activist. His father, Tobasonakwut, was both a beloved traditional chief and a respected elected leader who engaged directly with Ottawa. Internally divided, his father embraced both traditional native religion and Catholicism, the religion that was inculcated into him at the residential school where he was physically and sexually abused. In a grand gesture of reconciliation, Kinew's father invited the Roman Catholic bishop of Winnipeg to a Sundance ceremony in which he adopted him as his brother. Kinew writes affectingly of his own struggles in his twenties to find the right path, eventually giving up a self-destructive lifestyle to passionately pursue music and martial arts. From his unique vantage point, he offers an inside view of what it means to be an educated aboriginal living in a country that is just beginning to wake up to its aboriginal history and living presence. Invoking hope, healing and forgiveness, The Reason You Walk is a poignant story of a towering but damaged father and his son as they embark on a journey to repair their family bond. By turns lighthearted and solemn, Kinew gives us an inspiring vision for family and cross-cultural reconciliation, and for a wider conversation about the future of aboriginal peoples.

In Matthew 15:22-28 Jesus describes healing and deliverance as the 'children's bread'. In other words, it is an everyday essential which no good father would withhold from his children. How much more so does our Father God want to bless us today with these gifts? Writing from his fundamental desire to close the gap between what we read in the New Testament description of Jesus and the early church's ministry and kingdom lifestyle, and our experiences as individual believers and, especially, as the family of God in our churches, Alastair Mitchell-Baker has crafted a vital foundational 'manual' for the practice and culture of healing ministry within the local church.Churches are of all types, styles and sizes. They look wonderfully and beautifully different, and so the full restoration of healing ministry will look and feel different too. Yet Jesus wants us all to be His feet and hands, His eyes, ears, and lips, to bring His restoring love and power to the people in our communities, towns, and cities.This book is designed as a resource for church leaders and members who want to see more healing and transformation in their local churches and communities. It is born of Alastair's personal journey and the experiences and teaching of his home church, The Gate, in Reading, UK.

Does the Christian community have the resources to develop a coherent response to today?s health care challenges? In a comprehensive survey covering the full scope of the Bible and three millennia of Christian belief and practice, Willard Swartley fleshes out the central place of health care in the church?s mission.

Leading scholars in the social sciences, public health and religion examine the embodied sacred practices of the world's religions, the history of alignment and tension between religious and public health institutions and the role of religious institutions in health and development efforts around the globe.