Practicing Our Faith

An updated edition of the down-to-earth resource that offers twelve practices to make Christian faith a way of life Many Christians are looking for ways to deepen their relationship with God by practicing their faith in everyday life. This best-selling guide helps take belief out of the realm of theory and shows how to live it out in a series of twelve central practices such as hospitality, forgiveness, healing, testimony, and keeping Sabbath. Designed to work across a wide range of Christian laypeople, leaders, denominations, and study groups, this is the second edition of the book that Theology called "... a stimulating contribution to the work of making explicit the connection between what Christians do and what they believe." Contains information on the practices discussed in the book and shows how they relate to and intersect with prayer, worship, and Bible study Offers a guide for conversation, learning, and growth at the back of the book This updated and expanded new edition includes a new introduction and two additional chapters that describes new insights into and experiences with the "practicing our faith" approach The book includes a variety of prominent contributors, who draw on their rich shared experience as believers, theologians, ethicists, and educators.

Twelve time-honored Christian practices that will help us, and the world, to flourish Practicing Our Faith offers help to Christians who are asking how our faith can help us discern what we might do and who we might become. How can we live faithfully and with integrity in a world where the pace of existence is so fast and life's patterns are changing all around us? Can we conduct our daily lives in ways that help us not just get by but flourish--as individuals, as communities, and as a society in concert with creation and in communion with God? These questions are on the hearts and minds of many seekers who are exploring spirituality today. They are also at the heart of Practicing Our Faith. Practices are those shared activities that address fundamental needs of humankind and creation and that, woven together, form a way of life. The twelve practices explored in this book are practices that human beings simply cannot do without, particularly at this time in history. This book will stimulate your imagination. It will encourage you to reflect. It initiates a conversation that will spread into many contexts, each of which presents unique opportunities for noticing, discussing, and living the practices of faith.

"Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." Mohandas Gandhi famously critiqued the contemporary church with this pithy phrase. Church planter Tim Morey keeps this challenge in mind as he coaches other planters in the Evangelical Covenant Church. In this book he brings his experience, combined with research and theological reflection, to help your church cultivate the irreducible qualities of an embodied apologetic: a community that is revealed by its faithful to be experiential, communal and enacted.

Christian teachers have long been thinking about what content to teach, but little scholarship has been devoted to how faith forms the actual process of teaching. Is there a way to go beyond Christian perspectives on the subject matter and think about the teaching itself as Christian? In this book David I. Smith shows how faith can and should play a critical role in shaping pedagogy and the learning experience.

The Practice of the Presence of God is a wonderful text, compiled by Father Joseph de Beaufort, of the teachings of Brother Lawrence (born Nicholas Herman), a Carmelite Monk. The beautiful compilation includes letters, as well as records of his conversations kept by Brother Lawrence's interlocutors.

Over the past decades, Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity has arguably become the fastest growing religious movement in the world. Distinguishing features of this variant of Christianity include formal ritual activities as well as informal, experiential, and ecstatic forms of worship. This book examines Pentecostal-charismatic ritual practice in different parts of the world, highlighting, among other things, the crucial role of ritual in creating religious communities and identities.

A call for Christians to move past the shallows of idealized beliefs and into a deeper, more vibrant, beatitude-like faith rooted in sacred practices and intimate experiences with God. When the limits of his own faith experience left him feeling spiritually empty, Niequist determined God must have a wider vision for worship and community. In his search, Aaron discovered that there was historical Christian precedent for enacting faith in a different way, an ancient and now future way of believing. He calls this third way "practice-based faith." This book is about loving one's faith tradition and, at the same time, following the call to something deeper and richer. By adopting some new spiritual practices, it is possible to learn to swim again with a renewed sense of vigor and divine purpose.

Born out of the experiences of hundreds of thousands of women who Raechel and Amanda have walked alongside as they walk with the Lord, She Reads Truth is the message that will help you understand the place of God's Word in your life.