Shaping The Stranger Churches

Silke Muylaert explores the struggles of the Netherlandish migrant churches in England in engaging with the Reformation and the Revolt in their fatherland.

The London stranger churches in the international Reformation, 1547-1565 -- Between dissent and cooperation : relations between the foreign churches in England and connections with the Low Countries -- The entanglements of stranger churches with growing resistance in the Low Countries, 1560-1565 -- The impact of the Wonderjaar (1566) on the stranger churches -- The foreign churches and the Dutch Revolt, 1567-1585 -- The foreign churches and the Reformation, 1567-1585.

95 Questions to Shape the Future of Your Church is a comprehensive commentary on systemic change for the church. It combines the spirit of Luther’s 95 Theses with depth of insight akin to Luther’s reformation catechism. This book will be essential for every congregational, denominational, and seminary bookshelf. Church leaders and members all yearn for a new Reformation that will realign Christian congregations with God’s mission. This book frames the right questions, and focuses the right answers. It helps church leaders do the hard work of assessment and planning. The next Reformation will be an extraordinarily practical endeavor. Leaders need to apply the tactics that will leverage the greatest change, and guide the church deeper into the mystery of Christ and further in companionship with Christ. We want to be faithful. Now we know how to be faithful.

This ground-breaking collection reveals the networks of interrelation between Early Modern England and the Dutch Republic. As people, ideas and goods moved back and forth across the North Sea – or spread further afield in the vanguard of globalisation and empire – Anglo-Dutch relations shaped all aspects of life, with profound implications still relevant today. A diverse range of expert scholars share new research in their discipline, ranging across technology, trade, politics, religion and the arts. Different aspects of this history of competition, alliance, migration and conflict are taken up by each chapter, providing the reader with detailed case studies as well as the broader background and its historical roots. Anglo-Dutch Connections in the Early Modern World aims to be both accessible and innovative. It will be essential to students and researchers interested in European politics, intellectual history, and shared Anglo-Dutch society, while showcasing current research in multiple facets of the Early Modern World.

I Was a Stranger will help you build empathy for the strangers and foreigners among you. Through personal experience and through the narratives of people who have moved to a foreign country for a variety of reasons, Jodi Mullen Fondell offers encouragement for churches desiring to be a place of welcome and embrace for those who often find themselves rejected by the broader society. Packed with tips on how to help your church navigate the road toward greater openness, this book offers advice on how to avoid the pitfalls that prevent churches from truly welcoming and embracing the stranger among them. Rev. Fondell gently guides readers in examining their own experiences of alienation in order to understand the profound disorientation that being a stranger in a strange land entails. This identification with the pain of being an outsider, she asserts, can move, motivate, and mobilize the church to live out God’s calling to welcome in the stranger. As the body of Christ embraces the members we are tempted to exclude, a new level of joy and a taste of heaven await our congregations. Includes a small-group Bible-study guide for communities ready to grow in ministry and hospitality.

"In this compelling new history, Lucy Wooding explores every aspect of life in Tudor England, reassessing not just how monarchs ruled, but also how men and women thought, wrote, lived and died. Wooding sheds new light on a society rich in ideas and ideals as well as conflicts and controversies. We see a monarchy under strain; religion in crisis; a population contending with war, rebellion, plague and poverty. Tudor England presents a markedly different picture of this famous era from the one we thought we knew"--

In this book, two leading ministry experts place the missional church conversation in historical perspective and offer fresh insights for its further development. They begin by providing a helpful review of the genesis of the missional church and offering an insightful critique of the Gospel and Our Culture Network's seminal book Missional Church, which set the conversation in motion. They map the diverse paths this discussion has taken over the past decade, identifying four primary branches and ten sub-branches of the conversation and placing over one hundred published titles and websites into this framework. The authors then utilize recent developments in biblical and theological perspectives to strengthen and extend the conversation about missional theology, the church's interaction with culture and cultures, and church organization and leadership in relation to the formation of believers as disciples. Professors, students, and church leaders will value this comprehensive overview of the missional movement. It includes a foreword by Alan J. Roxburgh.

Robert Beale (15411601) was a diplomat and administrator who worked at the heart of Elizabethan governance and international policymaking. In spite or perhaps because of the voluminous record he left behind, he has never been the subject of a dedicated biography, and his remarkable life and influence have therefore remained hidden. By thoroughly investigating Beales personal reference archive, which remains largely intact at the British Library, and additional material from archives across the UK, mainland Europe, and the USA, this book brings Beales life into sharp focus: from his shadowy upbringing in Coventry and London, through his first trips to the European mainland in the 1550s, and to his prominent roles in Queen Elizabeths government. By reconstructing the complex web of transnational connections he forged throughout Europe, David Scott Gehring demonstrates for the first time the extent to which these networks and his experiences abroad made him an invaluable agent of the Elizabethan regime. In the process, Gehring reveals Beales broader significance for our understanding of the workings of Elizabethan government, especially the role of second- and third-level players within it, and he recognizes the impossibility of truly understanding Elizabethan England without considering its interactions with and connections to the rest of Europe. The book makes a range of novel contributions, including to understandings of Elizabethan foreign policy, the succession, religion, political life, and intelligence gathering.