The Invisible Church

For anyone who is concerned about Church decline, the contents of this book offer an essential blueprint for building God’s whole community in the coming years. This unique set of resources offers practical help and insight for all who want to grow, enrich and develop their congregational life. The Church of Scotland has drawn on the findings of extensive new research that it has commissioned in order to put together this set of carefully crafted and informed resources aimed at helping every congregation to understand why people leave the Church, how to avoid unnecessary departures and, above all, to develop an enriching, vital Christian fellowship with the large numbers of Churchless Christians in every community across the country. This ground-breaking book, illustrated by Dave Walker, offers information, hope, insight, prayerful reflection and practical ideas for bringing together in fellowship all Christians, whether they are members of an institutional Church or not.

Could you persuade fellow Christians that church membership is not optional? That it is more than just a useful tool or practical necessity? Could you defend the historic position that membership is required for participation in communion? Using a construction metaphor, the author of A Church You Can See builds a biblical case for church membership--the builder, the blueprint, rough work, finishing work, the punch list, etc. When the building (or the case for membership) is finished, he invites you to move in.

What is a church? This can be a difficult question to answer and Christians have offered a variety of perspectives. Gregg Allison thus explores and synthesizes all that Scripture affirms about the new covenant people of God, capturing a full picture of the biblical church. He covers the topics of the church's identity and characteristics; its growth through purity, unity, and discipline; its offices and leadership structures; its ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper; and its ministries. Here is a rich approach to ecclesiology consisting of sustained doctrinal reflection and wise, practical application. Part of the Foundations of Evangelical Theology series.

Rewilding the Church explores afresh the compelling invitation of Jesus to ‘Follow me’ and the call to ‘throw off everything that hinders and entangles’. It poses provocative questions and issues a call to contribute to the great rewilding of the Church – and to be rewilded ourselves. The same human instincts that have disrupted our natural environment have also constrained and domesticated the Church and Rewilding the Church commends a rediscovery of the adventure of faith.

The hard work required to make God real, how it changes the people who do it, and why it helps explain the enduring power of faith How do gods and spirits come to feel vividly real to people—as if they were standing right next to them? Humans tend to see supernatural agents everywhere, as the cognitive science of religion has shown. But it isn’t easy to maintain a sense that there are invisible spirits who care about you. In How God Becomes Real, acclaimed anthropologist and scholar of religion T. M. Luhrmann argues that people must work incredibly hard to make gods real and that this effort—by changing the people who do it and giving them the benefits they seek from invisible others—helps to explain the enduring power of faith. Drawing on ethnographic studies of evangelical Christians, pagans, magicians, Zoroastrians, Black Catholics, Santeria initiates, and newly orthodox Jews, Luhrmann notes that none of these people behave as if gods and spirits are simply there. Rather, these worshippers make strenuous efforts to create a world in which invisible others matter and can become intensely present and real. The faithful accomplish this through detailed stories, absorption, the cultivation of inner senses, belief in a porous mind, strong sensory experiences, prayer, and other practices. Along the way, Luhrmann shows why faith is harder than belief, why prayer is a metacognitive activity like therapy, why becoming religious is like getting engrossed in a book, and much more. A fascinating account of why religious practices are more powerful than religious beliefs, How God Becomes Real suggests that faith is resilient not because it provides intuitions about gods and spirits—but because it changes the faithful in profound ways.

While nearly half of Americans identify themselves with a fundamentalist brand of religion, and a sizable minority has rejected religion altogether, there is a vast middle ground. This book is aimed at that huge group of people who describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. In other words, people who are open to encountering the divine and the transcendent, and indeed actively seek these experiences. The authors help readers improve their understanding of the religious nature of the psyche, the origins of myths and religions in the collective unconscious, and the ways in which organized religion has often worked to infantilize its followers. They leave the reader with an empowered ability to claim his or her own spiritual authority and lead a more abundant, authentic life. Many of those who have left organized religion have done so because it has hurt them in some way or because it failed to address their needs, yet they maintain a strong yearning to reconnect with the divine and transcendent level of human existence. As religious fundamentalism continues to influence so much of our national discourse, and as atheistic books rank high on bestseller lists, the time has never been more crucial for a book to address a third way between fundamentalism and atheism - a way that encourages readers to connect with their true religious nature, while at the same time maintaining their intellectual integrity and claiming their own authority. McGehee and Thomas offer that third way.

One of the most widespread theories of today is the universal, invisible church theory. This theory teaches that all believers belong to this invisible church and they were made a part of it through Holy Spirit baptism. The author of this book shows the fallacy of such a theory. He discusses all passages used to support a universal church theory, refutes them, and uses those same passages of Scripture to show how the Bible teaches a local church.