Somewhere in the mists of time, between history and hagiography, stands the great evangelist and missionary St. Patrick. Raised a "cultural Christian," Patrick's encounter with God during captivity in Ireland transformed his life and the history of a people. Freedom from slavery, and a return home to Britain, produced the divine summons--Vox Hibernia--to return to Ireland and the place of captivity in order to witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Christian witness in twenty-first-century...

"I'm rich and I don't need a thing," bragged the early Christians in the big city of Laodicea. The Apostle John, however, saw their affluence and arrogance through a theological lens. He declared them to be bankrupt, "lukewarm Christians" whom God would gladly gargle and spit out. Today, the mainline church in the West finds itself in a dominant culture of Laodicean affluence, where even faith is a commodity to be consumed. While the gospel spreads and thrives in the global South and East,...

What could be better than brunch on a Sunday morning? For most people in Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, the answer of gathering to worship the Triune God and be sent as witnesses would not be top of mind. And yet, across the Pacific Northwest the authors discovered deeply rooted missional communities worshipping God and serving their neighborhoods, offering evidence of unexpected Cascadian treasure in clay jars. Join the authors on a treasure hunt throughout the region as they identify ...

Karl Barth is widely regarded as the most important theologian of the twentieth century, and his observations about the church and its place in a modern world continue to engage religious scholars nearly fifty years after his death. This English translation of the Swiss-published Conversations is a three-volume collection featuring correspondence, articles, interviews, and other short-form writings by Barth from 1959–1962. Among them are dialogues with representatives of the Evangelical Co...

In recognition of Karl Barth's stature as a theologian and public figure in the life of Europe and the West, Swiss publisher Theologischer Verlag Zurich (TVZ) published Conversations, a collection of correspondence, articles, interviews, and other short-form writings by Barth. Collected in three volumes, Conversations reveals the depth and breadth of Barth's theological thought, as well as his humor and humanity. Now, for the first time in English, the second of those volumes is offered he...

Is God changing the face of the church in North America today? The secularization thesis makes it appear that churches are inevitably declining in membership and influence. Too often, however, this assumption of decline is based on only watching the denominations that were "church plants of Western Christendom" in North America. Christianity: An Asian Religion in Vancouver focuses on the context of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and notes through a mixed-methods study including inter...

Leading Voices from across Christian Traditions Discuss the Mission of the ChurchWhat is the mission of the church? Every seminarian and church leader must wrestle with that question. No matter what designation a church uses to describe itself, it must also think critically about why it exists and what it should be doing. In this book, five leading voices representing a range of Christian traditions engage in an enlightening conversation as they present and compare...

In recognition of Karl Barth’s stature as a theologian and public figure in the life of Europe and the West, Swiss publisher Theologischer Verlag Zurich (TVZ) published Conversations, a collection of correspondence, articles, interviews, and other short-form writings by Barth. Collected in three volumes, Conversationsreveals the depth and breadth of Barth’s theological thought as well as his humor and humanity. Now, for the first time in English, the third and final volum...

In an eloquent defense of Calvinist theology, author and professor Michael Horton invites us to explore the teachings of Calvinism—also commonly known as Reformed theology—by showing how it is biblical and Christ-centered, leading us to live our lives for the glory of God.The system of theology known as Calvinism has been immensely influential for the past five hundred years, but it's often encountered negatively as a fatalistic belief system that confines human fr...

With the many models of worship available, choosing a style to worship God can be a bit overwhelming. Is it better to go with traditional or contemporary models? Christians may find themselves asking how early believers worshiped and whether they can provide insight into how we should praise God today.Rooted in historical models and patristic church studies, Ancient-Future Worship examines how early Christian worship models can be applied to the postmodern church. Pastors a...

Ancient Christians invoked sin to account for an astonishing range of things, from the death of God's son to the politics of the Roman Empire that worshipped him. In this book, award-winning historian of religion Paula Fredriksen tells the surprising story of early Christian concepts of sin, exploring the ways that sin came to shape ideas about God no less than about humanity.Long before Christianity, of course, cultures had articulated the idea that human wrongdoing violated relat...

"One of those rare volumes that . . . makes one wonder how we could possibly have lived without it. . . . [A] must-read for any student of the New Testament." — Publishers WeeklyIn this groundbreaking and controversial book, Burton Mack brilliantly exposes how the Gospels are fictional mythologies created by different communities for various purposes and are only distantly related to the actual historical Jesus.Mack's innovative scholarship which bol...