Perfectly Ordinary: In Search of Healthy Church Leadership (2024) Marcus Throup
In the wake of scandals involving high-profile Christian leaders in the UK, US and beyond, Perfectly Ordinary issues a timely warning about the dangers of pursuing 'spectacular' ministry. It uncovers how coercive, manipulative subcultures often thrive – and are even admired – because of their outward success, while ignoring the deeper harm they cause. Marcus Throup calls for a return to an authentic, Christ-centred approach to leadership that values humility, faithfulness, prayer, and genuine pastoral care over sensationalism. By celebrating the beauty of simplicity, it invites readers to rediscover the heart of ministry: holiness, down-to-earth preaching, and a focus on what truly matters.
Types of Ecclesiology: Five Theological Approaches (2024) David Emerton
Types of Ecclesiology introduces the study of the doctrine of the church. It illuminates the breadth of contemporary ecclesiological thought by articulating five approaches to ecclesiology.
Avoiding denominational alignments, David Emerton charitably elucidates the logic and concerns driving each type. He argues that ecclesiology must account theologically for the unique nature of the church before considering its activities. We must ask what the church is before asking what the church does.
Professors will find a valuable orienting text, students will grasp the stakes of contemporary debates, and scholars surveying ecumenical ecclesiology will discover an illuminating structural framework. Doing the work of the church requires discerning its essence, and this timely volume insightfully examines what is at the heart of the body of Christ.
The Metaphysics of Historical Jesus Research: A Prolegomenon to a Future Quest for the Historical Jesus (2024) Jonathan Rowlands
In this book Rowlands interrogates the theological and philosophical foundations of the 'Quest' for the historical Jesus, from Reimarus to the present day, culminating in a call for greater metaphysical transparency and diversity in the discipline.
This multidisciplinary approach to historical Jesus research, drawing on historiography, sociology, philosophy, and theology, makes a significant and original contribution to the field. Part I outlines the implicit role of metaphysical presuppositions in historical methodology by examining the concept of an historiographical worldview. Part II provides an overview of the 'Quest' for the historical Jesus, demonstrating that the disparate historiographical worldviews operative in the 'Quest' evidence a particular shared characteristic, in that they might accurately be described as ‘secular.’ Rowlands’ study concludes with a call for a greater plurality and openness regarding the philosophical and theological presuppositions at work in historical Jesus research.
The Metaphysics of Historical Jesus Research is of interest to students and scholars working on New Testament studies and historical Jesus research.
Mixed Ecology: Inhabiting an Integrated Church (2024) Ed Olsworth-Peter
Ed Olsworth-Peter explores what an integrated mixed ecology of Church looks like in a post pandemic world. As society begins to come to terms with the cultural and financial impacts of the last couple of years, the way we meet as church and how we reach out to those within our communities needs to be reconsidered. The Church of England's new vision and strategy includes three priorities one of which is that 'mixed ecology is the norm'. Much has been written about the mixed economy/ecology of Church over the last 15 years across a range of traditions and denominations, but what hasn't been explored as such is the connectivity and dependency between different local expressions of church, and the value of 'co-growing' alongside one another for their mutual health and missional development. More than ever there is a need for the church to be 'one body' - unified yet distinctive, aware of the gift of its breadth in a 'global' ecosystem that together recognises and resources different expressions of church. This book will help church leaders and worshipping communities to understand their place within the mixed ecology, the value of growing their own local ecosystem, and how to develop a physically gathered, digital and hybrid ecology of Church. Offering cultural, ecclesiological and missional insights, coupled with practical application, it draws on the voices of respected theologians, authors and church leaders in the UK and USA
Living His Story Together: Being a Community of Missionary Disciples (2024) Hannah Steele
In Living His Story (2020), Hannah Steele wrote 'with an infectious understanding of her subject' (Mark Oakley, Church Times).
Now, in Living His Story Together, she turns her attention to mission and evangelism that is not only for individuals but for the whole local church. Offering an inspiring mandate for the church to see itself as a missionary community, Hannah considers the practical outworkings of that identity through engaging with scripture and current theological thinking, and sharing real-life stories from churches on the front line.
Living His Story Together isn't an argument for a particular model of church (plant or parish, for example) but an exciting exploration of what can happen when two or three of God's missionary disciples are gathered together, empowered by the Spirit and seeking to be good news in the world today. It covers contemporary missional themes, such as hospitality, cultural engagement, presence, diversity and spoken witness, and offers practical principles - vividly enlivened by relating the imaginative and disarming ways in which ordinary churches and individuals are sharing the gospel - to help us embrace the great privilege to which we have been called.
When Jesus Calls: Finding a simpler, humbler, bolder vocation (2022) Marcus Throup
When Jesus Calls considers the new approach to vocation in the Church of England and offers a guide for those who are exploring a call to licensed ministry, lay and ordained, and for those with responsibility for encouraging and discerning vocations. It introduces the categories of the Church's new discernment framework, and brings them into conversation with the historic Anglican understanding of priestly vocation (the Ordinal) and the wider missional 'manifesto' of the Anglican Communion (the Five Marks of Mission). Its unique approach offers a comprehensive and up-to-date treatment which is attuned to the 'simpler, humbler, bolder' vision of the post-pandemic Church of England. It will be an essential resource for every diocesan vocations team and will also have value as a basic text for Anglican ministerial theology in IME 1.
Navigating a World of Grace: The Promise of Generous Orthodoxy (2022) Graham Tomlin
‘Generous orthodoxy’ is a liberating outlook that encourages the Church to embrace different traditions of belief, worship and prayer within a broad framework of Christian faith.
But is it really possible to be both generous and orthodox?
In Navigating a World of Grace, Graham Tomlin offers his own invigorating vision of a generous orthodoxy that is rooted in the creeds’ description of a God who is, by nature, the essence of generous grace. Looking at the history of the church, he explores how orthodoxy can enrich and enhance our perception of the world. Rather than restricting us, it liberates us to be generous in our expressions of faith.
This tantalizingly different theology, that brings together the best from every tradition, shows why orthodoxy is so important to the Christian faith – and how it can bring us together as a revitalized, unified and visionary Church.
Accessible and insightful, Navigating a World of Grace acts as a companion volume to The Bond of Peace but can also be read by itself as an exploration and celebration how Christians of all denominations can show generosity and grace in embracing different traditions of worship while remaining united by a single orthodoxy of faith.
Ideal reading for anyone wanting to understand the meaning of generous orthodoxy better or how we can engage with different parts of the church with grace, this is an encouraging and inspiring vision for the future of the church. Navigating a World of Grace challenges us to see that adopting an attitude of generosity towards other Christians and those outside the Christian faith is part of orthodoxy, and will result in a deeper, fuller experience of God than we can possibly imagine.
Preaching Beyond the Pandemic: Exploring Topical Homiletics (2022) Marcus Throup
As we adapt to a changing world, our preaching too must change—in format, style, tone and even content.
This essential guide puts forward a post-pandemic approach to homiletics that takes the human situation seriously, placing it front and centre in a pastorally attuned and thoroughly applied manner. It encourages preachers to speak in the power of the Spirit, into the real-world issues people are facing.
Not Forgotten: Walking With Jesus Through the Wilderness (2022) Chris Lane
How do you keep going when everything seems to be falling apart?
Not Forgotten begins at a moment of chaos and despair for Chris Lane and Salford’s Langworthy Community Church. Tracing their journey into hope and healing, Chris shares wider reflections on the wilderness experience and how Jesus meets with us in the desert. Taking the sweep of Scripture as a guide, Chris relates faith-building stories of the unlikely people God has raised up, from characters in the Bible and Church history to contemporary church planters and pioneers in ‘forgotten’ places.
Be inspired to keep going, keep loving and keep sharing the good news, wherever you are. Because when we walk with Jesus in the wilderness, we can hear the gospel in fresh ways and see life-giving streams flow.
Embodied Trauma and Healing: Critical Conversations on the Concept of Health (Critical Approaches to Health) (2022) Anna Westin
What if philosophy could solve the psychological puzzle of trauma? Embodied Trauma and Healing argues just that, suggesting that one might be needed in order to understand the other. The book demonstrates how the body-mind problem that haunted Descartes was addressed by phenomenologists, whilst also proposing that the human experience is lived subjectively as embodied consciousness.
Throughout this book, the author suggests that the phenomenological tools that are used to explore the body can also be an effective way to discuss the physical and mental aspects of embodied trauma. Drawing on the work of Paul Ricœur, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Lévinas, the book outlines a phenomenological approach to the embodied and relational subject. It offers a reading of embodied trauma that can connect it to wider conversations in psychological underpinnings of trauma through Peter Levine’s somatic research and Bessel van der Kolk’s embodied remembering. Connecting to the analytic tradition, the book suggests that phenomenology can unify both language-based and body-based therapeutic practice. It also presents a compelling discussion that ties the embodied experience of relation in trauma to the wider causal factors of social suffering and relational rupture, intergenerational trauma and the trauma of land, as informed by phenomenology.
Embodied Trauma and Healing is essential reading for researchers within the fields of philosophy, psychology and medical humanities for it actively engages with contemporary configurations of trauma theory and recent research developments in healing and mental disorder diagnosis.
The Bond of Peace (2021) Graham Tomlin
'Generous orthodoxy' is a phrase that describes a Christianity both broad and deep, rooted in the historic creeds and embracing different expressions of Christian faith. The Bond of Peace is a ground-breaking, creative and practical exploration of what generous orthodoxy really means, and how expressing it might bring about a sense of unity in the church that is badly needed in our fractured and polarised world.
An Interweaving Ecclesiology The Church, Mission and Young People (2021) Mark Scanlan
What is church? What spaces does church occupy? Can ecclesial space exist beyond the boundaries of church? In An Interweaving Ecclesiology Mark Scanlan offers a fresh vision of Christian community as constructed for and by participants as potential ecclesial spaces combine to create an experience which we call "church".
The Art of Christmas: The Nativity through the Eyes of Great Painters: Meditations on the birth of Jesus (2021) Jane Williams
A beautiful book for Advent 2021, these profoundly perceptive reflections on the different ways in which artists have imagined the Nativity will deepen and refresh your appreciation of the real meaning of Christmas, and the message of love, joy and peace that it speaks to all the world.
Illustrated in stunning full colour, with famous and lesser-known Western masterpieces, and presented in a small, easily portable format, The Art of Christmas is ideal Advent reading for all art lovers, but also makes a wonderful Christmas gift.
We Believe: Exlporing The Nicene Faith (2021) Alex Irving
The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of ad 381 was a key statement in the context of the theological controversies and confessional atmosphere of the fourth-century church.
Alex Irving explores Christian belief about God, creation, and redemption, as it is expressed in the Creed. He thereby contributes to the continuing task of the church's self-examination of its talk about God.
Living His Story: Revealing the extraordinary love of God in ordinary ways: The Archbishop of Canterbury's Lent Book (2021) Hannah Steele
How can we convey the love of God to our neighbours in a post-Christian world that has largely forgotten the gospel of Jesus Christ?
In Living His Story, the Archbishop of Canterbury's Lent Book 2021, Hannah Steele uncovers liberating and practical ways of sharing the gospel story afresh. With warmth and encouragement, She shows us how we can live Jesus' story in our own lives simply by being the people God made us and allowing people to be drawn to him through our natural gifts.
Living His Story is a Lent devotional that will change the way you think about evangelism, show how ideally suited it is for the world we live in and fill you with confidence in sharing God's love with the people around you.
God, Freedom, and the Body of Christ: Toward a Theology of the Church (2020) Alex Irving
A contribution to the end of the Church knowing itself as the body of Christ. Irving articulates a theology of the Church as that which participates in all that Jesus is in his vicarious humanity by the power of the Spirit. This is developed through a dialogical (or covenantal) frame that has its focal point in Christ, in whom the faithful love of God toward creation and the faithful love of creation toward God is actualized. The Church as the body of Christ participates in the mediatorial work of Jesus Christ. Each chapter explores a different element of this participatory ecclesiology.
God's Church-Community: The Ecclesiology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2020) David Emerton
David Emerton argues that Bonhoeffer understands the church as a pneumatological and eschatological community in space and time, and that this understanding is thus built on eschatological and pneumatological foundations. These foundations, in turn, give rise to a unique methodological approach to ecclesiological description an approach that enables Bonhoeffer to proffer a genuinely theological account of the church in which both divine and human agency are held together through an account of God the Holy Spirit
Why Being Yourself is a Bad Idea: And Other Countercultural Notions (2020) Graham Tomlin
This book dares us to let go of some of the assumptions we make about life. Drawing on current research, contemporary events and ancient wisdom, it offers an invitation to journey to places we may never have imagined before. It vividly reveals how the revolution that Christianity began can still make remarkable sense of our experience of wonder, love, evil, justice, identity and freedom
Reimagining the Spiritual Disciplines for a Digital Age (2020) Sara Schumacher
This compelling study urges Christians to reclaim the spiritual disciplines as an antidote to the creep of technology in our lives, and to rediscover our creatureliness—our dependence on and need for intimacy with the God who created us.
Every Tribe: Stories of Diverse Saints Serving a Diverse World (2019) Sharon Prentis
In Every Tribe, editor Sharon Prentis and a diverse team of contributors present a powerful challenge to the bias that taken hold of storytelling in the Church. They tell the true, and in some casing surprising, stories of the lives of twelve Christian saints, including St Augustine, who came from present day Algeria, and St George, an immigrant with a Turkish father and a Palestinian mother.