Global Church

Beginning with the life of Jesus, Robert Louis Wilken narrates the dramatic spread and development of Christianity over the first thousand years of its history. Moving through the formation of early institutions, practices, and beliefs to the transformations of the Roman world after the conversion of Constantine, he sheds new light on the subsequent stories of Christianity in the Latin West, the Byzantine and Slavic East, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

Journalist Krithika Varagur's Da'wa chronicles the House of Saud as it systematically transforms the Muslim world in its own image, in one of the major imperial projects in today's world, on par with China's economic diplomacy. Since 1979, Saudi Arabia has spent $1.8 billion per year, by one estimate, to propagate its puritanical brand of Islam, called Salafism or Wahhabism. It has kept scrupulous records of its religious activity in 27 countries, with over 4,000 Salafi preachers on its payroll worldwide.

The history of the Episcopal Church is intimately bound up with the history of empire. The two grew in tandem in the modern era, and as they grew they developed particular ideologies and practices around race. As slavery was carried over into the new political formations of the United States, so too were racially based exclusions carried over in the Episcopal Church. Mission, Race, and Empire presents a new history of the Episcopal Church from its origins in the early British Empire up to the present, told through the lenses of empire and race.

A pesar de que la mayoría de los cristianos no se trasladan a vivir a otros países, la Biblia recluta a todos los cristianos y a todas las iglesias locales en el gran proyecto de las misiones mundiales. La iglesia local es el motor de las misiones a nivel mundial, ¿pero por dónde debemos empezar? Las iglesias no necesitan un complicado programa misionero, lo que necesitan es la Biblia y la sabiduría necesaria para saber cómo aplicarla. Este libro se basa en la Escritura y ofrece pasos prácticos para capacitar misioneros.

In Pressure Points, J. D. Payne gets to the heart of 12 of the most important challenges we face today, raising awareness of realities that will influence the church for decades to come. J. D. helps us understand how we can prevent these global issues from pushing the church off her biblical moorings. Pressure Points gives us the tools to absorb the pressures of society while responding in a way that remains faithful to the church’s calling and mission.

A young Christian from Ireland moves to India - not to evangelize but to help girls escape prostitution. A retiring missionary in Brazil, who long ago left all remnants of home, encounters a 30-year-old, laptop-carrying family man who rarely stops texting friends in the States. A Kenyan pastor struggles to connect with a congregation that watches a mega church pastor on the Internet every Sunday morning. But what is happening to the Church as technology, generational transitions, and cultural shifts make their mark?

What Brian McLaren sets forth in this provocative, unsettling work is a "form of Christian faith that is holistic, integral, balanced, that offers good news for both the living and the dying, that speaks of God's grace at work both in this life and the life to come, both to individuals and to societies and the planet as a whole."