Seminary Dropout

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Michael Rhodes is the director of community development and an instructor at the Memphis Center for Urban Theological Studies, where he heads up efforts to equip urban pastors and community development practitioners with theologically informed tools for community transformation.

The church in the West is rediscovering the fact that God cares deeply for the poor. More and more, churches and individual Christians are looking for ways to practice economic discipleship, but it’s hard to make progress when we are blind to our own entanglement in our culture’s idolatrous economic beliefs and practices.

Practicing the King’s Economy cuts through much confusion and invites Christians to take their place within the biblical story of the “King Jesus Economy.” Through eye-opening true stories of economic discipleship in action, and with a solid exploration of six key biblical themes, the authors offer practical ways for God’s people to earn, invest, spend, compensate, save, share, and give in ways that embody God’s love and provision for the world.

-From the Publisher

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Kathy Khang is a speaker, journalist, and activist. She has worked in campus ministry for more than twenty years, with expertise in issues of gender, ethnicity, justice, and leadership development. She is a columnist for Sojourners magazine, a writer for Faith and Leadership, and a coauthor of More Than Serving Tea: Asian American Women on Expectations, Relationships, Leadership and Faith.

You have a voice. And you have God’s permission to use it.

In some communities, certain voices are amplified and elevated while others are erased and suppressed. It can be hard to speak up, especially in the ugliness of social media. Power dynamics keep us silent and marginalized, especially when race, ethnicity, and gender are factors. What can we do about it?

-From the Publisher

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Austin Fischer is the teaching pastor at Vista Community Church in Temple, Texas. He is the author of Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed.

“People don’t abandon faith because they have doubts. People abandon faith because they think they’re not allowed to have doubts.”

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This Week on Seminary Dropout…

Emily P. Freeman is a writer, creative director, and spiritual mentor who helps create space for the soul to breathe so people can walk in step with their calling.

She is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Simply Tuesday and Grace for the Good Girl as well as Graceful and A Million Little Ways. She’s been writing online for over 10 years and is the co-founder of a growing community for writers at hopewriters.com.

She and her husband live in North Carolina with their three children. Connect with Emily online at emilypfreeman.com and on Instagram @emilypfreeman.

Nothing gets our attention like an unmade decision: Should I accept the new position? Which schooling choice is best for my kids? How can I support my aging parents? When we have a decision to make and the answer isn’t clear, what we want more than anything is peace, clarity, and a nudge in the right direction.

If you have trouble making decisions, because of either chronic hesitation you’ve always lived with or a more recent onset of decision fatigue, Emily P. Freeman offers a fresh way of practicing familiar but often forgotten advice: simply do the next right thing. With this simple, soulful practice, it is possible to clear the decision-making chaos, quiet the fear of choosing wrong, and find the courage to finally decide without regret or second-guessing.

Whether you’re in the midst of a major life transition or are weary of the low-grade anxiety that daily life can bring, Emily helps create space for your soul to breathe so you can live life with God at a gentle pace and discern your next right thing in love.

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Carolyn Custis James is an award-winning author and international speaker. She blogs at www.carolyncustisjames.com, as a Leading Voice at MissioAlliance, and at Huffington Post, is an adjunct faculty member at Biblical Theological Seminary, and a consulting editor for Zondervan’s Exegetical Commentary Series on the New Testament. Her books include Malestrom―Manhood Swept into the Currents of a Changing World, Half the Church―Recapturing God’s Global Vision for Women, and The Gospel of Ruth―Loving God Enough to Break the Rules. She speaks regularly at church conferences, colleges and other Christian organizations and is a visiting lecturer at theological seminaries. In 2013, Christianity Today named her one of the 50 evangelical women to watch.

In four short episodes, readers encounter refugees, undocumented immigrants, poverty, hunger, women’s rights, male power and privilege, discrimination, and injustice.

In Finding God in the Margins, Carolyn Custis James reveals how the book of Ruth is about God, the questions that surface when life falls apart, and how God reaches into the margins and chooses two totally marginalized women who, in the eyes of the patriarchal culture, are zeros.

Against the backdrop of disturbing issues in today’s world, this bracing narrative puts on display a radical gospel way of living together as human beings that shouts the Kingdom of God, foreshadows Jesus’ gospel, and raises the bar for men and women, then and now.

-From the Publisher

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Matthew W. Bates (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame) is Assistant Professor of Theology at Quincy University. His main teaching area is the Bible and early Christian literature, especially the New Testament. He also teaches courses in Western Religion, Church History, and Christian Spirituality.

Dr. Bates writes with a posture of faith seeking understanding, with a desire to serve the church, academy, and any reader of goodwill. A new book, Salvation by Allegiance Alone (Baker Academic, 2017) is now available for order. His recent The Birth of the Trinity (Oxford University Press, 2015) focuses on how certain reading strategies helped early Christians to see that the one God can be differentiated as multiple persons. He has also written on the Apostle Paul’s method of interpreting Scripture: The Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation (Baylor University Press, 2012). A current book project, to be published by Eerdmans, explores the process by which Jesus came to be enthroned as king, as well as the theological implications for us today.

Dr. Bates co-hosts a popular podcast on biblical studies called OnScript. The podcast focuses on interviewing authors in the field of biblical studies about their recent books. He has hosted some of the most renowned biblical scholars in the world.

We are saved by faith when we trust that Jesus died for our sins. This is the gospel, or so we are taught. But what is faith? And does this accurately summarize the gospel? Because faith is frequently misunderstood and the climax of the gospel misidentified, the gospel’s full power remains untapped. While offering a fresh proposal for what faith means within a biblical theology of salvation, Matthew Bates presses the church toward a new precision: we are saved solely by allegiance to Jesus the king. Instead of faith alone, Christians must speak about salvation by allegiance alone. -From the Publisher

*Originally Posted at MissioAlliance.org

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*Originally Posted at MissioAlliance.org

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Aaron Niequist is a liturgist, writer, in the New York City. After leading worship at Mars Hill Church (Grand Rapids, MI) and Willow Creek Church (Barrington, IL), Aaron created A New Liturgy- a collection of modern liturgical worship recordings. Shortly after, Aaron started a discipleship-focused, formational, ecumenical, practice-based community at Willow Creek called The Practice. Since writing ‘The Eternal Current: How a Practice-Based Faith Can Save Us from Drowning’, he’s continued to create resources to help us all flesh it out. 

A call for Christians to move past the shallows of idealized beliefs and into a deeper, more vibrant, beatitude-like faith rooted in sacred practices and intimate experiences with God.

When the limits of his own faith experience left him feeling spiritually empty, Niequist determined God must have a wider vision for worship and community.

In his search, Aaron discovered that there was historical Christian precedent for enacting faith in a different way, an ancient and now future way of believing. He calls this third way “practice-based faith.”

This book is about loving one’s faith tradition and, at the same time, following the call to something deeper and richer. By adopting some new spiritual practices, it is possible to learn to swim again with a renewed sense of vigor and divine purpose.

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*Originally Posted at MissioAlliance.org

Our Sponsor:

Sponsor a Child — At Compassion we take a committed, long-term approach to fighting child poverty. Our Holistic Child Development Model is made up of four comprehensive programs investing in children from the beginning of their lives until they’ve reached adulthood, and covering everything from prenatal care to university-level education.

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Atheist-turned-Christian Lee Strobel is the former award-winning legal editor of The Chicago Tribune and best-selling author of more than twenty books. His classic, The Case for Christ, is a perennial favorite which details his conversion to Christianity. His recent release, The Case for Grace, just won the 2016 Nonfiction Book of the Year from the EPCA. For the last twenty-five years, his life’s work has been to share the evidence that supports the truth and claims of Christianity and to equip believers to share their faith with the people they know and love.

New York Times bestselling author Lee Strobel trains his investigative sights on the hot-button issue of whether it’s credible to believe God intervenes supernaturally in people’s lives today.

This provocative book starts with an unlikely interview in which America’s foremost skeptic builds a seemingly persuasive case against the miraculous. But then Strobel travels the country to quiz scholars to see whether they can offer solid answers to atheist objections. Along the way, he encounters astounding accounts of healings and other phenomena that simply cannot be explained away by naturalistic causes. The book features the results of exclusive new scientific polling that shows miracle accounts are much more common than people think.

What’s more, Strobel delves into the most controversial question of all: what about miracles that don’t happen? If God can intervene in the world, why doesn’t he do it more often to relieve suffering? Many American Christians are embarrassed by the supernatural, not wanting to look odd or extreme to their neighbors. Yet, The Case for Miracles shows not only that the miraculous is possible, but that God still does intervene in our world in awe-inspiring ways. Here’s a unique book that examines all sides of this issue and comes away with a passionate defense for God’s divine action in lives today.

-From the Publisher

*Originally Posted at MissioAlliance.org

Our Sponsor:

Sponsor a Child — At Compassion we take a committed, long-term approach to fighting child poverty. Our Holistic Child Development Model is made up of four comprehensive programs investing in children from the beginning of their lives until they’ve reached adulthood, and covering everything from prenatal care to university-level education.

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Dominique DuBois Gilliard is the director of racial righteousness and reconciliation for the Love Mercy Do Justice (LMDJ) initiative of the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC). He serves on the board of directors for the Christian Community Development Association and Evangelicals for Justice. In 2015, he was selected as one of the ECC’s “40 Under 40” leaders to watch, and the Huffington Post named him one of the “Black Christian Leaders Changing the World.” An ordained minister, Gilliard has served in pastoral ministry in Atlanta, Chicago, and Oakland. He was executive pastor of New Hope Covenant Church in Oakland, California and also served in Oakland as the associate pastor of Convergence Covenant Church. He was also the campus minister at North Park University and the racial righteousness director for ECC’s ministry initiatives in the Pacific Southwest Conference. With articles published in the CCDA Theology Journal, The Covenant Quarterly, and Sojourners, Gilliard has also blogged for Christianity Today, Faith & Leadership, Red Letter Christians, Do Justice, and The Junia Project. He earned a bachelor’s degree in African American Studies from Georgia State University and a master’s degree in history from East Tennessee State University, with an emphasis on race, gender, and class in the United States. He also earned an MDiv from North Park Seminary, where he served as an adjunct professor teaching Christian ethics, theology, and reconciliation.

The United States has more people locked up in jails, prisons, and detention centers than any other country in the history of the world. Mass incarceration has become a lucrative industry, and the criminal justice system is plagued with bias and unjust practices. And the church has unwittingly contributed to the problem.

-From the Publisher

*Originally Posted at MissioAlliance.org

Our Sponsor:

Sponsor a Child — At Compassion we take a committed, long-term approach to fighting child poverty. Our Holistic Child Development Model is made up of four comprehensive programs investing in children from the beginning of their lives until they’ve reached adulthood, and covering everything from prenatal care to university-level education.

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Rebekah Lyons is the author of Freefall to Fly: A Breathtaking Journey Toward a Life of Meaning and Founder of Q Women.

She is the mother of three, wife of one and a dog walker of two living in Nashville. Rebekah is an old soul with a contemporary, honest voice who puts a new face on the struggles women face as they seek to live a life of meaning. Through emotive writing and speaking, Rebekah reveals her own battles to overcome anxiety, depression, and consumer impulses – challenging women to discover and boldly pursue the calling God has for them.

Alongside her husband, Gabe, Rebekah serves as cofounder of Q Ideas, a nonprofit organization that helps Christian leaders winsomely engage culture. Her favorite pastime is spent with her nose in a book and a discriminating cup of coffee in hand.

Have you bought the lie? Many of us do. We measure our worth by what others think of us. We compare and strive, existing mostly for the approval of others. Pressure rises, anxiety creeps in and we hustle to keep up.

Jesus whispers, I gave my life to set you free. I gave you purpose. I called you to live in freedom in that purpose. Yet we still hobble through life, afraid to confess all the ways we push against this truth, because we can’t even believe it. We continue to grasp for the approval of anyone that will offer it: whether strangers, friends, or community.

Christ doesn’t say you can be or may be or will be free. He says you are free.

Dare you believe it?

In You Are Free, Rebekah invites you to:

• Overcome the exhaustion of trying to meet the expectations of others and rest in the joy God’s freedom brings.

• Release stress, anxiety and worry, to uncover the peace that comes from abiding in His presence.

• Find permission to grieve past experiences, confess areas of brokenness, and receive strength in your journey towards healing.

• Throw off self-condemnation, burn superficial masks and step boldly into what our good God has for you.

• Discover the courage to begin again and use your newfound freedom to set others free.

Freedom is for everyone who wants it—the lost, the wounded, and those weary from all of the striving. It’s for those who gave up trying years ago. It’s for those angry and hurt, brilliant and burnt by the Christian song and dance. You are the church, the people of God. You were meant to be free.

-From the Publisher