This survey of Africa's Christian centuries is organized around Augustine's vision of the City of God and H. Richard Niebuhr's conception of the kingdom of God in history. African Christianity, writes the author, has blended the sovereign rule of God, the redemptive reign of Christ, and the social emphases of the kingdom of justice.

The Kingdom of God in Africa: A Short History of African Christianity (Bgc Monograph)

History

Shaw, Mark R.

World

Baker Pub Group

Tired of following the latest church-growth fad? In many churches, building vision means embracing the ideas of the latest guru and jumping from one program to another. Ministry decisions are made according to the crisis of the moment or the pressures of the bottom line. Long-term planning can seem like an impossible dream. This book offers something different. Here are ideas that have stood the test of time--ideas from the most significant Christian leaders of the last five hundred years. Your church can implement key strategies from the lives and writings of the reformers: 
<ul>
<li>Gain a vision for truth.</li>
<li>Renew your quest for holiness.</li>
<li>See how delighting in God will inspire your worship.</li>
<li>Bring renewal with a biblical model of revival.</li>
<li>Build leaders with a time-tested plan for discipleship.</li>
<li>Energize your vision for missions.</li>
<li>Grow together with key principles of Christian community.</li>
</ul> And who makes up the panel of expert consultants who will guide your vision for lasting change? None other than Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, William Carey, John Wesley, Richard Baxter, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and more. Each of the ten great ideas found in this book provides a biblically based and historically rooted vision for your church over the long haul. Do you want to revitalize the work of your church? Here are ten of the best ways in history to make it happen.

10 Great Ideas from Church History: A Decision-Maker's Guide to Shaping Your Church

Work. Play. Love. Most of our life is spent in these three areas. But all too often, our work is frustrating, our play is exhausting and our relationships are challenging. What would it take to have a life of meaningful work, refreshing fun and great relationships? Mark Shaw paints us a vivid picture of human flourishing, where a convergence of work, play and love brings delight in life. By pursuing wisdom rather than folly, we can have a renewed sense of vocation. Guarding against cultural pitfalls of money, sex and power, Shaw invites us to discover instead a deeper calling to playful work and faithful love. There we can find our place and experience life as it?s intended to be lived―playfully, with freedom and joy. Filled with engaging visual illustrations, this friendly guide will help you discover a life where your work, play and love are all in alignment with God's purposes for you and a larger mission in the world.

Work, Play, Love: A Visual Guide to Calling, Career and the Mission of God

Self-Help

Happiness

The last century has seen the revolutionary remaking of Christianity into a truly world religion. How did it happen? What triggered the emergence of this new global faith no longer dominated by the West, full of new and vital forms of devotion? Mark Shaw's provocative thesis is that far-flung revivals are at the heart of the global resurgence of Christianity. These were not the quirky folk rituals associated with rural America and nineteenth-century camp meetings that belong more to an age of plows and prairies than of postmodernity and globalization. Rather they were like forces of nature, protean, constantly adjusting their features and ferocity to new times and to new places, speaking Spanish, Portuguese, Yoruba, Korean, Mandarin and Gujarati. They crossed the equator. As they traveled abroad they grabbed hold of missionaries, Bible translations, national evangelists, globalization and glossolalia and turned them into a religious revolution. In this engaging book we read the stories of Joseph Babalola and the Aladura Revival in Africa, of Kil Sun-Ju and the great Korean revival of 1907, of Paulo Borges Jr. and explosion of neo-Pentecostalism in Brazil, and of V. S. Azariah and the mass conversions of the Dalit people in India. As Shaw paints portraits of these and many more, his gallery fills, and we begin to see beyond isolated pictures to the sweeping landscape that we didn't realize was before our eyes all the time.

Global Awakening: How 20th-Century Revivals Triggered a Christian Revolution

IVP Academic

<ul><li>Christianity Today 2019 Book of the Year Award, Missions/Global Church</li></ul> Building from a behind-the-scenes case study of Kenya's Nairobi Chapel and its "daughter" Mavuno Church, Wanjiru M. Gitau expands their story into a narrative that offers analysis of the rise, growth, and place of megachurches worldwide in the new millennium. In contexts experienced as deeply volatile, and on a continent reeling from the structural incoherence imposed in colonial times, megachurches provide a map of reality to navigate by, with the gospel as their primary compass. Gitau shows that recognizing the psychological, spiritual, and social destabilization of modernizing societies is the first step to valuing the place of megachurches in contemporary Christianity. Through analysis of social demography, theology, philosophy of ministry, leadership development, and strategy, Megachurch Christianity Reconsidered makes integral sense of the historical and social forces that give megachurches their growth opportunity, and reclaims them as a subject of serious theological conversation. This engaging account centers on the role of millennials in responding to the need for "a home for new generations" amid the dislocating transitions of globalization and postmodernity in postcolonial Africa and around the world. Gitau gleans practical wisdom for postdenominational churches everywhere (mega- and otherwise) from the lessons learned in Kenya's remarkable urban, evangelical renewal movement.

Megachurch Christianity Reconsidered: Millennials and Social Change in African Perspective (Missiological Engagements)

Gitau, Wanjiru M.

Africa