Søren Kierkegaard

C. S. Lewis

Jean Vanier

Eugene H. Peterson

Thomas Merton

Joan Chittister

Henri J. M. Nouwen

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Richard J. Foster

Chiara Lubich

Saint Benedict

Howard A. Snyder

Dorothy Day

David Janzen

Christine D. Pohl

Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Eberhard Arnold

John M. Perkins

Christine Christine

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Why, in age of connectivity, are our lives more isolated and fragmented than ever? And what can be done about it? The answer lies in the hands of God's people. Increasingly, today's Christians want to be the church, to follow Christ together in daily life. From every corner of society, they are daring to step away from the status quo and respond to Christ's call to share their lives more fully with one another and with others. As they take the plunge, they are discovering the rich, meaningful life that Jesus has in mind for all people, and pointing the church back to its original calling: to be a gathered, united community that demonstrates the transforming love of God. Of course, such a life together with others isn't easy. The selections in this volume are, by and large, written by practitioners--people who have pioneered life in intentional community and have discovered in the nitty-gritty of daily life what it takes to establish, nurture, and sustain a Christian community over the long haul. Whether you have just begun thinking about communal living, are already embarking on sharing life with others, or have been part of a community for many years, the pieces in this collection will encourage, challenge, and strengthen you. The book's fifty-two chapters can be read one a week to ignite meaningful group discussion.

The Life Jesus Wants for His People

Called to Community

Many young idealists, after a few failures, burn out and return to status quo lives. Not so with the seven radicals in this book, who met in an interracial house church and intentional community on Chicago's West Side during the civil rights era. Here you will make the acquaintance of a Church of the Brethren pastoral couple who tried to bring communal life to the black ghetto; a fashionable socialite who trashed her curlers and joined the simple life; an elite Stanford graduate who cast his lot with a bus full of black teens on an epic ride to Washington, DC, to hear MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech; two ethnic-Mennonite women who became community leaders and elders during a male-dominated era; and a painfully shy "geek" awakened to the traumas of racism by five days in the Albany, Georgia, jail. Now, in their seventies, eighties, and nineties, these veterans of community witness to the possibility of radical life conversions, engagement with the hard, slow work of racial reconciliation that learns from mistakes and does not quit. This book concludes with the invitation to the joyful path of becoming who God made us to be--saints.

How Refugees from a Civil-Rights-Era Storefront Church Energized the Christian Community Movement, An Oral History

Seven Radical Elders

The anthropological approach to the expulsion of the foreign women from the post-exilic community argues that it was the result of a witch-hunt. Its comparative approach notes that the community responded to its weak social boundaries in the same fashion as societies with similar social weaknesses. This book argues that the post-exilic community's decision to expel the foreign women in its midst was the direct result of the community's inability to enforce a common morality among its members. This anthropological approach to the expulsion shows how other societies with weak social moralities tend to react with witch-hunts, and it suggests that the expulsion in Ezra 9-10 was precisely such an activity. It concludes with an examination of the political and economic forces that could have eroded the social morality of the community.

The Expulsion of the Foreign Women in Ezra 9-10

Witch-hunts, Purity, and Social Boundaries

Many young idealists, after a few failures, burn out and return to status quo lives. Not so with the seven radicals in this book, who met in an interracial house church and intentional community on Chicago’s West Side during the civil rights era. Here you will make the acquaintance of a Church of the Brethren pastoral couple who tried to bring communal life to the black ghetto; a fashionable socialite who trashed her curlers and joined the simple life; an elite Stanford graduate who cast his lot with a bus full of black teens on an epic ride to Washington, DC, to hear MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech; two ethnic-Mennonite women who became community leaders and elders during a male-dominated era; and a painfully shy “geek” awakened to the traumas of racism by five days in the Albany, Georgia, jail. Now, in their seventies, eighties, and nineties, these veterans of community witness to the possibility of radical life conversions, engagement with the hard, slow work of racial reconciliation that learns from mistakes and does not quit. This book concludes with the invitation to the joyful path of becoming who God made us to be—saints.

David Janzen

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