In Future Faith: Ten Challenges Reshaping Christianity in the 21st Century author Wesley Granberg-Michaelson provides a lucid view of how the top ten winds of change blowing through global Christian faith are reshaping the practice of Christianity today. He is uniquely qualified to identify and interpret connection points between global Christian trends and the American church.
Drawing on the stories, examples, and personalities of pastors and congregations from throughout the United States, as well as those from Africa, Asia, Latin America, who are the faces of Christianity’s future, Future Faith is designed to inform and empower followers of Jesus to seek new ways of becoming the face of Christ to a rapidly changing world.
Leaders and practitioners in church growth, renewal, and planting will be a primary audience for this book. Students of religion from Catholic, evangelical, Pentecostal, and historic Protestant streams will find this book an informative and stimulating resource for pondering together the future of their faith. Small groups engaged in congregational nurture and growth will find in the author a welcome companion for guiding them through the multicultural landscape of contemporary faith.
The Ten Challenges that Granberg-Michaelson identifies are:
- Revitalizing Withering Congregations
- Embracing the Color of the Future
- Seeing through Non-Western Eyes
- Perceiving the World as Sacred
- Affirming Spirit-Filled Communities
- Rejecting the Heresy of Individualism
- De-Americanizing (decolonizing) the Gospel
- Defeating Divisive Culture Wars
- Belonging before Believing
- Saving This World
In this book, Granberg-Michaelson has identified what he believes are the ten major trends, or challenges, that require our awareness if we (the church) wish to participate in changing expressions of Christian faith that are being driven, ultimately, by God’s Spirit -that Spirit that is always shaping, molding, infusing, and renewing the church.
The prophet Isaiah said, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isa 43:19 ESV).
Read about the first challenge here.
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