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Item Symposium on the Role of Women in the Church(Zondervan, 1984-08-28)The Biblical Research Institute (BRI) of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists has been involved since 1972 with committees, councils, and research papers on the roles of women in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. At times they were encouraged to believe that the papers written on the subject could be published for the benefit of concerned individuals within the church and the information of similar persons outside the membership of the church.* Until the present time there have been various factors which have led the administrative leadership of the church to postpone such publication. The general reason given for the reluctance to publish was the fear that certain countries in the world family of Adventist churches would be embarrassed, if not offended, by actions that could result in placing women in leadership roles in the church, the home, the school, or the family. Persons or organizations hearing of the existence of these papers could purchase copies from the Biblical Research office. Some copies have been distributed under these terms. Now the BRI’s Administrative Committee has voted to publish this set of papers. The following provides an overview of them so that the reader may better anticipate their contents. One of the issues receiving the attention of Christian churches in the past fifteen years has been the roles that the women of these churches can best fulfill. This subject is of particular concern to those women who feel that they have been, or are, prevented from carrying out certain roles in the church, for which they believe they have a competency or a potential capacity. Others share their concern. It is of interest also to those—both men and women—who are aroused by present-day agitation in society for women to be freely admitted to those areas from which custom and tradition have hitherto excluded them. Such persons want to know whether and how the church is affected by, and is relating to, this general movement in society—how it is treating its women. For many, the church’s profession of Christ is judged on this issue.Item Reasonable Faith Christian Truth and Apologetics(Crossway Books, 2008-08-08) WILLIAM LANE CRAIGWhat is apologetics? Apologetics (from the Greek apologia: a defense) is that branch of Christian theology which seeks to provide a rational justification for the truth claims of the Christian faith. Apologetics is thus primarily a theoretical discipline, though it has a practical application. In addition to serving, like the rest of theology in general, as an expression of loving God with all our minds, apolo getics specifically serves to show to unbelievers the truth of the Christian faith, to confirm that faith to believers, and to reveal and explore the connections between Christian doctrine and other truths. As a theoretical discipline, then, apologet ics is not training in the art of answering questions, or debating, or evangelism, though all of these draw upon the science of apologetics and apply it practically. T his implies that a course in apologetics is not for the purpose of teaching you, “If he says so-and-so, then you say such-and-such back.” Apologetics, to repeat, is a theoretical discipline that tries to answer the question, What rational warrant can be given for the Christian faith? Therefore, most of our time must be spent in trying to answer this question. Now this is bound to be disappointing to some. They’re just not interested in the rational justification of Christianity. They want to know, “If someone says, ‘Look at all the hypocrites in the church!’ what do I say?” There’s nothing wrong with that question; but the fact remains that such practical matters are logically secondary to the theoretical issues and cannot in our limited space occupy the center of our attention. The use of apologetics in practice ought rather to be an integral part of courses and books on evangelism.Item How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth:A Guide to Understanding the Bible(Zondervan, 1993-03-13) Gordon D. Fee; Douglas StuartEvery so often we meet someone who says with great feeling, “You don’t have to interpret the Bible; just read it and do what it says.” Usually, such a remark reflects the layperson’s protest against the “professional” scholar, pastor, teacher, or Sunday school teacher, who, by “interpreting,” seems to be taking the Bible away from the common man or woman. It is their way of saying that the Bible is not an obscure book. “After all,” it is argued, “any person with half a brain can read it and understand it. The problem with too many preachers and teachers is that they dig around so much they tend to muddy the waters. What was clear to us when we read it isn’t so clear anymore.” There is a lot of truth in that protest. We agree that Christians should learn to read, believe, and obey the Bible. And we especially agree that the Bible should not be an obscure book if studied and read properly. In fact we are convinced that the single most serious problem people have with the Bible is not with a lack of under standing, but with the fact that they understand most things too well! The problem with such a text as “Do everything without com plaining or arguing” (Phil. 2:14), for example, is not with under standing it, but with obeying it—putting it into practice.Item Fighting for Your Marriage Positive Steps for Preventing Divorce and Preserving a Lasting Love(JOSSEY-BASS, 2001-01-11) Howard J. MarkmanThings change. Because of that simple fact, we’ve updated our work in order to bring you what we consider to be an even more practi- cal and potent version of Fighting for Your Marriage. What you hold in your hand is a major revision of the book we published in 1994. We wrote the original version to help couples build and nurture happy and strong marriages. This book is based on PREP®, which stands for the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program. PREP is based on over twenty years of research at the University of Denver as well as on research from universities around the world. PREP is a program we developed to help couples beat the odds. PREP workshops use specific steps and exercises to teach couples the skills and attitudes associated with good relationships. Because of its roots in solid research and its straightforward approach, PREP has received a great deal of attention from couples across the coun- try, professionals in the field of marital counseling, and the media. PREP is one of the most extensively researched programs for cou- ples ever developed. The strategies in PREP are based on our study of the key risks couples face as well as the most promising avenues for helping couples lower the risks. Marriage in our culture is risky business, and the costs of marital failure are staggering. The good news is that there are proven strategies that can help you preserve a lasting love. Whether or not you ever take a PREP workshop, this book presents the core of our thinking and strategies for couples.Item Faith-Based Organizations and Legislative Advocacy: A Qualitative Inquiry(M. Lori Thomas, 2008-08-08) Marye LorelleA dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2008 Major Director: F. Ellen Netting, Professor, School of Social Work Since the early 1990s, religion and matters of faith and spirituality have become a focal point in numerous arenas beyond the individual and traditionally sacred. With President George W. Bush’s White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives of 2001, the Charitable Choice provision of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act that preceded it in 1996, and the myriad of legal challenges that followed, matters of religion have become paramount in political discourse regarding social welfare. The viability of faith-based social service provision and the organizations providing the direct services have been the focus of speculation, debate, and a growing amount of research. Few studies, however, have explored the role of faith-based advocacy or lobbying organizations in shifting the social welfare climate, in proposing or opposing policy changes in the social welfare system, or in defining social welfare. Little is empirically known about the organizational dynamics of religious advocacy groups whose attempts at structural influence are, in part, affected by theological positions and religiously-informed values.Item CLASSICAL APOLOGETICS A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics(Zondervan, 1984-04-04) R. C. SPROUL; JOHN GERSTNER and ARTHUR LINDSLEYChristianity is rational. But because it provokes passion, devotion, prayer, worship, and aspirations to obedience, its purely rational element can easily be submerged or concealed from view. It has been called variously a “religion,” a “way of life,” an “experience,” a “faith,” and an “ideology.” That Christianity involves more, much more than rationality, is evident. That it is eminently rational is not always evident. Throughout this work, the authors, John Gerstner, Arthur Lindsley, and R. C. Sproul, affirm the primacy of the mind in the Christian faith. To suggest the primacy of the mind is outrageous to some, particularly to those who equate rationality with rationalism. We also affirm the primacy of the heart. The scope of this volume focuses primarily on the rational aspect of Christianity. Our emphasis on this part, however, must not be misconstrued as a summary of the whole.Item Fighting for Your Marriage Positive Steps for Preventing Divorce and Preserving a Lasting Love(Jossey Bass, 2001-01-11) Howard J. MarkmanThings change. Because of that simple fact, we’ve updated our work in order to bring you what we consider to be an even more practi- cal and potent version of Fighting for Your Marriage. What you hold in your hand is a major revision of the book we published in 1994. We wrote the original version to help couples build and nurture happy and strong marriages. This book is based on PREP®, which stands for the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program. PREP is based on over twenty years of research at the University of Denver as well as on research from universities around the world. PREP is a program we developed to help couples beat the odds. PREP workshops use specific steps and exercises to teach couples the skills and attitudes associated with good relationships. Because of its roots in solid research and its straightforward approach, PREP has received a great deal of attention from couples across the coun- try, professionals in the field of marital counseling, and the media. PREP is one of the most extensively researched programs for cou- ples ever developed. The strategies in PREP are based on our study of the key risks couples face as well as the most promising avenues for helping couples lower the risks. Marriage in our culture is risky business, and the costs of marital failure are staggering.Item An Expositional Commentary ACTS(Zondervan, 1996-06-26) James Montgomery BoiceIn the last few years I have come across a number of disturbing books that ring a loud alarm for the church establishment known as evangelicalism. Evangel means "good news," or "the gospel," and the evangelical churches are those that assume they know the gospel and are defending it in a day when liberal churches are not. The books I am referring to say that this is not so, that evangelicals are actually in the process of abandoning the gospel along with many other theological convictions on which the church has been built. One outstanding book is David F. Wells's No Place for Truth: Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? Michael Scott Horton edited Power Religion: The Selling Out of the Evangelical Church.Item UNDERSTANDING CHURCH GROWTH(Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1970-09-29) DONALD A. McGAVRANOne of the greatest privileges of my life has been to associate closely with Donald A. McGavran. After sixteen years as a missionary to Bolivia, I ac cepted his call in 1971 to join him on the faculty of the Fuller Theologi cal Seminary School of World Mission in Pasadena, California. For ten years, until his retirement in 1981, we worked together teaching church growth, supervising graduate theses and dissertations in the field, train ing missionaries and pastors, and consulting with churches and mission agencies. I was honored in 1984 to be invited to become the first incum bent of the Donald A. McGavran Chair of Church Growth. Understanding Church Growth is one of those classics which has be come the indispensable foundational text for an academic field. No one can claim to be a serious student of church growth who has not read and absorbed the content of Understanding Church Growth. I was one of the first to be introduced to the content of this book, in classroom lectures in the late 1960s while it was yet being written. The first edition was pub lished in 1970, and the revised edition was expanded and updated by McGavran in 1980. In this 1990 edition the language has been modern ized, the flow of ideas somewhat streamlined, the content also reduced, mostly by eliminating redundancies, ideas and illustrations updated, and a bit of new material such as the chapter on divine healing introduced. But through it all, Donald McGavran is the one who speaks.Item transformational leadership(LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS Mahwah, New Jersey, 2006-06-26) Bernard M. BassThere has been an explosion of interest in leadership. Each day stories appear in the newspapers discussing instances of successful leadership, as well as signifi cant failures of leadership. The stories usually concern world class and national politicians and statesmen, chief executive offi cers (CEO) of business and industry, directors of government and health care agencies, or generals and admirals. Sometimes the stories are of high-level leaders who are often in the spotlight. Carly Fiorina was the CEO of Hewlett Packard (HP) from 1999 until ousted in early 2005. As one of only a handful of women CEOs of Fortune 100 companies, she was often in the news, but no more so than when she led HP through the choppy waters of its merger with Compaq. Through a contentious fi ght to win over the support of HP’s board of directors, Fiorina kept her eyes on the vision of transforming HP into a “full service” technology company to rival IBM (Lashinsky, 2002). To make this a reality, Fiorina had to fi rst persuade board mem bers and inspire rank and fi le employees to buy in to her vision: Indeed, the day after the merger, she and Michael Capellas, the CEO of Compaq—now the No. 2 at HP—spent two hours simply marching through the one-mile-plus walkway that connects Compaq’s 17-building corporate headquarters in Houston, meeting and greeting as many people as they could. “She was like this massive fi gure,” recalls HP employee Antonio Humphreys, who worked for Compaq before the merger. “She took pictures and put on hats. The fact that she was willing to do that for the common folk—that earned her a lot of points.” (Lashinsky, 2002, p. 94) CEO Fiorina immediately focused on implementing the vision by empowering subordinates and providing an example of the hard work needed to transform an organization, its culture, and its trajectory.