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Small group resources tend to overlook the spiritual side of small group leadership. And yet most would agree that spiritual preparation is the most important aspect of leading a small group. Only God’s supernatural power can draw people to the truth and liberate them to be all that God wants them to be. Only through the Spirit’s power can we expect to see the miracles that Jesus talked about when He said that if we would abide in Him, we would bear much fruit and even do greater works than He did while He was on earth. The key distinction of this book is the spiritual perspective it gives to small group ministry. So much of the literature about small groups relates to small group technique and only touches briefly on the Spirit’s power. This book is a practical reference guide to help small group leadership begin to move in the supernatural realm. The book’s first priority is to help small group leaders and members trust the Holy Spirit to lead them, empower them and work in their group. Small group facilitators often sense a lack of guidance, power and spiritual authority. Jesus knew His disciples would be powerless without a touch from the Holy Spirit, and so He told them to wait in Jerusalem, saying, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Small group leaders need a power boost to make small group ministry relevant and exciting. The second priority of this book is to help the facilitator identify and mobilize each small group member to use his or her own spiritual gifts. Small group facilitators often feel ill-prepared to identify spiritual gifts of the people in the group. I firmly believe that the small group atmosphere is the perfect place to develop the gifts of the Spirit in each member’s life, and so it is essential that the facilitator know how to do this. Whatever denominational or non-denominational label a church wears, the most important characteristic, in my opinion, is promoting individual sensitivity, devotion and dependence on the Holy Spirit. In a Holy Spirit-charged atmosphere, cell leaders are best raised up and members are encouraged to minister in their giftedness. This book has been written for those who are leading (facilitating) a small group, participating in a small group or considering joining a small group. Group members should read this book for two particular reasons: First, members make a significant contribution to the life of the cell. Each member will be intimately involved in causing supernatural events to happen—using the gifts, intercession, etc. In the life of the group, no one is to sit back and do nothing. The best cell leaders, in fact, rarely “lead” the entire cell, instead encouraging cell members to participate actively. Second, members are the next in line to actually lead the small group. I am assuming that the readers of this book are believers who desire God and are seeking to walk in the Spirit. I am also assuming that those reading this book are studying the Bible and growing in their relationships with the Lord. There are many great books dedicated to defining each spiritual gift in detail. Many other authors cover gifts beyond the scope of this book, such as voluntary poverty, hospitality, celibacy, missions, exorcism, martyrdom, artistic creativity, craftsmanship and music. Rather than cover every possible gift, this book will focus on how the Spirit uses gifts in the small group context and guides the leader to facilitate a Spirit-filled group. Because this book is written to lay leadership rather than senior leaders of the Church, I will not cover in detail the five-fold offices that Paul mentioned in Ephesians 4.8 Instead, the gifts I will cover in this book are explicitly listed in Scripture (the one exception is intercessory prayer, which I call a spiritual gift although some would disagree).
This innovative text uses the lens of culture to examine the various theoretical perspectives and paradigms of urban analysis. It explores the city's impact on how we make and consume all types of culture—art, music, literature, architecture, film, and more—not only illustrating the effects the urban environment has on the production of culture, but, at times, how culture has influenced the city. Theoretically diverse, Urban Culture employs the major theoretical perspectives in sociology and the major paradigms in Urban Sociology and Urban Studies: Urban Ecology, Marxism, New Urbanism, Socio-Psychological Perspective, Structuralists/Econometrics, and Urban Elites/ Entrepreneurs. Urban Terrorism is also addressed to provide a timely examination of the cultural impact and sociological effects of terrorism in an urban setting.
The Politics of Urban Cultural Policy brings together a range of international experts to critically analyze the ways that governmental actors and non-governmental entities attempt to influence the production and implementation of urban policies directed at the arts, culture, and creative activity. Presenting a global set of case studies that span five continents and 22 cities, the essays in this book advance our understanding of how the dynamic interplay between economic and political context, institutional arrangements, and social networks affect urban cultural policy-making and the ways that these policies impact urban development and influence urban governance. The volume comparatively studies urban cultural policy-making in a diverse set of contexts, analyzes the positive and negative outcomes of policy for different constituencies, and identifies the most effective policy directions, emerging political challenges, and most promising opportunities for building effective cultural policy coalitions. The volume provides a comprehensive and in-depth engagement with the political process of urban cultural policy and urban development studies around the world. It will be of interest to students and researchers interested in urban planning, urban studies and cultural studies.
This set includes key pieces from Peter Ackroyd, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, Homi Bhaba, Charles Dickens, Fredrick Engles, Paul Gilroy, Thomas Hobbes, Max Weber, George Simmel, Ian Sinclair, Edward W. Soja, Gayatri Spivak, Nigel Thrift, Virginia Woolf, Sharon Zukin, and many others. The material is arranged thematically highlighting the variety of interests that coexist (and conflict) within the city. Issues such as gender, class, race, age and disability are covered along with urban experiences such as walking, politics & protest, governance, inclusion and exclusion. Urban pathologies, including gangsters, mugging, and drug-dealing are also explored. Selections cover cities from around the globe, including London, Berlin, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Bombay and Tokyo. A general introduction by the editor reviews theoretical perspectives and provides a rationale for the collection. This collection offers a valuable research tool to a broad range of disciplines, including: sociology; anthropology; cultural history; cultural geography; art critical theory; visual culture; literary studies; social policy and cultural studies.
Drawing on biblical teaching and the ministry of the early church, Gareth Weldon Icenogle offers guidance for setting up and running a biblically based small-group ministry program.
Telecommunications and the City provides the first critical and state-of-the-art review of the relations between telecommunications and all aspects of city development and management. Drawing on a range of theoretical approaches and a wide body of recent research, the book addresses key academic and policy debates about technological change and the future of cities with a fresh perspective. Through this approach, the complex and crucial transformations underway in cities in which telecommunications have central importance are mapped out and illustrated. Key areas where telecommunications impinge on the economic, social, physical, enviromental and institutional development of cities are illustrated by using boxed extracts and wide range of case study examples from Europe, Japan and North America. Rejecting the extremes of optimism and pessimism in current hype about cities and telecommunications, Telecommunications and the City offers a sophisticated new perspective through which city-telecommunications relations can be understood.
Explores cities and urban life from the perspectives of both sociology and cultural theory. Through an interdisciplinary approach, the book demonstrates that the "real" city of physicality and struggle and the "imagined" city of representations are entwined in the construction of urban cultures.
This book studies the production of urban culture in Tehran after 1979. It analyzes urban resistance and urban processes in underground cultural spaces: bookshops, cafes and art galleries. The intended audience is architects and urban planners interested in socio-political aspects of bottom-up space formation, but also those in humanities and particularly cultural studies. The idea of the book reflects architectural criticism and bottom-up processes of space formation. It analyzes alternative, non-official ways of forming cultural spaces in Tehran and the way they resist formally endorsed culture. Cafés, bookshops and galleries, each take various and different sets of strategies to constitute their territory and their communities within the city. From temporarily occupying street corners (booksellers) to constitution of an underground network of unfixed meeting points, to using the modern paradigms of ownership and the idea of private property, primarily as a political tool for management, to claim a safe alternative sphere of art, and finally to semiotic spatial codifications of spaces to make them as a safe gathering places taking food as a means. All these three cultural spaces deal with various conditions to form specific forms of resistance practices, throughout processes that leave their spatial traces on the city.
Until now, much research in the field of urban planning and change has focused on the economic, political, social, cultural and spatial transformations of global cities and larger metropolitan areas. In this topical new volume, David Bell and Mark Jayne redress this balance, focusing on urban change within small cities around the world. Drawing together research from a strong international team of contributors, this four part book is the first systematic overview of small cities. A comprehensive and integrated primer with coverage of all key topics, it takes a multi-disciplinary approach to an important contemporary urban phenomenon. The book addresses: political and economic decision making urban economic development and competitive advantage cultural infrastructure and planning in the regeneration of small cities identities, lifestyles and ways in which different groups interact in small cities. Centering on urban change as opposed to pure ethnographic description, the book’s focus on informed empirical research raises many important issues. Its blend of conceptual chapters and theoretically directed case studies provides an excellent resource for a broad spectrum of undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as providing a rich resource for academics and researchers.