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Dissatisfied with a Victorian culture focused on domesticity and threatened by physical decline in sedentary office jobs, American men in the late nineteenth century sought masculine company in fraternal lodges and engaged in exercise to invigorate their bodies. One form of this new manly culture, developed out of the Protestant churches, was known as muscular Christianity. In this fascinating study, Clifford Putney details how Protestant leaders promoted competitive sports and physical education to create an ideal of Christian manliness.
“Church is boring.” “It’s irrelevant.” “It’s full of hypocrites.” You’ve heard the excuses—now learn the real reasons men and boys are fleeing churches of every kind, all over the world, and what we can do about it. Women comprise more than 60% of the adults in a typical worship service in America. Some overseas congregations report ten women for every man in attendance. Men are less likely to lead, volunteer, and give in the church. They pray less, share their faith less, and read the Bible less. In Why Men Hate Going to Church, David Murrow identifies the barriers keeping many men from going to church, explains why it’s so hard to motivate the men who do attend, and also takes you inside several fast-growing congregations that are winning the hearts of men and boys. In this completely revised, reorganized, and rewritten edition of the classic book, with more than 70 percent new content, explore topics like: The increase and decrease in male church attendance during the past 500 years Why Christian churches are more feminine even though men are often still the leaders The difference between the type of God men and women like to worship The lack of volunteering and ministry opportunities for men The benefits men get from attending church regularly Men need the church but, more importantly, the church needs men. The presence of enthusiastic men is one of the surest predictors of church health, growth, giving, and expansion. Why Men Hate Going to Church does not call men back to church—it calls the church back to men.
Biblically and practically instructs church members in ways they can labor for the health of their church. What Is a Healthy Church Member? takes its cue from Mark Dever's book What Is a Healthy Church?, which offered one definition of what a healthy church looks like biblically and historically. In this new work, pastor Thabiti Anyabwile attempts to answer the natural next question: "What does a healthy church member look like in the light of Scripture?" God intends for us to play an active and vital part in the body of Christ, the local church. He wants us to experience the local church as a home more profoundly wonderful and meaningful than any other place on earth. He intends for his churches to be healthy places and for the members of those churches to be healthy as well. This book explains how membership in the local church can produce spiritual growth in its members and how each member can contribute to the growth and health of the whole.
Just as a physically healthy person--at an ideal weight and with good blood pressure and cholesterol numbers--might not actually be fit enough to run a 5k, so churches can appear healthy--with no obvious issues, maintaining a healthy size--and yet not exhibit fitness. A fit church is one that is not satisfied with merely coasting along with no problems. A fit church is actively making disciples, maturing in faith, developing strong leaders, reaching out to the community, and more. Building the Body offers pastors and church leaders twelve characteristics of fit churches and shows them how they can move their church through five levels of fitness, from beginner all the way to elite--just as an athlete, through training and practice, can become the top in his or her class. Includes comparison charts at the end of each chapter so readers can clearly see where their church currently falls and concluding "Complete the Progress Chart" so that they can see what their goals should be for the future.
Sometimes, grace gets messy. Caleb Kaltenbach was raised by LGBT parents, marched in gay pride parades as a youngster, and experienced firsthand the hatred and bitterness of some Christians toward his family. But then Caleb surprised everyone, including himself, by becoming a Christian…and a pastor. Very few issues in Christianity are as divisive as the acceptance of the LGBT community in the church. As a pastor and as a person with beloved family members living a gay lifestyle, Caleb had to face this issue with courage and grace. Messy Grace shows us that Jesus’s command to “love your neighbor as yourself” doesn’t have an exception clause for a gay “neighbor”—or for that matter, any other “neighbor” we might find it hard to relate to. Jesus was able to love these people and yet still hold on to his beliefs. So can you. Even when it’s messy. “Messy Grace is an important contribution to the conversation about sexual identity for churches and leaders. Caleb's story is surprising and unique, and he weaves it together compellingly. He states his views clearly, leaves room for disagreement, and champions love no matter where you are in this conversation.” —Jud Wilhite, Sr. Pastor, Central Christian Church
Part 2 is here. This is the second installment of topics in the Christian Meat for Christian Muscles series; especially designed to pack more nutrition per page to those meat loving Christian readers and thinkers who devoured Part 1, and who want to live in God's perfect will. Continuing with the underlying premise that Strength in the Lord is essential for successful Christian living, we target more areas of our lives that can benefit from the spiritual nutrition that is ours through Jesus Christ. We trust all our readers are tasting more of His victory in their lives, and we boldly make this faith filled prediction: The battle to stop us from becoming better Christians is raging in vain. We are becoming stronger in the Lord and His power every day. The confidence and joy that comes with developing bigger Christian muscles is overflowing. We use this strength to fight the good fight, to gladly give to our poor brother, to compassionately forgive our weak brother, to lovingly serve our Big Brother; and as a community of brothers in Christ, we are growing to successfully live in God's perfect will. See sandtorock.com for more info on this important topic.
Before the heyday of the Chitlin Circuit and the Harlem Renaissance, African American performing artists and creative entrepreneurs—sometimes called Black Bohemians—seized their limited freedoms and gained both fame and fortune with their work in a white-dominated marketplace. These Black performers plied their trade in circuses, blues tents, and Wild West Shows with Native Americans. The era's traveling entertainments often promoted the "disappearing Indian" myth and promoted racial hierarchies with Black and Native people at the bottom. But in a racial economy rooted in settler-colonialism and legacies of enslavement, Black and Indigenous performers found that otherness could be a job qualification. Whether as artists or manual laborers, these workers rejected marginalization by traveling the world, making a solid living off their talents, and building platforms for political and social critique. Eventually, America's popular entertainment industry could not survive without Black and Native Americans' creative labor. As audiences came to eagerly anticipate their genius, these performers paved the way for greater social, economic, and cultural autonomy. Sakina M. Hughes provides a conceptually rich work revealing memorable individuals—laborers, artists, and entrepreneurs—who, faced with danger and discrimination, created surprising opportunities to showcase their talents and gain fame, wealth, and mobility.
Axel Bundgaard has produced a meaningful work on the important but little-told history of interschool athletics, exploring the introduction and nature of sport in the controlled environment of the American boarding school. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, American educators looked to the English public school as the educational archetype for producing good men, good Christians, and good leaders. The British incorporation of sport into the process of education, however, took root only slowly in the United States, where it seemed alien to Puritan values extolling hard work and deploring play as wasted time. Only when educators were convinced that sport was an essential tool in the process of raising the next generation by building character, team spirit, and leadership did the informal physical play initiated by students in early schools begin to evolve toward the highly organized, school-sponsored sports of today. Using archival material from several eastern boarding schools founded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Bundgaard traces this process from its beginnings in the muscular Christianity prevailing in the boarding schools of Victorian England-most notably Rugby. There, athletics and the prefect system older boys shaping the manners and morals of younger ones were used to mold youth into "Christian gentlemen," and it was believed that the seeds of future military victories were planted on the school playing fields. Bundgaard shows how this model of sport and character building was gradually absorbed into the classical curricula of private education in America, and then continues to chronicle the dramatic changes in this model through the first decade of the twentieth century, as educational philosophies evolved and an ideal of physical vigor and "conduct befitting a gentleman" emerged. Drawing on archival sources at Groton, Andover, Exeter, St. Paul's Suffield, Williston, Woodberry Forest, and Worcester Academy interviews, personal communications, school newspapers, and histories of various institutions Bundgaard provides a new critical perspective on the evolution of play and sports for schoolboys. This book will stimulate research on the broader subject of American secondary school athletics and pique the interest of sport historians, educators, and a general audience.