We all want a place where our stories matter, our voices are heard, our uniqueness is celebrated, our failures are embraced, and our hopes are unleashed. That kind of deep, life-changing community was modeled perfectly by Jesus and the ragged bunch of disciples with whom he chose to spend his time. But how can we create it in our lives? Using the relationship of Jesus to his disciples in the upper room, Bill Donahue presents a simple but compelling approach to community life that was modeled by Jesus and offered to us all today. Using a table, a towel, and the truth, Jesus created an "irresistible community" where everyone finds a place to belong, live fully in the truth, and serve others with joy. Foreword by Dr. Henry Cloud.

This is a groundbreaking study in the African American religious experience. Never before has there been a published collection of oral African American "call" stories that treats them as a genre worthy of scholarly analysis. This volume of eighty-six stories was collected in tape-recorded interviews over a six year period from 1985 to 1991. Significantly, this unique, in-depth study represents at least eight different Christian denominations. Many of the men and women who share their "call" story in this volume are nationally and internationally known.

Visionary essays from a founder of the modern ecology movement. In this collection of essays, Murray Bookchin's vision for an ecological society remains central as he addresses questions of urbanism and city planning, technology, self-management, energy, utopianism, and more. Throughout, he opposes efforts to reduce ecology to a toothless “environmentalism,” a task as vital today as when these essays were first published. Written between 1969 and 1979, the essays in this collection represent a fascinating and fertile period in Bookchin’s life. Coming out of the unfulfilled promise of the sixties and trying to develop a revolutionary critique of social life that avoided the pitfalls of Marxism, he was entering his creative intellectual peak. He was laying the foundations of a truly social ecology: a society based on decentralization, interdependence, democratic self-management, mutual aid, and solidarity. Presented with clarity and fervor, these key works contain the kernels of concerns that would occupy him until his death in 2006. This edition also includes a new foreword by Dan Chodorkoff, someone who was with Bookchin at the founding of his Institute for Social Ecology and who understand his work better than anyone.

A journey into Einstein's world of gravity and its captivating objects: black holes, neutron stars, and gravitational waves.

All societies are, by their very nature, dramatic. They present themselves, especially for those who want to look back in time, as a fascinating and confusing whole of theatrical events and constructions. Sometimes the theatre itself succeeds in capturing that fascination and confusion. This book describes the dramatic society in the form of case studies that link politics, history and culture. The Dramatic Society uses selected plays to examine specific moments in history. Its range of subjects are extremely diverse, including Medea as an icon of terrorism, a choreography based upon Shakespeare’s As You Like It, horror movies about the German unification, a truth commission dealing with "human zoos", and the reconstruction of Ai Weiwei’s troubles with the tax authorities. This collection of insightful essays deals with theatrical performances – including happenings, installations and movies – of the past fifty years, with every chapter attempting to link artistic events with politics and political theory, from Hannah Arendt to Slavoj Žižek. This is a revealing assessment of the ways in which drama and politics become intertwined, offering crucial insights for scholars and students of theatre studies, performance studies, contemporary politics and cultural studies.

The relationship between crime and community has a long history in criminological thought, from the early notion of the criminogenic community developed by the Chicago sociologists through to various crime prevention models in research and policy. This book offers a useful theoretical overview of key approaches to the subject of crime and community and considers the ways in which these have been applied in more practical settings. Written by an expert in the field and drawing on a range of international case studies from Europe, North America, Australia and Asia, this book explores both why and how crime and community have been linked and the implications of their relationship within criminology and crime prevention policy. Topics covered in the book include: the different crime prevention paradigms which have been utilised in the 'fight against crime', the turn to community in crime prevention policy, which took place during the 1980s in the UK and US and its subsequent development, the particular theoretical and ideological underpinnings to crime prevention work in and with different communities, the significance and impact of fear of crime on crime prevention policy, different institutional responses to working with community in crime prevention and community safety, the ways in which the experience of the UK and US have been translated into the European context, a comparison between traditional Western responses to the growing interest in restorative and community-based approaches in other regions. This book offers essential reading for students taking courses on crime and community, crime prevention and community safety, and community corrections.

Most churches in America struggle to have a significant percentage of their adult attendance in small groups. According to recent research done by Lifeway Research, only “33 percent of churchgoers attend classes or groups for adults (such as Sunday school, Bible study, small groups, or Adult Bible Fellowships) four or more times in a typical month. Fourteen percent attend two or three times a month.” Life transformation happens best within the context of community, so if a church is going to be intentional about discipleship they have to develop on-ramps to small groups that reach people on the fringes and beyond. If we continue to offer small groups to the normal church attenders, a majority of the people who show up to church are never reached. Pastors, church staff and small group leaders are trying to figure out how to make small groups work in their church and they don’t know how. Small Groups For The Rest Of Us gives them practical, proven strategies on moving people from the fringes into biblically based communities.

In the 1930s, German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer anticipated the restoration of the Church after the coming Second World War through a new kind of monasticism, a way of life of uncompromising adherence to the Sermon on the Mount in imitation of Christ. Since then, the renewal of Christian monasticism has become a great spiritual movement. Imbued with a love for God and neighbour, and with a healthy self-love, people are going to monasteries to deepen their relationship with God, to pray, andto find peace. While some monastic institutions are suffering a decline in traditional vocations, many Christians are exploring monastic lifestyles. This book introduces The Community of the Transfiguration in Australia, the story of a new monastic community and an inspiring source of hope for the world at another time of spiritual, social, and ecological crisis.

This book is a reinterpretation of China's international relations since 1949. Employing the notion and theory of international society, it offers a systematic examination of China's unique relationship with the society of states from its alienation in the 1950s and the 1960s to its political socialisation and economic integration in the 1980s and the 1990s. It explores how such a unique relationship has shaped and is likely to shape Chinese foreign policy. This book provides an entirely new perspective for our understanding of forces influencing Chinese foreign policy behaviour.

This book offers insight on access to justice from rural areas in internationally comparable contexts to highlight the diversity of experiences within, and across rural areas globally. It looks at the fundamental questions for people's lives raised by the issue of access to justice as well as the rule of law. It highlights a range of social, geographic and cultural issues which impact the way rural communities experience the justice system throughout the world with chapters on Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, Kenya, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Syria, Turkey, the USA and Wales. Each chapter explores three questions: 1. How do people experience the institutions of justice in rural areas and how does this rural experience differ to an urban experience? 2. What impact have changes in policy had on the justice system in rural areas, and have rural and urban areas been affected in different ways? 3. What impact does the law have on people's lives in rural areas and what would rural communities like to be better understood about their experience of the justice system? By bringing in the voices and experiences of those who are often ignored or side-lined by justice systems, this book will set out an agenda for ensuring social justice in legal systems with a focus on protecting marginalised groups.