If you have searched for a simple, concise booklet to put in the hands of each of your group members to fully explain what cell life is all about, you've found it! This easy-to-read booklet is filled with stories about healthy cell life and how to interact with fellow cell members and unchurched people. Topics include: - Developing a personal prayer life - Investing time with other members between meetings - Reading out to unchurched people and connecting them to the group - Discovering their own leadership potential and using it in the group - Helpful information on how to host a group meeting Each chapter ends with ways to share what has been learned as well as experience it. Additional resources are also included for deeper reading. If your cell group members don't seem to get it, or you want to put something in the hands of every incoming cell member so they'll know what to expect (and what cell life involves when it's done right), you will love this book.

"Community Life for the Mentally Ill" presents a social innovative experiment aimed at providing new and more participating social positions in American society for mental patients. It presents the events that occurred when a courageous group of former chronic mental patients abruptly left a hospital and established their own autonomous sub-society in a large, metropolitan area.In order to complete this experiment, the patients created a small society in the community where discharged patients could live and work. Others evaluated the effects of the newly created society upon the behavior and perceptions of its members, which is also presented here. Both the descriptive and comparative aspects of this study are presented as they occurred in real life. The book is concerned with the medical, economic, sociological, and psychological facets of these former patients' daily lives. The effects of this small society upon the neighborhood and city in which it was located, as well as its effects upon professional persons, are richly explored.Clearly defining a radical departure from standard methods for treating the mentally ill, the authors conclude that such an autonomous society can thrive in the appropriate setting; the ex-patient's chances of employment are increased and the chance of recidivism are reduced; the member's self-esteem is enhanced; treatment costs are greatly reduced; the community adjustment of all members is increased, especially among those who have been hospitalized for a long period. With new guidelines for identifying danger zones in urban settings, this becomes a critical work.

The inequalities that persist in America have deep historical roots. Evelyn Nakano Glenn untangles this complex history in a unique comparative regional study from the end of Reconstruction to the eve of World War II. During this era the country experienced enormous social and economic changes with the abolition of slavery, rapid territorial expansion, and massive immigration, and struggled over the meaning of free labor and the essence of citizenship as people who previously had been excluded sought the promise of economic freedom and full political rights. After a lucid overview of the concepts of the free worker and the independent citizen at the national level, Glenn vividly details how race and gender issues framed the struggle over labor and citizenship rights at the local level between blacks and whites in the South, Mexicans and Anglos in the Southwest, and Asians and haoles (the white planter class) in Hawaii. She illuminates the complex interplay of local and national forces in American society and provides a dynamic view of how labor and citizenship were defined, enforced, and contested in a formative era for white-nonwhite relations in America.

Looking for a Bible study that goes beyond the surface? Let’s dive into the depths of transformation. Ever find yourself on a spiritual treadmill, going through the motions without feeling truly moved? Do you wrestle with inner struggles, feeling stuck or unsure of your core values? It’s time for a change. Imagine experiencing significant and sustained life change. Picture those close to you noticing a difference and walking confidently in God’s presence, power, and purpose. It’s possible. While there’s no quick fix or magic wand, the path to spiritual growth is within reach. This experiential workbook is tailored just for you. It offers a 30-day solo journey with Paul’s warmest letter, providing intimate communion with God. Additionally, there’s a 12-week group experience to foster interpersonal connections and growth. Enhancing this journey is powerful and relevant worship music that will stir your soul. If you’re intrigued by the prospect of experiencing more—more depth, more growth, more connection—then read on. This study is designed to ignite your spiritual journey and lead you toward lasting transformation.

American cities are constantly being built and rebuilt, resulting in ever-changing skylines and neighborhoods. While the dynamic urban landscapes of New York, Boston, and Chicago have been widely studied, there is much to be gleaned from west coast cities, especially in California, where the migration boom at the end of the nineteenth century permanently changed the urban fabric of these newly diverse, plural metropolises. In A City for Children, Marta Gutman focuses on the use and adaptive reuse of everyday buildings in Oakland, California, to make the city a better place for children. She introduces us to the women who were determined to mitigate the burdens placed on working-class families by an indifferent industrial capitalist economy. Often without the financial means to build from scratch, women did not tend to conceive of urban land as a blank slate to be wiped clean for development. Instead, Gutman shows how, over and over, women turned private houses in Oakland into orphanages, kindergartens, settlement houses, and day care centers, and in the process built the charitable landscape—a network of places that was critical for the betterment of children, families, and public life. The industrial landscape of Oakland, riddled with the effects of social inequalities and racial prejudices, is not a neutral backdrop in Gutman’s story but an active player. Spanning one hundred years of history, A City for Children provides a compelling model for building urban institutions and demonstrates that children, women, charity, and incremental construction, renovations, alterations, additions, and repurposed structures are central to the understanding of modern cities.

In Hebrews and the Temple Philip Church argues that the silence of Hebrews concerning the temple does not mean that the author is not interested in the temple. He writes to encourage his readers to abandon their preoccupation with it and to follow Jesus to their eschatological goal. Following extensive discussions of attitudes to the temple in the literature of Second Temple Judaism, Church turns to Hebrews and argues that the temple is presented there as a symbolic foreshadowing of the eschatological dwelling of God with his people. Now that the eschatological moment has arrived with the exaltation of Christ to the right hand of God, preoccupation with the temple and its rituals must cease.

Originally published in 1971, this was the first text on community studies which analysed the major empirical work in this field in a comparative perspective. It is concerned both with the sociology of community and the sociology of community studies. It takes both the findings of individual studies and the research process itself as significant sociological data in their own right, and it asks continually: how do we know what we know about communities? Community Studies is, then, not only a contribution to that particular field but also to our understanding of the interaction between theory and method in sociology. Studies are analysed from North and Latin America, Britain and Western Europe, and India. Two central problems, stratification and power, are considered at greater length. This book would prove to be an invaluable introduction not only for students of sociology but also for architects, planners and all those who had an interest in the community at the time. Its authors were, and had been, actively engaged in field research in this area.