Do you long for something more in your relationship with God? Are you struggling to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit? Are you ready to embark on a Spirit-propelled adventure of restoration, renewal and transformation? When we do not experience God’s life within us, our Christianity can deteriorate into a lifeless system of rules and empty rituals. If this describes you at the moment, know that you are not alone. Many spiritual seekers are tired of a superficial faith and yearn to know the fi re of God’s presence burning in their hearts. In Holy Spirit Here and Now Trevor Hudson shares his personal journey and offers practical guidance to help you experience the Holy Spirit moving in your ordinary life. Some of the common hurdles he addresses are: Feeling that the Holy Spirit is only available to religious professionals, but not to you Being put off by negative past experiences with people attempting to push you into an experience of the Holy Spirit Having a sense that something is lacking in your relationship with God Feeling that experiences of God’s Spirit are far removed from our everyday lives Believing that experiencing the Holy Spirit is a once-off event rather than a lifetime journey. Trevor Hudson encourages you to allow every part of your life – your emotions, body, soul, relationships, career – to become an arena where the Holy Spirit can work. This is what it means to be truly fi lled with God’s Spirit.

Turning to the Gospels, James Bryan Smith invites you to compare your ideas about God with what Jesus himself reveals about his Father. In this Good and Beautiful Series book, Smith leads you through a process of spiritual formation that includes activities aimed at making these new narratives real in your body and soul as well as your mind.

While not endorsing what they consider to be the excesses of Pentecostalism, the charismatic movement, and the Third Wave, Sawyer and Wallace have embraced what they have tentatively called pneumatic Christianity. They contend that the way much of evangelical cessationism has developed is reactionary and reductionistic. Rather than focus upon scriptural images of the Holy Spirit as a presence deep within the soul of the believer, many cessationists have reactively denied experience in opposition to the Pentecostal overemphasis upon experience, which at times supplanted the revealed truth of scripture.

This highly readable investigation of the early church explores the revolutionary nature, dynamics, and effects of the earliest Christian communities. It introduces readers to the cultural setting of the house churches of biblical times, examines the apostle Paul's vision of life in the Christian church, and explores how the New Testament model of community applies to Christian practice today. Updated and revised throughout, this 40th-anniversary edition incorporates recent research, updates the bibliography, and adds a new fictional narrative that depicts the life and times of the early church.

Explains how Americans need to develop or restore a sense of community in order to reconstruct society.

The Politics of the Spirit is an in-depth discussion of the impact of the Spirit upon the community called Church. It is a call to the members of the covenant community to recognize that in the reality of the changing moments in the Church and the world, there are those dark inward times when winter stillness overtakes the Church and would seek to destroy it. It is a call for a contemporary appraisal of the Church's Spirituality when, on the broader scale, there are manifold claims to Spirituality. The breadth of the work is seen in such questions as "What is Spirituality?", "What does it mean to be Spiritually mature?", "What is the relationship between Spiritual authority and political authority in the Church?", "How do we differentiate between the activity of the Spirit in revelation, inspiration, interpretation, doctrinal formulation and church tradition?", and "Where do we place politics in these issues?" In a word, The Politics of the Spirit simply looks at the Spirit in the culture of the community called Church.

This volume is a meticulously researched text on pneumatology which puts the major pneumatological issues together without confining to the traditional way of dealing with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Although pneumatology has been a neglected field in theological discussions of the past, there is a renewal of interest among theologians on pneumatology today. This renewal of interest has led to the formation of this work on the role of the Holy Spirit in the Protestant Systematic Theology. Through highlighting the role and significance of the Holy Spirit in the whole divine action, this volume contends that pneumatology is not a dull theological locus, but rather an essential theological disposition relevant for today. The detailed arguments found within challenge and inspire the contemporary pneumatological discussions as it relates to all the facets of theological reflection and action.

Who is the Holy Spirit and how does the Spirit come to be in relation to the Father and the Son? What is the mission of the Spirit and where does it come from? Chris Holmes takes up the questions surrounding the Spirit’s procession and mission with the help of three of the church’s greatest teachers—Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Karl Barth. Drawing on their engagements with the Fourth Gospel, Holmes presents an account of the Spirit’s identity, origin, and acts, to show how the acts of the Spirit derive from the Spirit’s life in relation to Father and Son—and the extent to which the Spirit’s mission testifies to the Spirit’s origin. Holmes presents a way forward for pneumatology. Housed within the doctrine of the Trinity, pneumatology’s joyful task is to describe the Spirit’s acts among us in light of their source in the Spirit’s acts in God. The end of this inquiry is our beatitude—knowledge of the Trinity that yields to love of the Trinity.

This work models a creative exercise in ecclesiology based on a Latino/a practical theology of the Spirit, which designs theological discourse based on its encounter with the Spirit in human culture. Hence, it is a theology appreciative of and attentive to the "multiple matrices and intersections" of the Spirit with cultures. Garcia-Johnson offeres an appreciative and critical analysis of the uses of culture among Latino/a theologians, followed by the proposal for a postmodern Spirit-friendly cultural paradigm based on the narratives of the cross and the Pentecost. He develops a practical theology for a Latino/a postmodern ecclesiology based on three native Latino/a theological concepts: mestizaje, accompaniment, and manana eschatology. The resulting ecclesial construct-The Mestizo/a Community of Manana-reflects a transforming manana vision and models the visible cruciform community in which the transforming praxis and historical transcendence of the Christ-Spirit works from within. The work sets forth practical guidelines for implementation of the ecclesial construct in the urban context of devastated communities and offers suggestions for further development in Latino/a theology.

Ever since the sensational Azusa Street Revival in 1906, the global Pentecostal church has continued to explode numerically, pushing theological debates on the Holy Spirit to the forefront. This insightful collection draws together theologians, scientists, and Pentecostal scholars to make connections between the study and experience of the Holy Spirit. The authors begin by addressing theological implications before moving on to the Pentecostal experience, finally connecting the Spirit to scientific and philosophical reflections. Filled with interdisciplinary insights, The Work of the Spirit is inspiring and timely, honoring a century of intense reflection on and involvement with the Holy Spirit. Contributors: D. Lyle Dabney James D. G. Dunn Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen Frank D. Macchia Bernd Oberdorfer John Polkinghorne Margaret M. Poloma Kathryn Tanner Grant Wacker Michael Welker Amos Yong Anna York Donald G. York