Those who have never had extended conversations with God, ranging from complaints and anger to love and joy, can draw upon a lifetime of such conversations as Countryman grapples with the reality of evil and loss, as well as hope for the fulfillment of life. This new book takes liberties with the scriptures in order to explore them with new seriousness and argues with both God and scripture freely in the process. His poetic style takes its cue from the biblical poetry of the Psalms, Job, and the Song of Solomon, but moves freely in the realm of ordinary spoken English.
The first thing to say in our exploration of priesthood is this: priesthood is a fundamental and inescapable part of being human. All human beings, knowingly or not, minister as priests to one another. All of us, knowingly or not, receive priestly ministrations from one another. Unless we begin here, we are not likely to understand the confusions and uncertainties and opportunities we have been encountering in the life of the church itself in recent years. We shall be in danger, in fact, of creating makeshift solutions to half-understood problems, easy answers to misleading questions, temporary bandages for institutions that need to be healed from the ground up." - L. William Countryman There is a lot of tension in churches today about whose ministry is primary-that of the laity or of the clergy. L. William Countryman argues that we can only resolve that problem by seeing that we are all priests simply by virtue of being human and living, as we all do, on the mysterious and uncertain border with the Holy. Living on the Border of the Holy offers a way of understanding the priesthood of the whole people of God and the priesthood of the ordained in complementary ways by showing how both are rooted in the fundamental priestly nature of human life. After an exploration of the ministry of both laity and ordained, Countryman concludes by examining the implications of this view of priesthood for churches and for educating those studying for ordination.
Offers basic information to make the Bible less formidable to beginning readers. In How Can Anyone Read the Bible? preeminent biblical scholar Bill Countryman provides a basic introduction for those with little knowledge about the Bible that aims to provide an easy point of entry into engagement with Scripture.
Only the strong can forgive. God, who is strongest, forgives best," writes Dr. L. William Countryman in this fresh look at forgiveness. Unlike most books on the subject, Forgiven and Forgiving is not about a step-by-step process. Rather, it is about conversion. Once we truly understand the depths of God's love for us and know deep-down that we are forgiven, we begin to see the world anew through God's eyes. Only when we are able to accept God's forgiveness for ourselves can we offer forgiveness to others. Biblically based with sound academic research, yet written in a conversational style, Forgiven and Forgiving offers valuable insights for clergy, laity, and church study groups.
Written in accessible language and sensitive to those who have little or no experience in reading the Bible, each book in the Conversations with Scripture series focuses on exploring the historical and critical background of the biblical texts, while illustrating how these centuries-old writings still speak to us today. Countryman brings his considerable biblical studies erudition as well as his skills as a popular writer and published poet to bear on the Psalms. Though an accomplished scholar of the New Testament, Countryman illumines the Psalms with insight and creativity. Readers will experience this most beloved part of the scriptural canon in a fresh and exciting way.
At the heart of Christianity stands the figure of Jesus and the message he embodied the gospel. This book seeks to make what is at the heart of the Christian religion available in a new way in our time. Many of those who read this book will already have some notion of what the Christian faith is about. Professor Countryman therefore writes: "I fear that the reader will bring to the reading of this book all kinds of assumptions that don't belong here; and I have tried to be explicit in rejecting some of these so that I can reintroduce something truer." Within the church and outside of it, people today are in a period of refocusing and rediscovery, asking what is really central to the Christian faith. Some claim that today's church has lost its heart, if not its soul. Countryman sounds a clarion call back to the gospel, the "good news." For in the end, he writes, "we must be prepared to choose the good news over everything else." Here, then, is a fundamental work that has grown out of and been tested in the parish, and that has served as a basic text for seminary courses in "Foundations of Christian Spirituality." L. William Countryman is Professor of New Testament at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley, California, and author of The Language of Ordination: Ministry in an Ecumenical Context, also published by Trinity Press.
Using the model of "reading other people's mail," L. William Countryman proposes that we read the letters of the New Testament as an ongoing conversation between the text itself and the modern interpreter and the community.
Proposes that scripture be understood as a word that prompts more questions than it answers and that in scripture God has not uttered the last word for us, but the first.
The Advent season is filled with rich themes that have fascinated poets. In Run, Shepherds, Run, Bill Countryman presents a poem a day for devotional reading during Advent and the twelve days of Christmas. Readers will find classic poets they know and love, including George Herbert, John Donne, Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, as well as contemporary poets, known and unknown. Run, Shepherds, Run includes helpful hints for reading poetry, for those who have less experience reading it than others, as well as useful annotations to help readers with older language that may not have easily apparent meanings for today's readers.
Based upon addresses given to Anglican audiences in North America and Australia, Bill Countryman directly confronts the challenges that face Anglicans and other Western Christians at a time of internal division and increasing indifference to religion on the part of educated elites. He regards these challenges as a work of the Holy Spirit, who is clearing the ground for a new era of building, and help readers start thinking about what kind of future the Spirit is leading us toward. The book begins by presenting the Spirit as a demolition expert, endeavoring to shake us out of our complacency. It then focuses on three central elements of Christian faith and life: the image of Jesus, the sacraments, and the scriptures, and notes some different ways in which we have seen and utilized them over the ages. It holds out the communion of saints as the key to understanding the ongoing value of the church today. It calls faithful people of all stripes to reject our tendency to turn God’s gifts into idols and to rediscover a humility that will be open to the rebuilding that must now be done with the leadership of the Spirit.
Questions around sexuality have been major ones for the Episcopal and other mainline churches in recent years. In this short book, Countryman explores the intersection of sexuality and spirituality, and their relationship to the biblical texts, believers' relationship to God, and to one another.
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