Andrew Root
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Church In An Age Of Secular Mysticisms
$28.99Add to cartPost-Christian life and society do not eliminate a desire for the transcendent; rather, they create an environment for new and divergent spiritual communities and practices to flourish. We are flooded with spiritualities that appeal to human desires for nonreligious personal transformation. But many fail to deliver because they fall into the trap of the self.
In the last book of the Ministry in a Secular Age series, leading practical theologian Andrew Root shows the differences between these spiritualities and authentic Christian transformation. He explores the dangers of following or adapting these reigning mysticisms and explains why the self has become so important yet so burdened with guilt–and how we should think about both. To help us understand our confusing cultural landscape, he maps spiritualities using twenty of the best memoirs from 2015 to 2020 in which “secular mystics” promote their mystical and transformational pathways. Root concludes with a more excellent way–even a mysticism–centered on the theology of the cross that pastors and leaders can use to form their own imaginations and practices.
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When Church Stops Working
$21.99Add to cartWhat if the solution for the decline of today’s church isn’t more money, people, programs, innovation, and busyness?
What if the answer is to stop and wait on God?
In When Church Stops Working, ministry leaders Andrew Root and Blair Bertrand show how actively watching and listening for God can bring life out of death for churches in crisis today. Using clear steps and practices, they invite church leaders to stop the endless cycle of doing more and rather to simply “be” in God’s presence. They tell the story of two congregations who did this–and found new life in the process.
When Church Stops Working distills the core themes of Root’s critically acclaimed Ministry in a Secular Age series in a more accessible form. Leaders and churchgoers who are burned out and hopeless will experience affirmation, encouragement, and empowerment as Root and Bertrand turn to the book of Acts as well as examples from contemporary congregational life to show what “active” waiting looks like and the saving grace it can hold.
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Church After Innovation
$27.99Add to cartChurches and their leaders have innovation fever. Innovation seems exciting–a way to enliven tired institutions, embrace creativity, and be proactive–and is a superstar of the business world. But this focus on innovation may be caused by an obsession with contemporary relevance, creativity, and entrepreneurship that inflates the self, lacks theological depth, and promises burnout.
In this follow-up to Churches and the Crisis of Decline, leading practical theologian Andrew Root delves into the problems of innovation. He explores where innovation and entrepreneurship came from, shows how they break into church circles, and counters the “new imaginations” like neoliberalism and technology that hold the church captive to modernity. Root reveals the moral visions of the self that innovation and entrepreneurship deliver–they are dependent on workers (and consumers) being obsessed with their selves, which leads to significant faith-formation issues. This focus on innovation also causes us to think we need to be singularly unique instead of made alive in Christ. Root offers a return to mysticism and the poetry of Meister Eckhart as a healthier spiritual alternative.
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End Of Youth Ministry
$22.99Add to cartWhat is youth ministry actually for? And does it have a future? Andrew Root, a leading scholar in youth ministry and practical theology, went on a one-year journey to answer these questions. In this book, Root weaves together an innovative first-person fictional narrative to diagnose the challenges facing the church today and to offer a new vision for youth ministry in the 21st century.
Informed by interviews that Root conducted with parents, this book explores how parents’ perspectives of what constitutes a good life are affecting youth ministry. In today’s culture, youth ministry can’t compete with sports, test prep, and the myriad other activities in which young people participate. Through a unique parable-style story, Root offers a new way to think about the purpose of youth ministry: not happiness, but joy. Joy is a sense of experiencing the good. For youth ministry to be about joy, it must move beyond the youth group model and rework the assumptions of how identity and happiness are imagined by parents in American society.
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Christopraxis : A Practical Theology Of The Cross
$39.00Add to cartContents:
Part 1
1. A Theobiographical Starting Point
2. Setting The Terrain
3. Concrete Lived Cases Of Ministerial Encounters With Divine Action
4. Dominant Models Of Practical Theology
Part 2
5. A Christopraxis Practical Theology Of The Cross
6. Practical Theology Into Nothingness
7. The Concurring Of The Divine With The Human
Part 3
8. Critical Realism And Practical Theology
9. Human Action And Interdisciplinarity In Light Of A Critical RealistChristopraxis Practical TheologyAdditional Info
Finding practical theology not always able to present frameworks for understanding concrete and lived experience with divine action, Andrew Root seeks to reset the edifice of practical theology on a new foundation. While not minimizing its commitment to the lived and concrete, Root argues that practical theology has neglected deeper theological underpinnings.Christopraxis seeks to create a practical theology that is properly and fully theological, post-postmodern, post-Aristotelian, and that attends to doctrines such as divine action and justification.
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Theological Turn In Youth Ministry
$25.00Add to cartWhat haunts your youth group? So often we avoid talking about doubts and fears because we feel inadequately equipped to address them in any meaningful way. The crisis of existence can’t be answered with pat Sunday school formulas or a few Bible verses, let alone another relay race. The questions our youth have are often the same ones that perplexed the great theologians, driving them to search for God in the places God didn’t appear to be–places of brokenness, suffering and confusion. What if we let these questions drive our search for God too? Andrew Root and Kenda Creasy Dean invite you to envision youth ministries full of practical theologians, addressing the deep questions of life with a wonderfully adolescent mix of idealism, cynicism and prophetic intolerance for hypocrisy. Follow them into reflection on your own practice of theology, and learn how to share that theology through rich, compassionate conversation and purposeful experience.