Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World - Softcover

Kim, Grace Ji-Sun; Hill, Graham; Jennings, Willie James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0830845410 ISBN 13: 9780830845415

Publisher: IVP, 2018

Synopsis

• 16th Annual Outreach Magazine Resource of the Year - Culture

We live in conflicted times. Our newsfeeds are filled with inequality, division, and fear. We want to make a difference and see justice restored because Jesus calls us to be a peacemaking and reconciling people. But how do we do this? Based on their work with diverse churches, colleges, and other organizations, Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill offer Christian practices that can bring healing and hope to a broken world. They provide ten ways to transform society, from lament and repentance to relinquishing power, reinforcing agency, and more. Embodying these practices enables us to be the new humanity in Jesus Christ, so the church and world can experience reconciliation, justice, unity, peace, and love. With small group activities, discussion questions, and exercises in each chapter, this book is ideal to read together in community. Discover here how to bring real change to a dehumanized world.

About this title

Book Description:

"God wants to transform our broken world with radical love and justice. Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill show us practical, life-giving ways that the church can help God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven." (Jacqui Lewis, Senior Minister at Middle Collegiate Church)

"Healing Our Broken Humanity isn’t so much a banquet as it is a big tasting plate, introducing us to a rich set of practices, rooted in the missional, contemplative, and progressive traditions of the church. Kim and Hill have packed their short book with such a vast array of ideas, resources, and stories, the reader’s appetite to learn more and put it all into practice is thoroughly piqued―a wonderful introduction to the field." (Michael Frost, author of To Alter Your World and Surprise the World!)

"There are many books dealing with diversity and reconciliation. Of all those books, including my own, I believe Healing Our Broken Humanity is the most relevant, hands-on, how-to manual on the subject you will encounter! Grace and Graham draw you into practical application from the earliest pages and they never let go. Regardless of whether you have been seeking ways to do the gospel in the midst of present brokenness or have become somewhat jaded to the theorizing of it, Healing Our Broken Humanity will not disappoint. Written by two powerfully seasoned and wise mentors, they have found the missing link on this subject that everyone and every church should read. Healing Our Broken Humanity lives up to its subtitle, Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World, and what could be better than that?" (Randy S. Woodley, author of Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision)

"In these pages two voices that I respect harmonize beautifully to sing of what the church can be. Part road map for forming a community in the healing purposes of God, part primer on intersectional theology, part Bible study on how justice is at the centre of following Jesus, this book is wholly about the practices that make us a people who live together more like Jesus (and less like jerks)." (Jarrod McKenna, cofounder of the #LoveMakesAWay movement and #FirstHomeProject for refugees)

"Kim and Hill have marvelously provided what the church needs today: a road map for ways Christians can contribute to the common good and accordingly aid in the transformation of the world. Healing Our Broken Humanity is biblically grounded, sensitive to context, and eminently practical, as each chapter ends with concrete suggestions for 'practices, challenges, and activities for small groups' to move all those who encounter their book to immediate action. I heartily commend this book to all justice-seeking Christians." (Grace Yia-Hei Kao, associate professor of ethics at Claremont School of Theology, codirector at Center for Sexuality, Gender, and Religion)

"Kim and Hill in this courageous book are not simply offering us another account of Christian practices, but Christian practices that necessitate diverse communities for their performance. The crucial matter today for Christian discipleship is not what you practice but who you practice with. . . . If through our practices we follow Jesus into the depths of the world, then we will learn that the healing we all seek for ourselves and our world is offered to us not in our own strength but in God's power, if only we would seek it together." (From the foreword by Willie James Jennings, Yale Divinity School)

"The reality of a broken humanity is fundamental to a Christian understanding of the world. The temptation would be to simply offer a diagnostic that is a litany of lament over a fallen world. In this text, Kim and Hill not only offer an appropriate analysis, but also a Christian justice ethic that engages a theological depth and breadth. They also offer practical, real-life ways to put these principles into practice. For those who seek to revitalize and renew an active Christian faith, this book offers not a simple how-to guide, but a genuine, deep, significant, practical resource for the church." (Soong-Chan Rah, professor of church growth and evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary, author of Many Colors and The Next Evangelicalism)

"In Healing Our Broken Humanity, two authentic voices from two continents offer the Christian church practical reflections to renew our mission, lives, and world. This work touches on critical contemporary issues facing our communities, and offers individual and communal responses that make a difference." (Joel Edwards, advocacy director for Christian Solidarity Worldwide, London)

"This book is a clarion call for all those who dream of a church that is whole, holy, and humble, a church that acknowledges its own failings and seeks justice, and a church that seeks to join those who hope for a better humanity. It will inspire those who eschew the pursuit of power so they may better amplify the voices of the powerless and those who believe in community. This is a superb, clear-eyed call for all of those who dream of a better church and world, to begin to work toward it, and draw strength from the transformative power of love. There can be no greater and more urgent work than this." (Julia Baird, presenter on the Drum, columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald and the International New York Times)

"In this outstanding work―thought provoking, theologically sound, wonderfully practical, and comprehensive in scope―Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill effectively synthesize and ultimately advance key tenets of varying mindsets and movements within the church today, all in pursuit of a common goal: disruptive innovation in the local church whereby it is repurposed and positioned to advance a credible witness of God's love for all people in an increasingly diverse, globally connected, painfully polarized, and cynical society. Healing Our Broken Humanity is a thorough guide and inclusive playbook for pastors and parishioners alike seeking to engage the complexities of race, class, culture, gender, politics, and more, in a biblically accurate and informed way, and in so doing recognize that such things as lament, corporate repentance, reconciliation, and justice are not peripheral but intrinsic to the gospel." (Mark DeYmaz, directional leader of Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas, president of Mosaix Global Network)

"This marvelous book is a practical and relevant resource that will help the church work with God to build renewed communities based on the new humanity in Christ. It will empower Christians to deal with the problem of racism and all forms of injustice. This book emphasizes the importance of corporate expressions of pain, grief, repentance, and lament. This comes at a time when the world is faced with fresh upheavals of tensions and resurgence of racism, nationalism, and white supremacy. I commend this book to all pastors and churches that are looking to equip the saints to face the challenges of racism, misogyny, nationalism, tribalism, and any other form of injustice." (Ngwedla Paul Msiza, president of Baptist World Alliance, Pretoria, South Africa)

"There are plenty of reasons to throw our hands up in the air and walk away from the church. If we're honest, many of us have experienced it as a neutered counterfeit to the life and community Jesus invited us to embody. In this book, Grace and Graham remind us who we have been called to be all along, a new humanity in Christ who actively participate in healing our broken world. Rich in theological thought and firmly rooted in tangible practice, they invite us to be liberated into a cross-shaped ministry that leads to the flourishing of all. This isn't a church-growth strategy; it's holy provocation guiding us onto a path of confession, repentance, and new life. May this book be read and lived!" (Jon Huckins, cofounding director of Global Immersion, author of Mending the Divides: Creative Love in a Conflicted World)

"This book is simply incredible. Goodness. So needed. I can't wait to get this in our church bookstore. It is robust in theology, rich in ecclesiology, and practical in application. Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill paint the glorious vision of the bride of Christ rooted in the grand narrative of Scripture. Grace and Graham brilliantly put feet on this so any local church can catch a vision for participation in the healing of broken humanity." (Tara Beth Leach, author of Emboldened, senior pastor at First Church of the Nazarene of Pasadena)

About the Author:

Grace Ji-Sun Kim (PhD) is associate professor of theology at Earlham School of Religion. She is author or editor of thirteen books, including Embracing the Other,Christian Doctrines for Global Gender Justice, and Intercultural Ministry. She is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

Graham Hill (PhD, Flinders University) teaches applied theology at Morling College in Sydney, Australia, where he is the provost. A former church planter and pastor, he is the founding director of TheGlobalChurchProject.com. He is also the author of GlobalChurch: Reshaping Our Conversations, Renewing Our Mission, Revitalizing Our Churches.

Willie James Jennings (PhD, Duke University) is associate professor of systematic theology and Africana studies at Yale Divinity School. He is the author of The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race.

About this edition

• Publisher: IVP
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0830845410
• ISBN 13: 9780830845415
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224