Neal Kentch

Ourselves, the World, and God Neal Kentch

Key to the renewal of churches and congregations is the renewal of the church's language and message. The church must be able to say something powerfully true with its language and beliefs. It must be able to say something powerfully true about our experience of ourselves as human beings in our relations to the world and to God. The author of this book shows how the church's language and beliefs can be used to do just that by actually doing it. In the pages of this book, he offers a "reading" of some Christian beliefs about God, the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit and a "reading" of our experience of ourselves in the world and before God. Using Genesis 1 and the Book of Job, the author shows how we meet God in all things. Using the Gospel of Mark, he shows how we meet the Son of God in all people. Beliefs about the Holy Spirit are used to talk about our relationship with God in which God is an active partner shaping who we are. In the final chapter, the author writes about how his use of Christian language and beliefs renewed the life of a church he served and renewed the lives of those who found their way to that church. In the pages of this book the reader will find different but compelling takes on traditional Christian beliefs. The author has taken very seriously two aspects of our experience that perplex people's minds these days when they consider religion and Christian beliefs: human experience of undeserved suffering and scientific descriptions of our world. What can be said about undeserved suffering with Christian language? And what can be said about the value of human life when scientific descriptions of our world and of the cosmos make us feel very small and insignificant? The book is written so that most anyone can read it; one need not be a theologian or a student of religion or even have much of a religious background. The book is enlivened with stories and descriptions of incidents that illustrate and enhance the chapters.