Bruce G Epperly

Are you afraid of the Holy Spirit being active in your church? Are you willing to admit it? The Holy Spirit has been a kind of third-rate member of the trinity in the theological writings of mainline and progressive Christians. It seems that the Spirit brings disorder to communities, spiritual arrogance to those who claim to "have the Spirit," and frequently doctrinal confusion. We'd rather not have something in our churches that goes where it wants, and doesn't give account for where it's coming from and where it's going. But the biblical picture of the Spirit is one of action, change, and renewal. Perhaps there is a place for this Spirit in a movement claiming the title of "progressive." Bruce Epperly has experienced church from many perspectives. He has sat in conservative churches where too much Spirit might be seen as inciting division and heresy. He's been in progressive churches where the Spirit is often considered peripheral. He's a process theologian, and the Spirit, as he points out in this book, is often of tertiary concern. But he has also observed Spirit in action, and he thinks we do well to considered this third element of the trinity. What does it mean for the Spirit to be active? Is it safe? Can it be controlled? Can you keep it bound by your doctrinal statements? It should be active, and you cannot control it, Epperly argues in this book. You shouldn't control it. Nor does it coercively control you. But it does drive us to new life, to new adventures, and perhaps to transformed understandings of the universe in which we live. Are you ready to join in this joyous adventure?

What might Jesus say to you today about your political decisions? Would he care? With his gift for making Scripture and theology clear and very relevant, Dr. Bruce Epperly looks at the Sermon on the Mount and suggests to us what Jesus might be saying about our own politics and social ethics. Point by point he brings the topics Jesus covered home to a modern audience, especially in America. With topics such as "all-embracing love," intercessory prayer," and "bringing the light," almost anyone will find something here to think about. Perhaps God is asking something more of us in the social and political sphere than we might have imagined. Are we called to be Jesus in public forums and the halls of government? The book closes with a series of conversation starters, several for each chapter, which makes this an ideal book for a small group study. It can also be read individually, and will perhaps give you both the impetus and some of the ideas that will help you change our world.

2nd Expanded EditionAll too frequently studies of the gifts of the Spirit consist largely of answering two questions: "What are the gifts?" and "Which ones do I have?" In many cases studies go on to a third question: "How can I get more?" In response, institutional churches and theologically and intellectually respectable Christians often tend to avoid the work of the Holy Spirit in the church entirely. It's much easier to simply close the doors and windows than it is to deal with the wind (John 3:8). After all, they've seen the wind blow out the candles, disarrange the altar vestments, and send a chill through the congregants. Author, pastor, and church historian Bob Cornwall has experienced all of this for himself. He has seen traditional churches and worship. He has seen Pentecostal worship. He has led congregations in difficult times. For more than 30 years, he has studied, practiced, prayed, and lived the work of the Holy Spirit in the church. The result is Unfettered Spirit: Spiritual Gifts for the New Great Awakening. Here he avoids both the errors of replacing the freedom of the Spirit with human whim and of trying to tame or confine the Spirit that will not be fettered. He asks: "Do you truly believe that God is present in the world? And, do you believe that God is working through us to break down the walls that divide us from God, from each other, and from the world? And if you do, do you believe that you have been gifted and empowered to participate in this ministry that takes down the walls of egoism, suspicion, greed, self-interest, and hatred?" If you can say "yes" to these questions, jump right in. This is the book for you. If you are hesitant, or if the idea of the Holy Spirit working unfettered in your congregation and community frightens you, read the first four chapters carefully as Bob lays the theological foundation. You may find your "maybe" or even your "no" turned into a "yes." Building on this foundation, Bob continues with five chapters on the gifts of the Spirit as described in Scripture. These are practical discussions that will let you keep your bearings in discussions of the Spirit and, more importantly, in a community where the Spirit is active. Finally, he concludes with a discussion of how to lead and pastor a church where the gifts of the Spirit are active. Whether you are a Pentecostal, an evangelical, a mainliner, a progressive, or any other label you might find for yourself or your church, you will profit from reading this book.

How can you talk positively with your children or grandchildren about living in a time of crisis such as a pandemic? Our lives have been disrupted in so many ways, whether through economic hardship, such as lost jobs or closed businesses, or emotional hardship resulting from the lockdown. For many, it has been much worse. Your loved one may be dying in a hospital and you can't even visit. Adults have a difficult enough time sorting through this situation. What about our children? How do we talk to them and help them learn and grow, even as the world around them is deeply troubled? Dr. Bruce Epperly has authored two previous books about this time of Pandemic: Faith in a Time of Pandemic, and Hope after Pandemic. In those books, he addressed letting our faith guide us through and motivate us to work for a better world following this difficult time. Now, in Love in a Time of Crisis and Pandemic, he offers words that can be shared with our children, words of faith, hope, and yes, of love. This book will help you talk to your children, but it does so in a way that will help you as well. What can you do, what can you think about, and how can you live, so as to make the best of your current situation, no matter what that is? This book is for everyone who needs courage to live in this time and to learn from it as a time of holy adventure.

Authentic spirituality embeds us in the pain of the world and inspires commitment to social justice and conflict resolution. It seeks peace and justice in the public sphere, while nurturing a sense of connection with both God and all creation. Rooted in the deep mystery of Divine love, we can face challenges with confidence that God's vision of justice and peace will outlast the demagogues, dictators, and destroyers. This book is intended to support your integration of peacemaking, justice-seeking, and spiritual growth. You have a calling to be God's companion in healing the world-one relationship, phone call, and protest at a time. The journey may be long and difficult, but the path of contemplative activism found in this book will restore your spirit, giving you strength and inspiration as you join in God's work of peace and justice. Anamchara Books seeks to create a community of "soul friends" to encourage and inspire all of us who are on spiritual journeys. The Soul Seeds series is a unique new offering in that life-enhancing library, timely books that gently and accessibly address the challenges facing all of us in today's world.

Bruce Epperly invites you to share a Christmas adventure with him, voyaging through the twelve days of Christmas (plus Christmas Eve and Epiphany) with Brendan, Columba, Brigid, Patrick, and other Celtic saints. With these Celtic adventurers as your companions, you will discover "thin places"-moments of time when the Incarnation of Christ shines through ordinary people, places, and events. After the busyness of Advent, the days that follow Christmas can be a quieter time, when you can venture out on an inner vision quest for new ways of seeing and being. Loving God, give me vision. Help me hear the singing of angels and the crying of children. Let my prayers take shape in loving words and healing hands. Walk with me, and help me walk with the lost and lonely, the forgotten and marginalized. Let my life be an incarnation of that little Child who is our Savior. May your Christmas journey awaken you to thin places everywhere.

How can we recover the radical meaning of the Christmas season? Using the thoughts and words of Madeleine L'Engle, this books offers you a guide through the hectic Christmas season. With quiet times of prayer, Scripture, and meditation, you can begin to wonder-to imagine big possibilities and ask important questions-as you wander outside your typical comfort zones. In the twelve days of Christmas, bookended by Christmas Eve and the Feast of Epiphany, you will experience anew the awe and wonder of the Incarnation. As you both wonder and wander, the questions and images in this book will open your heart to the radical message of Christmas. Like the Magi, you too can follow a star, seeking wisdom in everyday life, while contemplating the cosmic forces within which we live and move and have our being.

In the spirit of God's call to creative transformation, Bruce Epperly invites you to join him on a holy adventure in spiritual growth, inspired by the evolving wisdom of Christianity and the world's great spiritual traditions, innovative global spiritual practices, and emerging visions of reality. Epperly explores the many resources of Christian spirituality in dialogue with the spiritual practices of the world's great wisdom traditions, describing the gifts other spiritual paths contribute to the pathway of Jesus; at the same time, he uses the lens of the spiritual practices Jesus has inspired throughout Christian history to examine these spiritual paths. Epperly write as a Christian committed to Jesus, whose teachings and way of life he believes lead to pathways of healing and creative personal and planetary transformation. We need an illuminating and multifaceted spirituality, Epperly affirms, to shed light and provide guidance as we confront the unique crises of our time. By embracing the diverse insights of spiritual wisdom givers, physicists, cosmologists, healing practitioners, and Earth keepers, we can meet the Earth's current challenges with love, joy, and a united strength.

Let us begin the work of Christmas This book is a celebration of the twelve days of Christmas, offering us a chance to dwell on the meaning of the season in dialog with the wisdom of one of America's greatest mystics and activists, Howard Thurman. Thurman knew that Christmas always begins in darkness-the darkness of the womb, the darkness of human violence and oppression, the darkness of hopelessness. In Christmas, Thurman reminds us, a light shines even in the darkness, and this light will never be defeated. God's light streams into the most unexpected places-a stable, among foreign magi from another religious tradition, and in the varieties of human culture and ethnicity. Just a little light can transform the darkness and help us anxious pilgrims find our way. During the twelve days of Christmas, our goal is to experience God's light, despite the temptation to close our hearts in a world too often characterized by racism, sexism, polarization, nationalism, and exclusion. This season asks us instead to open our hearts and our lives, so that throughout the year ahead, we may be light-bearers, carrying the message of Divine justice and hope, making it come alive even in the darkest corners of the world. This is the year-round work of Christmas

How do you feel when you see a yellow caution sign that reads "Church Ahead?" Is it a place of potential answers and guidance, or a stumbling block, holding you back? In Church Ahead, Bruce Epperly, pastor, professor, and adventurous pilgrim looks about what this sign could mean. He looks at the kinds of spiritual practice that a congregation can embrace in order to be renewed themselves, and restore their mission to those around them who are hurting and in need. This is not a rejection of "church" as an institution, but a challenge to make church into a beacon of hope and light. The mission presented in this book is not just abstract theology and spirituality. It calls for, describes, and embraces spiritual practices that have an impact on the church, the community, and the world. Each chapter includes specific activities designed to change attitudes and energize action. In answer to the ancient question voiced by the prophet Ezekiel - can these bones live? - Epperly gives an emphatic "Yes " But the path to that life involves an embrace of spiritual life, change, and adventure in every aspect of ministry.

Our lives have been disrupted by a pandemic, but at some point we will find a new normal. What will we do then? Better, what should we do then? Bruce Epperly has been writing while living through this time as a pastor, teacher, author, and grandparent. He provided some lessons for a hopeful, fulfilling life during the pandemic in his book Faith in a Time of Pandemic. In this book, he goes beyond that time to look at what these experiences should challenge us to do. How can we live better in the world. Fearlessly but gently he takes on issues of injustice, intolerance, inequality in society and discusses how the interdependence we have found during this time needs to be lived out in our society as a whole. His solutions are spiritual, social, and yes, political. Each chapter of the book includes a section titled "Hopeful Activism," with suggestions on what to do about the issues discussed, a section on spirituality, and a prayer--one that is challenging to pray This book is suitable for individual reading, but it will find its greatest value as a small group or churchwide study, or perhaps as a hopeful, forward looking study to do together online while we continue in social distancing.

How can we respond spiritually when a pandemic hits our nation? How can our faith help us to face our fears, going beyond panic and denial, to hopeful and courageous action? The Coronavirus is changing everything in our society. It can provoke isolation and self-interested individualism. It can also inspire kindness, generosity, patience, and compassion. Facing the pandemic with God as our companion will deepen our sense of agency as well as peace and move us from self-interest and nation-first to planetary loyalty. This text provides a theological, pastoral, and spiritual pathway to help you, your family, and congregation find your way through the wilderness of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Does theology have to be dry and boring in order to be serious? Not at all The prophet Isaiah once said, "a little child will lead them." But, what about a character from Winnie the Pooh? Can anxious, yet adventurous, Piglet help us understand our relationship with God and one another? Theology is serious business. So serious that it can't be left solely to adults Bruce Epperly's imaginative conversations with Piglet explore the contours of theological reflection from the perspective of Process Theology. Process Theology is often seen as far too complicated for adults to understand and impossible to teach or preach to laypeople. In this text, an experienced pastor and professor and a beloved character from the Winnie the Pooh stories bring Process Theology to life and explore themes such as beauty, spirituality, adventure, friendship, healing, and God's presence in our lives. In the spirit of Jesus' parables, Piglet's Process will inspire your imagination and creativity and invite you on a never-ending spiritual journey with a theologian, stuffed animal, and the healer from Nazareth as your companions. This is a book to read for fun and study seriously. It's theology for everyone.

"In choosing simplicity, says Dr. Bruce Epperly, "we make room for God's light to flow in and through us.""Decluttering" is a concept that is all over social media and the news these days. We have books with detailed instructions in how to declutter our houses and live more simply. Epperly takes this beyond the merely material, and teaches how to declutter our minds and spirits as well. Spiritual decluttering is more than a passing fad In clearing the clutter of our lives, we put first things first and align ourselves with God's vision for our lives. Tis a gift to be simple and one of today's leading progressive theologians and spiritual guides shows us a pathway to experiencing the holiness of everyday life and sharing the gifts of simplicity to heal the world.

This concise book, the sixth short guide on process theology and its practical implications by Dr. Bruce Epperly, applies process thought to the calling and activities of pastoral ministry. Short and to the point as are all books in the Topical Line Drives series, this text will provide pastors and others involved in caregiving ministries a new and adventurous way of thinking about and meeting the challenges of their vocation. God is already present in the hospital room and even the funeral home. You have the opportunity to experience the vision of what can happen when we discover that God is always opening up new possibilities, empowering us to partner with God in healing the world, and strengthening us for and comforting us in the difficult times of lifeLearn to connect more closely to the divine and the human, to see more clearly, and to participate more completely, as God does. A practical, deeply theological, and challenging guide to the adventure of pastoral care.

Can you imagine reading the Lord's Prayer as a gateway to adventure? Bruce Epperly, who has introduced process theology to the masses through concise, readable guides, presents this well-known prayer through a vision of a relational, open-spirited, profoundly personal, always creative, and forward-looking God, who invites us to be companions in the holy adventure of healing the earth. This is not your routine book on the Lord's Prayer. Instead, it is an invitation to to holy adventure through sharing in the prayer of Jesus. Each short chapter includes a section titled "Living the Prayer of Jesus." In the back, there are a series of questions for conversation. It would make a good church wide or small group study, and is suitable for individual reading.

Author Bruce Epperly looks at the Christian life as a holy adventure, and in this book he combines the ideas of process theology with the enduring ideas and practices of Celtic spirituality to produce a truly rewarding adventure.

In the spirit of God's call to creative transformation, Bruce Epperly invites you to join him on a holy adventure in spiritual growth, inspired by the evolving wisdom of Christianity and the world's great spiritual traditions, innovative global spiritual practices, and emerging visions of reality. Epperly explores the many resources of Christian spirituality in dialogue with the spiritual practices of the world's great wisdom traditions, describing the gifts other spiritual paths contribute to the pathway of Jesus; at the same time, he uses the lens of the spiritual practices Jesus has inspired throughout Christian history to examine these spiritual paths. Epperly write as a Christian committed to Jesus, whose teachings and way of life he believes lead to pathways of healing and creative personal and planetary transformation. We need an illuminating and multifaceted spirituality, Epperly affirms, to shed light and provide guidance as we confront the unique crises of our time. By embracing the diverse insights of spiritual wisdom givers, physicists, cosmologists, healing practitioners, and Earth keepers, we can meet the Earth's current challenges with love, joy, and a united strength.