BACK COVER #
A reassessment of approaches to metropolitan ministry focusing on ways religion relates to public life. Based on extensive research in the Hartford, Connecticut metropolitan area, the book gives special attention to the ways local churches and synagogues are present in the life of their communities, Its discussion of the dynamics of religious presence is applicable to all metropolitan areas.- Provides guidance to clergy, laity and denominational leaders seeking effectively to relate their faith and organizations to public life.
- Offers religious and community leaders a vision of a reinvigorated sense of public life and possibilities for religion's role in it.
- Provides researchers and students of congregational life with an innovative framework for understanding ways religious groups relate to community life and the dynamics that hinder and facilitate effectiveness in outreach ministries.
- A lively introduction to the possibilities and pitfalls of community-oriented ministry.
BLURBS #
"Based on broad urban analysis and detailed congregational case studies, Varieties of Religious Presence provides a comprehensive grasp of the impact which congregations have upon individual members and the larger society. In the tradition of Weber, Troeltsch, H. Richard Niebuhr, and Avery Dulles, this study provides a way of thinking about ministry which has the flesh and feeling of people in the congregations from which it is drawn. An exciting model of religious self-awareness for communities across the country, a Middletown with a religious perspective, it is must reading for church leaders and seminarians who seek the theological tools to be more than mechanics of ecclesiastical organizations."-- Carl S. Dudley, Professor of Church and Community McCormick Theological Seminary