Blessed are the Poor?
Urban Poverty and the Church
1st Edition
Published on 2. July 2015
224 pages
978-0-334-05367-5 (ISBN)
Description
Laurie Green considers a number of key biblical texts as well as recent research on poverty in the UK and asks what the Church's ministry among the poor would need to look like in order to be true to the gospel. The book ends with practical outcomes for pavement-level ministry.
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06/2015
SCM Press
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Content
- Intro
- Blessed Are the Poor?
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Crucial Question
- 1 Blessed Are the Poor?
- Poverty in Galilee
- What exactly is poverty?
- Calculating poverty
- A distinctive shape
- A distinctive history
- Distinctive people
- Demonizing the poor
- The Church's response?
- Listening to those at the edge
- 2 Listening to the Poor
- Listening to the stories
- Hell or heaven?
- Who cares?
- The quest for security
- Few expectations?
- Where's home?
- Where's the work gone?
- Nothing much to live for?
- The sheer strain of it all
- It's all the fault of the poor
- No voice for the poor?
- 3 The Story Unfolds
- The early housing estates
- Estates and the rise of the welfare state
- Quantity or quality?
- 'All Change' and the 'Right to Buy': 1979
- New Deals and new structures
- The Cameron years
- So have the poor been blessed?
- Despite all the odds
- 4 Praying the Kingdom Prayer
- Our Father : God's intimate concern
- Our Father: belonging together
- Our Father in heaven: acknowledging the beauty
- Hallowed be your Name: what is worth honouring?
- Your Kingdom come: a new world order
- Your will be done, on earth as in heaven: living out the Kingdom
- Give us today our daily bread: enough to eat
- Kingdom values: a compass for Kingdom living
- 5 Kingdom Living
- Forgive us our trespasses: shameful burdens lifted
- As we forgive those who trespass against us: mutuality
- Lead us not into temptation: the time of trial
- Deliver us from evil: the structural nature of sin
- Yours is the Kingdom: being turned around
- The power is yours: acting serenely
- The glory is yours: looking up!
- For ever and ever : living in God's constancy
- 6 The Challenge of the Beatitudes
- What is it to be blessed?
- A momentous event
- Understanding their poverty
- God's radical reversal
- The Kingdom challenge
- Signs of the blessedness of the poor
- Blessed by God's clear presence
- Blessed by God's gifts
- Blessed by faithfulness
- The blessedness of vision
- The blessedness of vulnerability
- 7 Blessed with Insight
- The poor's blessings of biblical insight
- Exclusion and exile
- Nehemiah
- Understanding the importance of place
- Theological insights of the poor
- Christological insights
- T-shirts and thin places
- Power and the Church
- Mission to or mission for?
- 8 Incarnational Church?
- The Church forgets its Kingdom values
- Living in the kairos moment
- Deep listening
- Reasons for confidence
- The elephant in the room
- Travelling light
- Incarnational mission
- Working together
- Engaging politically
- Redirecting resources
- Mary's revolutionary challenge
- 9 The Vanguard of the Kingdom
- Claiming the inheritance
- The small church
- It's all about relationships
- The welcome stranger
- Total immersion
- Pavement-level theology
- A people of action
- Holistic mission
- Worship - foretaste of the Kingdom
- Conclusion: Blessed are You who are Poor
- Bibliography
- A selection of websites relating to our subject
