Overview

"Throughout history, the Christian faith has experienced incredible flashpoints of both disruption and growth. These points in history always seem to involve turning away from tradition and institutionalized stagnation. These turns are almost always toward a fundamental movement sparked by an individual or small group who depend on face-to-face word of mouth for validation and growth. May I be so bold as to suggest that today we sit at the edge of a long overdue 3rd Great Awakening? It may have already begun in, of all places, educational institutions, not churches. As with the Protestant Reformation and the 1st and 2nd Great Awakenings, motivating conditions preceding these movements were unfavorable to following Christ's Great Commission. The same is true today. In fact, our present situation has had more than two-hundred years to ferment. Since the last Great Awakening mankind has, like a turtle, slowly withdrawn into their shell-a shell known as the church facility. Instead of going outside our comfort zone and introducing strangers to Christ through our ministry outside the church walls, we invite them into the church where they can hear a monologue-not a discussion with questions-about God's story from an ordained pastor draped in church traditions and theology. Is your congregation dying? If you consider that question harsh ... is your congregation seriously declining? If you belong to one of the protestant congregations in the United States, the truthful answer, based on real data, is most likely... ""Yes. Absolutely."" How does someone know a congregation is dying or seriously declining? Can even a stranger notice that something is seriously wrong? There are both telling signs and less-noticeable signs. You may have heard the tired slogan, ""There's no 'I' in team."" There is however an 'I' in Un-i-te, and unity is one of the primary subjects in this study guide. The 3rd Great Awakening?... A Spiritual Opportunity to Reverse Congregational Decline contains information that is written between the lines of the reference book ""Between Two Breaths, the Seasons of Creation."" The purpose of the reference book is to encourage dialogue instead of monologue, discussion instead of lecture, and relationships rather than institutional connection. This third study guide addresses and provides ways to place the 'I' where it belongs in your congregation by un-i-ting through the use of the Great Commission's original intent and application. Most importantly, this study gives a congregation a practical track to run on and some of the tools needed to create a great awakening within their congregational ministry. This study provides a fresh look at the Great Commission through twenty-first-century eyes, to determine its relevance to the mission of twenty-first-century congregations. The difficulty within this task is perspective. This study will be divided into three sections, all with the aim of uniting local twenty-first-century congregations through Christs' Great Commission by: - Becoming Informed - Becoming the Church, Instead of Just Sitting in It - Becoming Engaged Conversations surrounding the questions within these three areas could be the vehicle and the fuel needed to carry a twenty-first-century congregation out of distress, division, and desperation and into assurance, unity, and hope... and maybe even a 3rd Great Awakening."

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Bob gives his readers ways to think about their faith and not reject commonly held secular views about our world and universe. Rev. Dr. Lynndon L. Thomas, Director of Global Missions Cumberland Presbyterian Church

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Mr. Shupe is very involved in his church and is a past Moderator of the Nashville Presbytery of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. He is an active elder at his church and past Minister of Music, serving in that position for forty-eight years. He attended Free Will Baptist Bible College and then attended and graduated from Belmont University in 1973. He is the father of two, grandfather of two, and the husband of Valerie Shupe for the past fifty-two years.Mr. Shupe, as a teenager, felt called to the Christian mission field which led him to the higher education he pursued. After serving for a year and a half at the First Baptist Church in Portland, Tennessee as Minister of Music and Youth, he felt a different call. After a two-and-a-half-year search, he discovered the insurance industry. This industry allowed him to provide for his family and fund and provide time for several mission projects throughout the remainder of his forty-three-year career. Some of those were working for eight years on a Sudanese Church project for refugees in the U.S.; music programs in Colombia, South America; and raising funds for various other mission projects while directing music for many years in a Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Other music projects included co-writing a historic musical about the birth of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1810 during the Second Great Awakening in the Cumberland Valley. The research for this Great Awakening project and his tenure teaching a Bible Discussion Group for several years gave birth to the idea for this series entitled, The Great Commission for 21st Century Congregations based on his earlier resource book entitled, Between Two Breaths, the seasons of creation. This is the third book from that study series.

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