scholarly journals Thy Kingdom Come in BAM as It Is in Heaven: Implications on Defining the Kingdom of God in BAM Businesses

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 557
Author(s):  
Ben Ward

Business as Mission (BAM) is a subcategory of Social Entrepreneurship as it seeks cultural innovation from a Christian perspective focusing specifically on economic uplift and religious direction. Most BAM authors describe the kingdom of God as the reign of God. In a theological review, I will show that defining kingdom simply as God’s rule is not a complete view of the kingdom. Rather, a more robust definition of the kingdom is preferred in biblical and theological studies that focuses on God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule. Therefore, the BAM community can adopt a refined definition that helps them move forward in the core vision of holistic ministry. This research provides a biblical and theological understanding for business practitioners to pursue a spiritual bottom line alongside local churches.

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Koos Vorster

This research revisits the idea of a Christian perspective on human rights. Departing from a hermeneutics of trust, this article considers the concept of human rights from the perspective of revelation history. Revelation history departs from the consent of the parts of Scripture, irrespective of differences in dating, original languages, canonical differentiation, cultural, social and historical contexts. Scripture offers a theological unity consisting of various topics which are developed continuing and purposeful throughout the biblical revelation. Two of the major topics in Scripture as they are revealed by a revelation historical survey are the concepts kingdom of God and the covenant of God with God’s people. In this article these two concepts will be used as a foundation for a Christian theory of human rights both as legal human rights and moral human rights. The central theoretical argument of this investigation is that both the concepts kingdom and covenant are essentially about justice and relationships – the justice of the kingdom and the relation between God and humankind, the relation between people and the relation between humans and creation. These relations are the essence of the rights people have, vis-à-vis the authority of the day and other people. These rights, which deal with the orderly maintenance of relationships, can be formalised in legal human rights and should be nurtured and protected by the civil authorities. Christians and churches as moral agents in society have the calling to promote the idea of human rights in constitutional democracies.


Author(s):  
Xolisa Jibiliza ◽  
Prof. S.R Kumalo

Pastors, priests and ministers of congregations and all people of faith, are called to communicate the faithfulness and care of the Creator to the adherents of the faith. This needs to be carried out in the contexts in which communities live and through the ways people experience challenges in life and seek healing. This research paper sought to acknowledge the healing of our brokenness using a pastoral care approach as the lenses through which to explore the issues. The paper revealed some themes such as a definition of what pastoral care includes, what the researcher thinks about pastoral care and the methodology that the researcher has used. Furthermore, this paper sought to give an impact of the pastoral care in the lives of church members who are experiencing a sense of brokenness. Community pastoral care is required to integrate the revelation of the Kingdom of God and His grace and blessings, as well as the prospect of a solid association with Him when it comes to being whole. Such a linkage will serve to transform the life of the people in a community under duress. For healing to take its course, forgiveness has to be effected and then a reconciliation can then be the enhancer of healing. Grounds therefore need to open for people to speak openly with no biases being the stumbling blocks for them in revealing their feelings and frustrations. The predominant theological understanding of interpersonal forgiveness, as it is portrayed in Christian Scriptures and the teachings of Jesus, is that interpersonal and divine forgiveness are inextricably related. Theologically, one cannot consider the forgiveness of another person outside the context of God’s forgiveness. Brokenness is part of our lives because we are born into sin. This paper also reveals to a limited extent the impacts of the spiritual discipline of prayer, pastoral care in a process of healing, preaching as counseling tool for healing, and healing of total depravity.


1989 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 254-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale Goldsmith

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS: We have attempted to indicate that the ask-logion of Matthew 7. 7a, 8a is an independent saying (probably of Jesus himself) which originally called for or described a response within the context of the earliest, eschatological preaching of the Kingdom of God. The uncontrolled and volatile possibilities inherent in this independent saying led the church to begin a process of ‘definition’ of the saying. In this process the context in which the saying is found changes and often its form undergoes changes in order to bring the saying within the church's understanding of what was possible and permissible. The pressures of the ecclesiastical and the eschatological ethical traditions are both present in the Matthean version. A very sketchy suggestion (arising from our study) for the plotting of this development is offered in the accompanying diagram.


Author(s):  
Lenin John ◽  
Manuel Sampayo ◽  
Paulo Peças

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the implementation of Lean & Green (L&G) in an Industry 4.0 (I4.0) environment can enhance the potential impact of the L&G approach and help manufacturing companies moving towards higher operational and sustainable performances. The research work developed here shows that although a proper definition of L&G is neither exposed worldwide nor explicitly implemented under that name, the current industrial firms are deeply concerned about the demanding challenge of keeping businesses flexible and agile without forgetting strategies to minimize the acceleration of climate change. So, one contribution of this paper is the identification and characterization of L&G drivers and design principles, supporting a robust and well-informed L&G systems implementation. As inferred from the research work, this challenge demands high quality and updated data together with assertive information. Thus, the implementation of L&G in I4.0 contexts is the answer to overcome the identified barriers. Likewise, an L&G system contributes to overcoming the challenges of I4.0 implementation regarding the triple bottom line sustainability concept. Consequently, another contribution of this paper is to depict why an L&G system performs better in the I4.0 context.


Author(s):  
Alan W. Brown ◽  
David J. Carney ◽  
Edwin J. Morris ◽  
Dennis B. Smith ◽  
Paul F. Zarrella

A central theme of this book is the three-level approach to CASE environment design and construction that distinguishes conceptual issues (the services) from implementation issues (the mechanisms) and stresses the need for a design context (the process) that the CASE environment must support. Previous chapters have discussed this theme, as well as provided insight into a conceptual model that identifies and classifies the services that might be found in a CASE environment. However, regardless of the service model or conceptual approach selected, environment builders must eventually face the bottom-line decision of how to actually carry out tool integration. The choices they face in terms of potential mechanisms are numerous and include a full range of selections that provide varying degrees of effort and integrated capability. In this chapter, we first consider the properties of integration by continuing the discussion of integration as a relationship (see Section 2.2). In this discussion (Section 5.2), we highlight properties that are addressed by various integration mechanisms. Later sections of this chapter focus on the specific relationship between two particular classes of integrating mechanisms: those based on the sharing or transfer of data between tools (data integration), and those based on synchronization and communication between tools (control integration). In Section 2.2 we introduced the concept put forward by Thomas and Nejmeh that integration can be considered by defining the properties required of the relationships between different environment components. Their definition of integration is exclusively a conceptual view, and is independent of the particular technology being used to implement that integration.


Author(s):  
Johan Buitendag

The indispensability of habitat in our definition of human personhood: In search of an eco-theological understanding of human life. The endeavour of this article is to arrive at a theological responsible conception of life. Life cannot be described adequately only in terms of body and soul (and/or spirit), or even in terms of human personhood. The point is that it is constitutive for life to take the human being’s environment sociologically as well as ecologically into account. This article does not plead for a nature religion as advocated by the Deep Green Movement and all its variations of naturalism and supernaturalism, but asks for a revaluation of a Christian anthropology which approaches the Bible with a green hermeneutics. Perhaps the expression, ‘bio-cultural’ paradigm requests to be substituted with an eco-sociological niche of the human person. An eco-sociological (eco-theological) understanding of homo religiosus is therefore to assume human life as ontologically ‘distributed’.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-191
Author(s):  
Darren Cronshaw ◽  
Peter Downes

The corporate worship gathering has been centrally important to Vineyard Churches, but the Emerging Missional Church (emc) movement has challenged them to reconsider how corporate worship interfaces with mission. A linked series of case studies of three Australian Vineyard churches identifies several functions of the Sunday worship gathering. Worship is a ‘centripetal embrace’ for God’s people; which brings focus, community, continuity and a climax to the week. But worship as missional practice is equally about centrifugal release and the need for encouragement, equipping, empowering, direction and missional impetus. These functions are consistent with James Smith’s appeal for worship that forms disciples whose desires are shaped towards the Kingdom of God and whose imaginations are captured with a vision for being actors in God’s story.


2001 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Rose

The New Testament is connected to the Old Testament in a number of different ways. It is not unusual to find the word “messianic” used to categorise all the different ways in which the writers of the New Testament find Christ (and, similarly, Jewish sources of the Second Temple Period later find the future Messiah) in the Old Testament, or to identify the specific passages in the Old Testament which are now seen to point to Christ/the Messiah. In this article I argue that, if one wants to be able to appreciate the diversity, one should abandon this indiscriminate use of the word “messianic”. After a brief discussion of the meaning and use of the Hebrew word xyvm in the Old Testament, I propose a definition of the phrase “messianic expectations” (expectations focusing on a future royal figure sent by God – someone who will bring salvation to God’s people and the world and establish a kingdom characterised by features such as peace and justice). Subsequently, the origin of these expectations is located as in the proclamation of the eighth-century prophets (Amos, Isaiah and Micah). Finally, one special category of messianic expectations, that is, messianic expectations in the Books of the Psalms, is dealt with.


1998 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 599-619
Author(s):  
BARBARA SELLA

The early fourteenth century marks one of the most significant periods in the development of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Not only did this period witness a profound transformation in the theological understanding of the older feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but it also brought about the active engagement of the laity in its celebration. In northern Italy the first lay confraternities dedicated to celebrating the feast of the Conception were founded in the 1320s and 1330s under the direction of the Franciscans, then the greatest advocates of the immaculist cause. This coincidence between the theological definition of Mary's conception, lay participation in the feast's celebration, and Franciscan sponsorship of confraternities raises interesting questions about the nature of lay piety and the role of lay associations in disseminating religious beliefs.The question of when certain religious beliefs and their theological formulations become known and understood by the majority of the faithful is complex, particularly in the case of the Immaculate Conception. No explicit mention of Mary's sinless conception exists in Scripture or in apostolic teaching. Belief in the Immaculate Conception emerged only gradually, through centuries of reflection and disputation, and was not proclaimed a dogma of faith until 1854. This gradual unfolding of the doctrine has meant that identifying the shift from a general reverence for Mary's conception to an explicit belief in the sinlessness of her conception has proved difficult. A second difficulty is that for centuries the qualifier ‘immaculate’ was not attached to the name of the feast. During the Middle Ages the feast was referred to simply as the ‘Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary’ The mere observance of the feast, therefore, tells us little about what the faithful actually believed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1, Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 355-369
Author(s):  
Maria Annunziata Longo ◽  
Paolo Tenuta

The aim of this study is to define a methodology for assessing sustainability at different levels of detail. For the definition of the conditions of sustainability, the approach known as the triple bottom line was used. The study developed concerns the identification of a set of environmental, economic, and socio-institutional indicators and the elaboration of the same in a synthetic analysis index, organized in a hierarchical structure. An index for measuring irrigation sustainability has been built. This index, called the Sustainable Irrigation Index (SII), allows monitoring and assessment of the sustainability of irrigation activities and policies, at various territorial analysis scales, varying from the regional to the agricultural company. We proceeded with the creation of a multi-criteria spatial decision support system (GIS-based). The implementation of the index took place using the GIS IDRISI software. Finally, the index was applied to the concrete case of a Province of the Calabria region


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