A Presence That Disturbs: A Call to Radical Discipleship

by Anthony Gittins

Overview

This powerful, moving, and "disturbing" book looks at the contemporary issues that block the attainment of a revitalized Church--a Church united rather than fragmented, a Church tuned to justice for all rather than to provincial myopia. A Presence That Disturbs will engage the general reader and the specialist alike with a fresh perspective on what it means to follow Christ.

Three themes garnered from Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl underpin the message of this book. To live you must choose: you must not let life "just happen." To love you must encounter: you must know that human encounter is the only authentic way to know and love. To grow you must suffer: you must know that suffering can be a vehicle of growth, a chance for redemption, a way to turn ourselves to the outside.

Tony Gittins discusses these themes in the context of the search for meaning. The new lease on life endowed by the Holy Spirit, the function of imaginative ministry, the communitas of true discipleship, and the radical actions of Jesus' ministry are just a few of the ideas explored in the quest for a new understanding of discipleship.

"Authentic Christianity," says Gittins, "is outreaching and encountering; it communicates and ministers. Christianity, like its sibling, Judaism, does not produce complacency, but complicity or participation with others. These pages are an invitation to renewed discipleship and an appeal to radical Christianity in the footsteps and in the Spirit of Jesus, who prayed that his followers be one in Him."

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Paperback

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780764808487
Publisher:	Liguori Publications
Publication date:	02/19/2002
Edition description:	1ST
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Anthony J. Gittins, CSSp, Professor Dr. Anthony Gittins has taught Theology and Cultural Anthropology at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago since 1984. Born in Manchester, England, he earned an MA and PhD from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He has taught and worked in some thirty-five countries. His pastoral outreach includes ministry in cultures from Africa to the Pacific, and work with Chicago's disenfranchised, especially homeless women. He is the author of numerous books and articles. Father Gittins also lectures and leads retreats nationally and internationally. He continues his anthropological work by spending periods of time in local churches, especially in Africa and the Central Pacific, working on inculturation by bringing learnings from cultural anthropology and theology together. His commitment to homeless women in Chicago, whose stories he told in Where There's Hope, There's Life: Women's Stories of Homelessness and Survival, is ongoing.

Table of Contents

	Foreword	xi
	Introduction	xv
Chapter 1	Searching for Meaning, Renewing Discipleship	1
Chapter 2	The Holy Spirit: Advocate, Comforter, Life-Giver	23
Chapter 3	Imagination, Encounter, Ministry	43
Chapter 4	Community, Communitas, and Downward Mobility	69
Chapter 5	The Disturbing Ministry of Jesus	91
Chapter 6	Mentors and Midwives, Images of Discipleship	119
Chapter 7	Strangers in the Spirit of Jesus	143
	Afterword	163
	Notes	165