Soulmates: Friendship, Fellowship, and the Making of Christian Community

Publisher Description

:<p>For all the vast talk about the nature of the church over the years, our understanding of the actual relationship we euphemistically call "Christian community" is rather thin and incomprehensible. Peel away the institutional hard shell around what we understand to be the church and what fleshy relationship lies within? This book seeks to give definition to this utterly unique relationship-let's call it "fellowship." It does so in large measure by setting it against the backdrop of another important relationship that serves most often as its chief counterfeit-"friendship." </p>

<p>Are we simply to be "more friendly" than those around us? Or, maybe, just maybe, the relationship that we are to engender in one another in our life together is to be far more unique and radical than we often imagine.</p>

<p><b>Sample chapters include:</b>
<br>- The Many Faces of Relationships
<br>- On Being a Friend
<br>- More on Friendship
<br>- Community in the Making
<br>- More on the Making of Community
<br>- Great Expectations
<br>- The Hospitality of Sojourners and Aliens</p>