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280 articles found for “Communion”
Francis of Assisi
[People]Francis of Assisi (1181/1182–1226) was a medieval Italian friar who founded the Order of Friars Minor (the Franciscans), a community devoted to a life of poverty. He is a saint of the Catholic Church and is known for originating the tradition of the Christmas crèche.
Visible and Invisible Church
[Doctrine & Theology]The visible and invisible church is a concept that views the church under two aspects. The invisible church is the whole body of true believers known only to God, while the visible church consists of the actual communities on earth that profess the faith and gather together.
Lee Hyun-pil
[People]Lee Hyun-pil (1913–1964) was a Korean Protestant lay ascetic active during the Japanese colonial period and after liberation. He founded Donggwangwon, a community devoted to poverty, chastity (celibacy), and labor, and is known as the "Barefoot Saint."
Publius
[People]Publius is the "chief man" of the island of Melita (Malta) mentioned in Acts 28. He hosted the shipwrecked Paul and his companions for three days, and Paul healed his father through prayer and the laying on of hands.
Pyrrhus
[People]Pyrrhus was a man of Berea who is named in Acts 20:4 only as the father of Sopater, one of Paul's traveling companions. He appears once in Scripture, and nothing else about his life is recorded.
Monasticism
[History]Monasticism is the movement, beginning in the deserts of Egypt and Syria in the third and fourth centuries, through which a life of prayer, labor, and asceticism lived apart from the world became established in communities and institutions. It stood at the center of the medieval church, and since the Reformation the various Christian traditions have assessed it differently.
Proselyte
[Bible]Proselyte (Greek prosēlytos) is a New Testament term for a person born a Gentile who came to believe in the God of Israel and formally entered the Jewish community through circumcision and other rites.
Bithynia
[Bible]Bithynia was a region in northwestern Asia Minor bordering the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. In Acts, it is the region the Holy Spirit prevented Paul and his companions from entering; in 1 Peter, it is one of the regions where the letter's recipients lived.
Presence of God
[Doctrine & Theology]The presence of God refers to God's being with a particular place, person, or community. Denominations differ in their emphases on how this presence is experienced and understood in worship and prayer.
Samothrace
[Bible]Samothrace is an island in the northern Aegean Sea. It appears once in Scripture, in Acts 16:11, as the place where Paul and his companions stopped for a night while crossing from Troas to Macedonia.
Perga
[Bible]Perga was a city in the region of Pamphylia in southern Asia Minor. In the Book of Acts it appears as the place where Mark left Paul's company during the first missionary journey and as a city where Paul and his companions preached the word on their return.
Francis Schaeffer
[People]Francis Schaeffer (1912–1984) was an American Presbyterian minister and Christian apologist (one who explains and defends the rationality of the Christian faith). In 1955 he and his wife, Edith, founded the L'Abri community in Switzerland.
Henri Nouwen
[People]Henri Nouwen (1932–1996) was a Dutch Catholic priest and spiritual writer. After teaching at the divinity schools of Yale and Harvard, he served as pastor of a community for people with intellectual disabilities in Canada. His books, including The Return of the Prodigal Son, are widely read across denominational lines.
Nicolaus von Zinzendorf
[People]Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760) was a German count and Pietist leader. He founded the Herrnhut community, revived the Moravian Brethren, and is regarded as a leading pioneer of Protestant foreign missions.
History of Christianity in China
[History]The history of Christianity in China extends from the arrival of the Church of the East under the Tang dynasty in the seventh century, through the Catholic and Protestant missions, to the present day. After the Communist government came to power, Chinese Protestantism divided into the government-registered Three-Self churches and the unregistered house churches.
Missional Church
[History]The missional church is an ecclesiology, and a movement grounded in it, that regards the church as a community sent into the world and understands mission not as one of the church's many activities but as its very essence. The term gained wide currency through a book published in North America in 1998.
Emerging Church
[History]The emerging church was a church-renewal movement that arose in the Western evangelical world, particularly in the United States, from the late 1990s through the 2000s. It sought forms of worship, community, and mission suited to postmodern culture, and it spread not as a denomination but as a loose "conversation."
Discipleship Training Movement
[History]The discipleship training movement seeks to train laypeople as disciples of Jesus Christ so that they share in the ministry of the church. In Korea it spread from 1978 onward, when Ok Han-heum and SaRang Community Church introduced into the local church the discipleship training previously carried out by parachurch mission organizations.
Society of Jesus
[History]The Society of Jesus is a Catholic religious order of men that began in 1534, when Ignatius of Loyola and his companions took vows in Paris. It received approval from Pope Paul III in 1540 and has placed particular emphasis on foreign missions and higher education.
Beguines
[History]The Beguines were a medieval women's religious movement that began in the late twelfth century in the region of Liège, in present-day Belgium. Women who took no lifelong vows formed communities and lived lives of chastity, prayer, and work.