United Church Publications

Product Information

Challenging Empire: Justice Seeking in Your Faith Community

Format:

Softcover

ISBN/Product #:

CH10394

Price:

$20.95

• Available from UCRDstore

Challenging Empire: Justice Seeking in Your Faith Community is a five-piece resource with materials for working with children, adults, and intergenerational groups. It offers opportunities to learn what empire is, understand how we are involved in it, and envision how we can transform it. It includes:

• Challenging Empire: Stories and Activities to Transform Your Community
• Challenging Empire: Intergenerational Conversations
• Children Challenging Empire
• Living Faithfully in the Midst of Empire
• Mandate mission theme special edition (May 2007)

Challenging Empire: Stories and Activities to Transform Your Community

Primarily addressed to an adult audience, Stories and Activities to Transform Your Community will be useful for leaders of groups of different sizes in many areas of church and community ministry. It is structured in five 2- to 2 ½ -hour study sessions, but can be adapted. It includes:

• Stories from Near and Far—reflections on aspects of empire such as economics, militarism, and racial and gender justice from partners in Canada and around the world
• the Empire Lens—a tool for faith communities to see themselves and tell their own story in the context of empire
• a worship service on the theme of Empire Turning toward God

Supplementary workshops to go with this resource are available as PDFs:

The Social Justice Wheel [PDF: 8 pp/161 KB]

This activity, developed by the Faith in Action Committee of Halifax Presbytery, can assist churches and individuals to examine relationships they have with others and needs that exist in the world.

The Empire Lens, part 2: The Church’s Story [PDF: 10 pp/241 KB]

Building on the Empire Lens activity in the book, this workshop examines the challenge of empire in the context of the biblical story, faith practice, and church organization.

Challenging Empire: Intergenerational Conversations

This volume is intended for intergenerational groups to connect with and gain wisdom from one another using prayer, activities, and discussion. Structured in five 1 ½ - to 2-hour small-group sessions, the material can easily be adapted for other uses. It features

• a small-group process based on the Conversation Café method
• concrete illustrations of challenging empire through fair trade, conservation, sustainability, and peaceful play
• an opportunity to break down the walls of empire that too often separate adults from youth

Children Challenging Empire

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• $6.50

Children Challenging Empire is primarily meant for leaders of children's groups. It makes the concept of empire accessible by using storytelling and activities, and understanding empire as a bully. Sunday School or Vacation Bible School leaders can tailor the sessions to suit the group's time and age range.

Children Challenging Empire features

• original stories that illustrate empire's bullying behaviour
• a process of contrasting “Empire Thinking” with “Disciple Thinking”
• the Empire Rap—an engaging rhyme that children will be excited to learn and share with the faith community

Children Challenging Empire is also available separately as a standalone resource.

Living Faithfully in the Midst of Empire

This report was affirmed by General Council in 2006, and documents how economic globalization is becoming more complex and insidious and is exponentially increasing the misery experienced by the vast majority of God's people. It builds on To Seek Justice and Resist Evil, approved in 2000.

Living Faithfully in the Midst of Empire features

• a liturgical structure of witness, confession, call, and commitment
• first-hand accounts of the threat of empire by partners in Canada and overseas
• theological reflections by Drs. Douglas John Hall, Ofelia Ortega, and Néstor O. Míguez
• background documents from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and World Council of Churches

Mandate Mission Theme Special Edition (May 2007)

The Mandate mission theme special edition on “Challenging Empire,” published in May 2007, features articles, Bible studies, a workshop, and worship materials on empire.

For more information, please contact Christie Neufeldt