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Thanks for visiting the Living System Ministry blog where Doug and Judy Hall, along with others on our team, will discuss various aspects of what Living System Ministry is all about. We welcome you to leave comments and ask questions. We look forward to hearing from you!

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Judy Hall's picture
 Urban Planning Series: Learning to Appreciate the City
Submitted by Judy Hall on Thu, 05/17/2012 - 4:24pm

It is important for students of urban ministry to know Jane Jacobs’ work because she is an advocate for the city. She helps us have a positive attitude towards the city, our neighborhood and its streets, which is essential if we are involved in urban ministry.

Jacobs writes about having a positive attitude toward a city neighborhood using the example of Boston’s North End, which she says was originally built “to house the flood of immigrants first from Ireland, then from Eastern Europe and finally from Sicily.”

Judy Hall's picture
 Urban Planning Series: Learning in the Laboratory of the City
Submitted by Judy Hall on Mon, 05/14/2012 - 12:44pm

For the next four blogs I’d like to talk about the urban planner, Jane Jacobs. Her ideas greatly influenced how we thought about ministry in the city. Doug and I were first introduced to her classic 1961 work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, in the mid-sixties when we moved into Boston’s South End. At that time, the South End was considered to be the worst slum in the city and faced the threat of being demolished by urban renewal in order to build new “luxury” housing.

Doug Hall's picture
 Experiencing Spiritual Vitality in our Modern Culture
Submitted by Doug Hall on Fri, 05/04/2012 - 8:10am

The purpose of Living System Ministry is to see an aligned and empowered faith grow vitally in our modern, technological secondary culture. To my understanding, this has never happened before. All the great world revivals were nurtured in the context of primary or relationally-based culture, which has produced a growing faith in the world since the first century. But now the challenge is for the global revivals to experience spiritual vitality in the burgeoning contemporary secondary culture that is emerging all around them. Living System Ministry can help with this goal.

Doug Hall's picture
 Following Jesus’ Example of Self-Limiting
Submitted by Doug Hall on Fri, 04/27/2012 - 8:20am

For any major movement of God to have a long-term history, it must balance “enhancing” with “self-limiting.” Many of the major revivals that occurred in our world began in times of poverty and oppression, just as in the first century. Boston’s Quiet Revival began at a time when the city was experiencing riots, crime and poverty. We’ve seen God begin revivals in these types of environments, followed by substantial spiritual growth in the city.

Doug Hall's picture
 The Decline of Revival
Submitted by Doug Hall on Fri, 04/20/2012 - 8:13am

Global Christianity faces a crucial challenge. Following World War II, Christianity grew dramatically from being a Western religion to becoming a world faith in about one generation. It experienced massive revivals around the world in places such as Korea, China, Africa, Latin America and parts of India1. But while Christianity has grown worldwide, it is now encountering a problem.

Doug Hall's picture
 Continually Learning and Doing Ministry in a “Teaching Hospital” Model
Submitted by Doug Hall on Thu, 04/05/2012 - 10:02am

We can gain a lot of understanding about practicing Living System Ministry in social systems by observing how people in the medical professions deal with the living systems of human life. If we look at the characteristics of teaching hospitals, such as their commitment to research, teaching, practitioners who get involved with patients, and so on, we can see some parallels in the ways the Emmanuel Gospel Center pursues its ministry.

1) Applied Research helps us find out what God is doing in the city, and how he is doing it.

Doug Hall's picture
 A Growing Bridge Between Faith and Science
Submitted by Doug Hall on Fri, 03/30/2012 - 1:02pm

A developing correlation between faith and today’s systemic sciences can be greatly beneficial to Christianity. Christians need to be students of both special and natural revelation (by “special revelation,” I am referring to the Word of God, the Bible). Our understanding of the Bible can actually be enhanced by the sciences – especially by the newly developing systemic sciences – because they can give us a better understanding of natural revelation than we received from past social sciences demonstrating a more fragmented worldview.

     
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