I just received my copy of, “The Missional Church” edited by Darrell L. Guder. This book is written by a number of “missiologists…the result is a three-year research project…this book isses a firm challange for the church to recover its missional call right here in North America…they present a Biblically based theology that takes seriously teh church’s missional vocation and draw out the consequences of this theology for the structure and institutions of the church…”
(From the back cover…)
Here is a quote to wet your appetite:
“This trinitarian point of entry into our theology of the church necessarily shifts all accents in our eccesiology [by the way, this is referring to “viewing the Father, Son and Holy Spirit sending the church into the world”]. As it leads us to see the church as the instrument of God’s mission, it also forces us to recognize the ways in which the Western Church has tended to shape and fit the gospel into its cultural context and made the church’s instutional extension and survival its priority…we have begun to learn that the biblical message is more radical, more inclusive, more transforming that we have allowed it to be. In particular, we have begun to see the church of Jesus Christ is not the purpose or goal of the gospel, but rather, its instrument and witness…” (page 5)
Man, that’s good stuff…I can’t wait to get further into the book and see where this goes 🙂