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Editorial:
"There's Nothing New About Change"
Anna Rankin
Comment:
Embracing the Stranger
Denise Wright
From
the Director: Change and Decay – so what's new?
David W Porter
Alwyn
Thomson
Ethel White
A
Changing Church
Chris Easton
Women,
the Church and Change
Lesley Carroll
Interview
with Noel Fallows: Multi-cultural Church Life
Anna Rankin
Urban
Grit
Ken Groves
Higher
Throne
Keith
Getty & Kristyn Lennox
2003
Conference: Reconciliation – Illusion or Elusive?
What's
Jesus got to do with Forgiveness?
Stuart Noble
Review:
Lost in Translation
Gareth Higgins
Review:
The Church Beyond the Congregation by James Thwaites
Claire Martin
Review:
A Time for Mission by Samuel Escobar
Ben
Walker
Review:
Against the Stream by David W Smith
Cheryl
Reid
Review:
Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster, 1921-1998 by Patrick
Mitchel
David Hewitt
Review:
I was a teenage Catholic by Malachi O'Doherty
Fran
Porter
reviews:
THE CHURCH BEYOND THE CONGREGATION
by James Thwaites
Reviewed by Claire Martin
'OUR WORLD IS moving rapidly towards a fragmenting future and leaving the church behind in its wake; surely the time has come to look again at our paradigm and look again at our plan' (p 177).
Having always been taught that the church consists, not of the building, but the people, I wondered what a 'church beyond the congregation' could mean. The book sets out the idea that in today's world we have localised God, not just to the church building, but also to the programmes and meetings that take place within that building – ' . . . we have stopped at the gathering, stayed in the building and focused on the activities therein and not moved ahead to engage the creation' (p 137).
Thwaites suggests that our postmodern society, which is questioning the value of the church, could benefit from recapturing the Hebrew worldview and looking through it to the biblical principle of God being over all, through all and in all (Eph 4:6). This 'all of life' that God inhabits is encompassed in the three spheres of family, marriage and work and it is in these spheres that the church must provide for and equip the saints.
Using the example of the change effected in the city of Ephesus, the book shows how we too might rethink our ideas about church. 'Churches are becoming disconnected from the world and dislocated from the work of the saints themselves' (p 189), but there is no need for, and there shouldn't be, this tension between church life and all other life. 'We must release the powerful name 'church' to define all of life, work and relationships' (p 144).
Thwaites gives a comprehensive explanation of postmodernism and of the Hebrew worldview – why it works and how it can help us interpret the Bible – and then sets out to explain how this worldview can help the church today become more effective throughout the whole of life, especially in the realms of family, marriage and work.
Although mostly theoretical, Thwaites uses the fictional story of George the Elder, interspersed throughout the book, as a literary device to bring home the points made in the theoretical sections. George is trying to work out the priorities in his life – job, church and family.
It is made very clear that this book is not going to deal with the methodology of how to change the church. Rather, Thwaites wants to outline themes and principles and let us ruminate on these new ideas before we work out for ourselves (or pursue some other course to tell us) how to apply the thinking set out here.
The church is dying and a new strategy is needed. This book calls us to look at church from a different worldview and to plan a way forward for a different kind of church emphasis in a new generation of thinking.
CLAIRE MARTIN is Programme Co-ordinator with ECONI.
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