Over the next couple of weeks I will be facilitating an .acom class on Culture & Mission, one of my favourite topics.
The text for the class is Church Without Walls, a 1992 publication by an American who served as a missionary in Brazil.
Its one of the simplest books I have read on why missiology should shape ecclesiology and the silly situations we get ourselves into when we ‘lead with church’. I don’t have time to review it here, but I would highly recommend it to anyone serious about engaging with the world and establishing indigneous churches.
I’m looking forward to the conversation it will stir over the next few weeks in class!
Here’s a piece of the review of the Amazon site:
“The sad reality is that going to the lost and living Christlike lives among them is not in our ecclesiology,” says author Jim Petersen. Throughout its history, the church has pushed for institutionalism in an effort to preserve the purity of the gospel. As a result, we’ve evolved into congregations that meet inside the walls of a building-rather than vital communities that live among the lost.
In Church Without Walls, Jim Petersen offers an exciting definition of the church that pushes beyond the too-small boundaries we’ve inherited from the past. The first-century Christians had to sort out Jesus from Judaism in order to become a people for all nations. Today, we have to sort out Jesus from our religious traditions in order to make Him available to our nation. That’s the challenge we face: Will we be the church without walls, communicating a gospel free of traditional and cultural trappings? Or will we continue to reproduce our forms and structures, hiding the essence of the gospel within?
Baby I salivate when I read this stuff!