Multiplying Churches

This book, edited by Steve Timmis, is a short and readable collection of essays on the broad theme of church-planting. My church is very much a church-planting church by its nature and intentionality, and so everyone in it was given a copy of this a few months ago to help us generally think and talk and pray through corporately how to go ahead with an upcoming pair of new church-plants. I can say straight-up that it's a great book for this; each chapter is accessible, jargon-free, biblically-grounded, and thoroughly proactive and exhortational in style - I won't discuss it in much depth here, because I'm currently also reading another book more centrally focused on a holistic exploration of biblical theology of church, and I'll save reflections for the post on that.

   But yes - the chapters:

• Tim Chester - church planting as the work of spreading Christ's light
• Henri Blocher - church planting as the work of a renewed humanity in Creation
• Steve Timmis - church planting as the work of God's people witnessing to Him
• Matt Chandler - the motive of grace
• Reuben Hunter - the method of Word-centredness
• Matt Chandler - the means of empowerment by the Holy Spirit
• One Mokgatle - how churches can/should transcend ethno-cultural boundaries
• Steve Timmis - men's role in church planting
• Ruth Woodrow - women's role in church planting

   Overall, a great book to work through in church communities facing upcoming plants (or not - yet it might even inspire one!)

   Regular readers (ahahahahaha who?) may suspect, rightly, that I do have some thoughts on the last pair of chapters which I haven't divulged in this post - and that's because, to put it quite honestly, I have been convicted in recent months about the extent to which my social/political consciousness is allowed priority over my life in Christ (which then necessarily entails a degree of accountability and humility toward the body of Christ which is the church) to determine my opinions and reactions to things. And that's not to say that I'm still far from in agreement with many of the senior leadership (in both my church and the wider Acts 29 network of which it is a part) on the issue of gender roles (the thoughts I laid out here are still basically what I think), but I recognise that such arguments aren't as neat as I'd've liked to think. My uptake of support for feminism was rooted in hearing and reading the experiences and reflections of women, talking about the oppressions they faced; and while I'm not convinced the church isn't complicit in this to a significant degree (especially considered historically), I also have to recognise that there are many wise and socially-conscious women in the church who accept the seniors' position on gender roles (in a nutshell - complementarianism, so men-only-leaders), and that doesn't end the argument, but in humility creates new space for constructive discussions about where to go from there. I don't know. We're in an interesting period of political and cultural shift regarding gender norms, as we also are regarding the role of traditionally hegemonic religion: my personal opinions aren't as important as the wider attempts by the church to seek unity for all in Christ, which won't be overly aided if the whole church is busy arguing internally about the finer shades of theological nuance in this or that egalitarian theory, or where we draw the line between being subversive in a Spirit/grace-led sense and just being downright subversive. I wish I could explore these avenues further because trust me I've got views - but so what? Maybe some day there will come a time and a place for these conversations between the secular, the philosophical, and the church to take place, with all degrees of no-holds-barred criticality alongside an earnest intention to find workable common ground: and if or when that day comes, I will spring into action and try to help radical feminists and complementarian church leaders realise where their concerns overlap - or whatever else may come about. But until such hypothetical scenarios arise, I am not complacent, but merely refraining from unhelpful or divisive arguments.
   Let dialectics get on with themselves.
   You just get on with being.