This book by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis was one I've been meaning to read for years while somehow simultaneously feeling like doing so would be largely redundant, as its two authors were the founding elders of the church I grew up in, and therefore its theology had already broadly been thoroughly absorbed by my adolescent self in the form of a life's worth of sermons, pastoral care & conversation, and even hymns (written by Tim).
Glad to say - reading it was a highly rewarding experience even if not particularly insightful in the sense of exposing me to new forms of presentation or argument about what the gospel is and how it does, or should, work - the premise is simple: if churches are intentional communities centred around the gospel, then that gospel is manifest in both the content (words of truth around which those church communities are unified) and the mission (actions & life-patterns within this community springing from those truths, which are to be shared in the wider world and affect every element of life). According to the blurb comments, this book was apparently considered 'provocative' when it came out - but reading it over a decade down the road it's a wonderful testament to the robustness of post-Christendom evangelical missiology that it basically echoes (or rather pre-echoes) mostly the same kind of ground that I would consider hegemonic in the field, albeit without becoming academic or wishy-washily impractical (as some texts can, maybe, be criticized of doing). The book itself is extremely readable, and draws helpfully on both biblical underpinnings to their ideas and experiential examples of things working out in contemporary efforts. After an introductory pair of chapters exploring what 'gospel' and 'community' mean in this context and the particular challenges of pursuing the fullest overlap of the two (which is what a church, in the total sense, is meant to be), Tim and Steve then apply this robustly simple framework to various areas of Christian living - including evangelism, social involvement, church planting and world mission, discipleship and training, pastoral care, spirituality, theology and apologetics, children and young people, and how we conceptualize success.
There could be much more to unpack from the ideas presented in this book - but since this is not presented as a manifesto, rather an ascertainment of the way church already is (or at least is meant to be), the parameters discussed in here may be flexible enough to be readily applied to anything not covered here. Overall I think most Christian readers would find helpful food for thought in here, in terms of approaches to missional living and community particularly, and would recommend this book to believers looking for workable roadmaps to keep their witness relevant while rooted together in the gospel.
Glad to say - reading it was a highly rewarding experience even if not particularly insightful in the sense of exposing me to new forms of presentation or argument about what the gospel is and how it does, or should, work - the premise is simple: if churches are intentional communities centred around the gospel, then that gospel is manifest in both the content (words of truth around which those church communities are unified) and the mission (actions & life-patterns within this community springing from those truths, which are to be shared in the wider world and affect every element of life). According to the blurb comments, this book was apparently considered 'provocative' when it came out - but reading it over a decade down the road it's a wonderful testament to the robustness of post-Christendom evangelical missiology that it basically echoes (or rather pre-echoes) mostly the same kind of ground that I would consider hegemonic in the field, albeit without becoming academic or wishy-washily impractical (as some texts can, maybe, be criticized of doing). The book itself is extremely readable, and draws helpfully on both biblical underpinnings to their ideas and experiential examples of things working out in contemporary efforts. After an introductory pair of chapters exploring what 'gospel' and 'community' mean in this context and the particular challenges of pursuing the fullest overlap of the two (which is what a church, in the total sense, is meant to be), Tim and Steve then apply this robustly simple framework to various areas of Christian living - including evangelism, social involvement, church planting and world mission, discipleship and training, pastoral care, spirituality, theology and apologetics, children and young people, and how we conceptualize success.
There could be much more to unpack from the ideas presented in this book - but since this is not presented as a manifesto, rather an ascertainment of the way church already is (or at least is meant to be), the parameters discussed in here may be flexible enough to be readily applied to anything not covered here. Overall I think most Christian readers would find helpful food for thought in here, in terms of approaches to missional living and community particularly, and would recommend this book to believers looking for workable roadmaps to keep their witness relevant while rooted together in the gospel.
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