Here is a book that some Acts 29 pastors are talking about:

Total Church, by Tim Chester & Steve Timmis.

From the forward:
“This book argues there are two key principles that should shape the way we ’do church’: gospel and community. Christians are called to a dual fidelity: fidelity to the core content of the gospel and fidelity to the primary context of a believing community. Whether we are thinking about evangelism, social involvement, pastoral care, apologetics, discipleship or teaching, the content is consistently the Christian gospel and the context is consistently the Christian community. What we do is always defined by the gospel and the context is always our belonging in the church. Our identity as Christians is defined by the gospel and the community.

Being gospel-centred actually involves two things. First, it means being word-centred because the gospel is a word – the gospel is news, a message. Second, it means being mission-centred because the gospel is a word to be proclaimed – the gospel is good news, a missionary message.

So maybe we have really got three principles! Christian practice must be (1) gospel-centred in the sense of being word-centred; (2) gospel-centred in the sense of being mission-centred; and (3) community-centred

You may think this sounds like a statement of the obvious! We hope you do. But let us make two points by way of introduction.

1. In practice, conservative evangelicals place a proper emphasis on the gospel or on the word. Meanwhile others, like those who belong to the so-called emerging church, emphasize the importance of community. The emerging church is a loose movement of people who are exploring new forms of church. Each group suspects the other is weak where they are strong. Conservatives worry that the emerging church is soft on truth, too influenced by postmodernism. The emerging church accuses traditional churches of being too institutional, too programme-oriented, often loveless and sometimes harsh.

Let us as authors nail our colours to the mast from the outset. We agree with the conservatives that the emerging church is too often soft on truth. But we do not think the answer is to be suspicious of community. Indeed, we think that conservatives often do not ’do truth’ well because they neglect community. Because people are not sharing their lives, truth is not applied and lived out.

We also agree with the emerging church movement that conservative evangelicals are often bad at community. The emerging church is a broad category and an ’emerging’ one at that, with no agreed theology or methodology. This means that generalizations about emerging church are far from straightforward. But many within the movement seem to downplay the central importance of objective, divinely revealed, absolute truth. This may not be a hard conviction, but it is a trajectory. Others argue that more visual media (images, symbols, alternative worship) should complement or replace an emphasis on the word. We do not think this is the answer. Indeed, we think emerging church can sometimes be bad at
community because it neglects the truth. If Christian community is not governed by truth as it should be, then it can be whimsical or
indulgent. There is a danger of community becoming me and my acquaintances talking about God – church for the Friends generation – middle-class twenty- and thirty-somethings church. This certainly is not true of all that calls itself emerging church, but it is a danger. Only the truth of the gospel reaches across barriers of age, race and class.

We often meet people reacting against an experience of conservative churches that has been institutional, inauthentic and rigidly programmed. For them the emerging church appears to be the only other option.We also meet people within more traditional churches who recognize the need for change, but fear the relativism they see in the emerging church. For them existing models seem to be the only option. We also meet people within the emerging church movement who want to ’do church’ in a different way, but do not want to buy into postmodern or post-evangelical notions of truth. We believe there is an alternative.We need to be enthusiastic about truth and mission and we need to be enthusiastic about relationships and community.

2. Rigorously applying these principles has the potential to lead to some fundamental and thoroughgoing changes in the way we do church. The theology that matters is not the theology we profess, but the theology we practise. As John Stott says: ’our static, inflexible, self-centred structures are “heretical structures” because they embody a heretical doctrine of the church.’ If ’our structure has become an end in itself, not a means of saving the world’ it is ’a heretical structure’.

Being both gospel-centred and community-centred might mean:

* seeing church as an identity instead of a responsibility to be juggled alongside other commitments
* celebrating ordinary life as the context in which the word of God is proclaimed with ’God-talk’ a normal feature of everyday conversation
* running fewer evangelistic events, youth clubs and social projects, and spending more time sharing our lives with unbelievers
* starting new congregations instead of growing existing ones
* preparing Bible talks with other people instead of just studying alone at a desk
* adopting a 24-7 approach to mission and pastoral care instead of starting ministry programmes
* switching the emphasis from Bible teaching to Bible learning and action
* spending more time with people on the margins of society
* learning to disciple one another – and be discipled – day by day
* having churches that are messy instead of churches that pretend

We have called this book Total Church. Church is not a meeting you attend or a place you enter. It is an identity that is ours in Christ.
It is an identity that shapes the whole of life so that life and mission become ’total church’.

Is this ’gospel plus’ (requiring something – in this case Christian community – in addition to the gospel, which thereby robs the gospel of its saving power)? The answer is it depends how you tell the gospel story. It depends whether you see the gospel simply as the story of God saving individuals, or as the story of God creating a new humanity.

Part one, ’Gospel and community in principle’, outlines the biblical case for making gospel and community central principles for Christian life and mission. Part two, ’Gospel and community in practice’, applies this double focus to various areas of church life. Activists may be tempted to skip part one and go straight to part two, but the applications in part two are integrally linked to the convictions outlined in part one. We are trying to do more than assemble a collection of ’good ideas’ for church life. We have tried to explore the contemporary implications of the preoccupation with the gospel word and gospel community in the Bible story. …”

Currently, it is sold only in the UK. Sources say that Crossway will be printing it under a new book line by Acts 29 called “Re:Lit” (Resurgence Literature).

http://www.ivpbooks.com/pages/data.asp?cache=update&layout=Article.htm&Id=538

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David Thew
Sojourn Founding Pastor
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David Thew
Sojourn Pastor
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