New David Runcorn title

The Road to Growth Less Travelled: Spiritual Paths in a Missionary Church, by David Runcorn.

This is one of a wide-ranging series of booklets (all 27 pg long) from Grove Books. Part of what Runcorn is saying is that we need to be careful to challenge rather than mirror our culture, and that our very ‘irrelevance’ to the society at large may be one of our strengths.

He also explores why so many people are drifting away from churches, while still ostensibly remaining Christian. At one point he quotes Douglas John Hall: ‘the church of Christendom, so often growing in the wake of national, expansionist interests, missed [the sense of loss in the Christian life].’ ‘Christendom tried to be great, large, magnificent. It thought itself the object of God’s expansive grace. It forgot the meaning of its election to worldly responsibility. Today we are constrained by the Spirit to rediscover the possibilities of littleness.’

Paul Fromont has written four brief posts on the Prodigal Kiwi blog discussing some of the book’s points, starting here.

Does being a Sinner still 'work'?

David Fitch discusses the issue of whether telling people they are sinners still 'works' in a postChristendom age...

Traditionally, the first move in evangelism is to convince the non-Christian that he or she is a sinner in need of God (or that he or she is deserving of God’s judgment and going to hell without Christ). “You must admit you are a sinner in need of God!” We evangelicals inherit this ‘starting point’ from our Reformed theology (which for many reasons starts with the depravity of humanity). This starting point was effective in Christendom where so many were determined by the ever-present Western guilt derived from the Roman Catholic ethos of the European medieval time period. This guilt however is waning in the new cultures of post Christendom. As a result, some of our evangelistic techniques must go to greater and greater lengths to prove to the non Christian that they are indeed sinner.

The Postmodern Parish

Discerning the shape of the emerging church will be an inexact process, especially for those of us who still have one foot firmly planted back in the old modernist and Christendom paradigm and are only beginning to understand the impact of the new postmodern and post-Christian context for ministry. Because that process will often be confusing, we need the Holy Spirit to lead us through it. If we could rely only on our own bumbling efforts at discerning the shape of the emerging church, we would be in trouble. As a friend once described the way a new pastor is called to lead a congregation, "It's so crazy, you have to believe the Holy Spirit is in charge; or you'd go nuts!" In a similar way, we would be tempted to despair in our attmepts to discover the emerging church, were we not confident that the Spirit is at work in and through us.

The Postmodern Parish - Jim Kitchens - pg 41. Alban Institute, 2003