Musings of a peripatetic wannabe-sage: ecclesiology

Showing posts with label ecclesiology. Show all posts

Church Community as Conduit of Grace

As community, the church's primary relationship with God pours forth in relationship among believers and toward the world, functioning as a conduit of grace.

Places for One Anothering

Christian practices are the places where one anothering takes place, and all of it must focus on Jesus.

Eldership and the Mission of God: Chapter 2

Elders lead and equip toward mission-alignment.

Elders are responsible for the mission-alignment of the local church in which they serve. Mission alignment means everything the church is and does focuses on and supports disciple-making in ways that fit the particular people, time, and culture. To accomplish this, elders must strive to keep open communication with and submission to God, both as individuals and as a team. They must ensure that disciple-making is the church's number one job, and they must lead the church to do so primarily through relationships rather than relying on structures and programs. Finally, elders strive to maintain unity in the church by keeping the focus on Jesus and his mission.

Eldership and the Mission of God: Equipping Teams for Faithful Church Leadership
By J.R. Briggs, Bob Hyatt · 2015

Eldership and the Mission of God: a reflective summary of Chapter 1

Elders put persons and the mission of God above all else.

Mission-oriented elders are committed to Jesus, truth, and the mission of God. To help the church live this out, they fit the church's communications and practices to the current time and culture. They prioritize persons and the practices of community above structures and processes. They model mission-oriented discipleship. They spend more time caring about spiritual health than about headcounts and money. They subordinate tradition to flexibly follow the Spirit on mission.

Eldership and the Mission of God: Equipping Teams for Faithful Church Leadership
By J.R. Briggs, Bob Hyatt · 2015

Eldership and the Mission of God: a reflective summary of the introduction

Elders focus on Jesus and his mission and equip and lead the church to do the same.

Elders have the overarching responsibility to focus on Jesus and his mission in the context of the local people of God and through their sibling relationship. Under this responsibility, there are three areas of focus. (1) Elders wrestle together by the Spirit to discern and describe what it looks like to be the church as this particular local congregation. (2) Elders lead, feed, and protect the saints and this local congregation so that the saints might carry out the ministry and mission of God both as the church and as individual Christians. (3) Elders, as a body, model before the congregation what it looks like to be the people of God and siblings and Jesus. As individuals, elders model before the saints and attenders what it looks like to be a saved-by-grace Jesus follower.

Eldership and the Mission of God: Equipping Teams for Faithful Church Leadership
By J.R. Briggs, Bob Hyatt · 2015

being we (dissertation haiku)

we are surely we

diverse, yet one: his body

together: see, be

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(C) Laura Springer

Musings of a peripatetic wannabe-sage by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License..

If we’re not feeling communal, something’s wrong

It is amazing that, given our real and essential connection in Christ, we often fail to experience those deep connections in our daily life together.

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(C) Laura Springer

Laura's Writings by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Every church needs a senior pastor, right?

We freely proclaim the fact of Jesus’ resurrection, glorification, and headship over the church, but I doubt we understand the implication:

He’s THE Senior Pastor.

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(C) Laura Springer

Laura's Writings by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Church Government (Definition)

More than structure, adhering to settled Constitution and By-Laws, more than hierarchy handed down through centuries, church government is properly a means of communal God-following.

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(C) Laura Springer

Laura's Writings by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Nurturing this lived reality

journeying together
blood kin
ours
his

intentionally integrated
hand-in-hand leaning
toward his teleology

interior, exterior heart
deepening
forever siblings

felt, lived attachment
reflecting his heart

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Informant
Kemp’s “Situated Learning” in Christian Education Journal 7.1
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This Alien Righteousness

we are sojourners
traveling with siblings
sharing identity

we are his people
living as community
sharing character

he is our life
reigning, indwelling
Master, Friend

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Informants

"this alien righteousness" Life Together
Life Together, by Bonhoeffer

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When the Church Was a Family (Micro Review)

Claim: Modeling life after "the strong-group, surrogate family relations of early Christianity" is the only and best way to be Jesus-followers.

Powerful, researched, ecclesiology must-read.

Disclosure: If you purchase an item through the affiliate link, I receive a percentage of amazon's profit.
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Definition: Church

...a community of virtue in which we develop and live out dispositions that tend toward human flourishing in Christ by the Spirit for the Father.

Informants

Dissident Discipleship by David Augsburger
Discussion prep with classmate, Sam

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Life Together (Micro Review)

Claim: The Scripture provides the "directions and precepts" by which Christians live "life together under the Word" (17).

True classic; life-tested amidst dire circumstances.

Disclosure: If you purchase an item through the affiliate link, I receive a percentage of amazon's profit.
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What if each city had one church?

Inter-congregational partnership--the minimum needed if each city is to have one church--must prioritize three things.

Partnership occurs by means of mutual submission, with a willingness to follow and to give self for the other, in order to partner with Christ.
Unity exemplifies a submissive manner, with a willingness to set the self aside wholeheartedly, actualizing our inherent oneness in Christ.
Mission prioritizes Christ rather than us, holding Christ as primary, considering the other as more important, and following Christ as he leads.

Informants

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Blogs Discussing Ecclesiology of Late

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I'm talking ecclesiology at Who in the World Are We?

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Twenty-five Ecclesiology Books Worth Considering

More Theoretical Works

Robert Saucy: The Church in God's Program
Darrell Guder: Missional Church
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen: An Introduction to Ecclesiology
J. Scott Horrell: From the Ground Up: New Testament Foundations for the 21st-Century Church
Frank Viola: The Untold Story of the New Testament Church
Edmund Clowney: The Church
Earl D. Radmacher: What the Church is All About
Andrew Walker and Luke Bretherton (editors): Remembering Our Future (Deep Church)
Eddie Gibbs: Emerging Churches
Joseph H. Hellerman: The Ancient Church as Family
Robert J. Banks: Paul's Idea of Community
Craig Van Gelder: The Essence of the Church
Miroslav Volf: After Our Likeness--The Church as the Image of the Trinity

More Practical Works

Frank Viola: Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity
Robert Webber (editor): Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches
Brian McLaren: Church on the Other Side
Robert Banks: The Church Comes Home
Robert Banks: Going to Church in the First Century
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Life Together--The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community
James C. Wilhoit: Spiritual Formation as if the Church Mattered
Frank Viola: Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices
Tod E. Bolsinger: It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian
Dan Kimball: The Emerging Church
Michael Moynagh: emergingchurch.intro
Kester Brewin: The Complex Christ

>25 not yet read, but on my list

Wolfgang Simson: Houses that Change the World
Brad Harper: Exploring Ecclesiology: An Evangelical and Ecumenical Introduction
Mark Greene: Let My People Grow
Roger Gehring: House Church and Mission
William D. Henard and Adam W. Greenway (editors): Evangelicals Engaging Emergent--A Discussion of the Emergent Church Movement
Karl Barth: The Church and the Churches

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Notes:

These are listed in no particular order.
Works I've found especially useful works are in bold.
I've commented on many of these on Stuff I've Read.

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Necessary Bits in the Monkey Bars

"Trinity"
"The full deity and humanity of Jesus Christ"
"Justification by faith"
"The authority of Scripture"
One holy universal apostolic Church

Would you add/remove anything?

For Further Reading
"A Call for Theological Triage and Christian Maturity ," by Albert Mohler [source of quoted items"]
Confession of Chalcedon, wikipedia
Nicene Creed, wikipedia
Definition: Monkey Bar Theology, me
Rubric for the Theological Evaluation of an Ecclesiology, me

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"...we're not in the evangelical preservation society..." - Galli

What will fail and should fail are “branches” of Evangelicalism that center on anything other than Christ or who place any rule above Spirit-interpreted Scripture.

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Related:
Mark Galli: On the Lasting Evangelical Survival
Springer: on Evangelicalism

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We are not a collection of individuals; we are persons-in-community

God has indeed chosen to deal with persons as individuals…Yet they are not simply individuals; they become members of a social reality called ekklesia… *