Gospel and Our Culture (GOCS)

What would a theology of the Church look like that took seriously the fact that North America is now itself a mission field? This question lies at the foundation of this volume written by an ecumenical team of six noted missiologists-Lois Barrett, Inagrace T. Dietterich, Darrell L. Guder, George R. Hunsberger, Alan J. Roxburgh, and Craig Van Gelder. The result of a three-year research project undertaken by The Gospel and Our Culture Network, this book issues a firm challenge for the church to recover its missional call right here in North America, while also offering the tools to help it do so. The authors examine North America's secular culture and the church's loss of dominance in today's society. They then present a biblically based theology that takes seriously the church's missional vocation and draw out the consequences of this theology for the structure and institutions of the church.

An expert study of church planting in the most secular part of contemporary Europe In this book, Stefan Paas offers thoughtful analysis of reasons and motives for missionary church planting in Europe, and he explores successful and unsuccessful strategies in that post-Christian secularized context. Drawing in part on his own involvement with planting two churches in the Netherlands, Paas explores confessional motives, growth motives, and innovation motives for church planting in Europe, tracing them back to different traditions and reflecting on them from theological and empirical perspectives. He presents examples from the European context and offers sound advice for improving existing missional practices. Paas also draws out lessons for North America in a chapter coauthored with Darrell Guder and John Franke. Finally, Paas weaves together the various threads in the book with a theological defense of church planting. Presenting new research as it does, this critical missiological perspective will add significantly to a fuller understanding of church planting in our contemporary context.

Explores how the church has engaged-and should engage-the American context What might faithful and meaningful Christian witness look like within our changing contemporary American context? After analyzing contemporary challenges and developing a missiological approach for the US church, Craig Van Gelder and Dwight Zscheile reflect on the long, complex, and contested history of Christian mission in America. Five distinct historical periods from the beginning of the colonial era to the dawn of the third millennium are reviewed and critiqued. They then bring the story forward to the present day, discussing current realities confronting the church, discerning possibilities of where and how the Spirit of God might be at work today, and imagining what participating in the triune God's mission may look like in an uncertain tomorrow.

Over the course of several decades, missiologist George Hunsberger has written numerous essays on crucial themes for the church's recovery of its missional identity and practice. The Story That Chooses Us brings these essays together for the first time. The book as a whole presents a composite sense of the missional identity and faithful witness to which the church is called in contemporary Western society. Hunsberger engages with well-known missiologist Lesslie Newbigin throughout his work as he carefully discerns biblical and theological roots for a contemporary vision of missional theology. The recurring themes in Hunsberger's essays provide both theological mooring and practical guidance for churches following Christ on the missional path.

Academy of Parish Clergy's Top Ten Books for Parish Ministry Insights from a noteworthy convergence of top scholars in biblical studies and missiology Over the past half century, it has become clear that mission is a central theme in the Bible's narrative and, moreover, is central to the very identity of the church. This book significantly widens and deepens the emerging conversation on missional hermeneutics. Essays from top biblical and missiological scholars discuss reading the Scriptures missionally, using mission as a key interpretive lens. Five introductory chapters probe various elements of a missional hermeneutic, followed by sections on the Old and New Testaments that include chapters on two books from each to illustrate what a missional reading of them looks like. Essays in two concluding sections draw out the implications of a missional reading of Scripture for preaching and for theological education. CONTRIBUTORS Craig G. Bartholomew Richard Bauckham Carl J. Bosma Tim J. Davy Dean Flemming John R. Franke Mark Glanville Michael W. Goheen Joel B. Green Darrell L. Guder George R. Hunsberger Timothy M. Sheridan Christopher J. H. Wright N. T. Wright.

The first detailed exegetical treatment of Paul's letters from the emerging discipline of missional hermeneutics, Michael Gorman's Becoming the Gospel argues that Paul's letters invite Christian communities both then and now to not merely believe the gospel but to become the gospel and, in doing so, to participate in the life and mission of God. Showing that Pauline churches were active public participants in and witnesses to the gospel, Gorman reveals the missional significance of various themes in Paul's letters. He also identifies select contemporary examples of mission in the spirit of Paul, inviting all Christians to practice Paul-inspired imagination in their own contexts.

American Christians today, says Michael Barram, have a significant blind spot when it comes to economic matters in the Bible. In this book Barram reads biblical texts related to matters of money, wealth, and poverty through a missional lens, showing how they function to transform our economic reasoning. Barram searches for insight into God's purposes for economic justice by exploring what it might look like to think and act in life-giving ways in the face of contemporary economic orthodoxies. The Bible repeatedly tells us how to treat the poor and marginalized, Barram says, and faithful Christians cannot but reflect carefully and concretely on such concerns. Written in an accessible style, this biblically rooted study reflects years of research and teaching on social and economic justice in the Bible and will prove useful for lay readers, preachers, teachers, students, and scholars.

What can preachers do to help congregants navigate everyday life with the courage, imagination, and savvy it takes to testify in action and word to God's mercy and justice? Christianity's witness depends on credible Christian lives carried out in ordinary settings of everyday life. Sunday's Sermon for Monday's World helps preachers design sermons that equip believers to act with improvisational, creative courage in the ordinary settings of their Monday-to-Saturday lives.  How can we who preach inspire the "ordinary prophets" of our time-those who, in Christ's name, will act in great or small ways as agents of redemptive interruption? Sally A. Brown, with her extensive experience both in parish ministry and training others for ministry, shares preaching strategies that equip these ordinary prophets to take daring action.  Brown begins by reconsidering the power and limits of the missional model of Christian witness and argues that Christian witness today must be adaptive, and therefore imaginative and improvisational. She then turns to the connection between the sermons our listeners hear on Sunday and their capacity to timely, inventive action in everyday situations.  Sunday's Sermon for Monday's World will inspire both preachers and those who listen to them to move from sanctuary to street, week after week, eager to discern and participate in the ongoing, redemptive work of God already under way amid the ordinary scenes and settings of their Monday-to-Saturday lives.

Distillation of crucial issues for the church by one of the leading voices in missional theology Since the publication of the groundbreaking volume Missional Church in 1998, there has been wide-ranging engagement with the theme of the missional church. One of the leading voices in the missional church conversation, Darrell Guder here lays out basic theological issues that must be addressed for the church to serve God faithfully as Christ's witnessing people. Guder argues that there are major consequences for every classical theological locus if the fundamental claims of the missional church discussion are acknowledged. In Called to Witness he delves into these consequences, saying that we need to keep doing missional theology until it is possible to leave off the "missional scaffolding" because, after all, mission defines the very essence and calling of the church.