Summary of the Thesis of Guder's, 'The Missional Church'

Chapter 1.  The church is missional, not by its sending out of missionary ventures but by its life as a community sent by God into its place in the world.

Chapter 2.    The context for the recovery of missional identity in North America is one in which the modern world shaped by the Enlightenment is fast becoming a postmodern one in which truth, self, and society are differently conceived.

Chapter 3.    The churches of North America face a particular challenge in that they live in a place and time in which the functional Christendom to which they had become so accustomed no longer provides their role and definition.

Chapter 4.    The church's origin in the gospel of the reign of God which Jesus preached and established gives shape to the church's missional identity as representing the reign of God as its community (koinonia), its servant (diakonia) and its messenger (kerygma).

Chapter 5.    The missional church lives an alternative vision in the midst of the "powers" constituted by its surrounding society's culture and socio-political, economic structures.

Chapter 6.    Churches participate in the community-forming work of the Holy Spirit by cultivating in their life together those ecclesial-missional practices implicated by the gospel of Christ.

Chapter 7.    Leadership in the church lives at the leading edge of its life on behalf of the reign of God, drawing all to join the community in centering faith and hope in Jesus and cultivating their discipleship into the community's covenanted life as a "body of people sent on a mission."

Chapter 8.    All institutional, organizational forms of the church are historically and culturally contingent and must always be held in a tentative way, subject to the continuing re-forming work of God.

Chapter 9.    All local Christian communities are intimately bound in a "community of communities" with all others, in a global church which is apostolic, catholic, holy and one.

(source)

Comments

[Daling]

Is #1 a false dichotomy? It seems to me that the church is missional both by its sending out, as well as its 'life as a community sent by God into its place in the world.'

[paul soupiset]

nice summary. appreciated and agreed.

[David Hegg]

Just one note. Your use of kerygma in #4 as translating messenger should be karrux, which is the proper form of the greek term, with kerygma being the "message." Technically, karrux was a "herald", entrusted by one in authority to deliver a message. It is never used of writing, but only proclamation.

[Kevin Cawley]

Thanks David. As the source notes, I pulled this straight off GOCN's web page. Personally, I have never been good at, nor understood the value of transliteration.

[Alan]

In response to the question "is number 1 setting up a false dichotomy": No, the point is to challenge the way the church has traditionally thought of mission throughout Christiandom, not to create an either / or.

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