Missionary Church

....and more notes from Derek.

Ch 5 : Graham Cray: Focusing church life on a theology of mission“Christendom is over.” p62“The task is not to combine theology with social analysis and come out with an ideal church from scratch. The task is to engage gospel (and church) as we now know it, with culture as it has become, to answer the question: where do we go from here?” .”

p62He gives some key thoughts on Mission-shaped church (based on the report, which he chaired) A Missionary Church is Focused on the Trinity p64“The same gospel which wins us as worshippers calls us as missionaries.”“[We have..] the maintenance of a religious environment which also requires people to change their culture to become Christians! This situation can no longer be acceptable in the Church of England.”“Both worship and mission are ultimately for God and not for ourselves.”“.. There will be a greater emphasis on the Church as a movement, and as a community of disciples, and less on church as an institution...”A Missionary Church is incarnational p65“The tension between relevance and syncretism lies at the heart of the relationship between the Church and the world.”“No serious attempt at inculturation by the Church of England can begin with afixed view of the outward form of the local church.”“...we, for whom Christ laid down His life, may well have to lay down much that is loved and familiar, and not wrong in itself, to reach those who are far from God.” (Italics mine)“When so called “traditional” are out of touch with the people around them, the problem is not that they are irrelevant, but that they are not incarnational.”

“We are not left alone in this task. An incarnational church seeks to be responsive to the activity of the Spirit in its community. Just as the Spirit prepared the way for the coming of Christ, so we may expect God the Spirit to prepare the way for us..”

A Missionary Church is transformational p68 A Missionary Church is makes disciples p70“The embarrassment about evangelism, which still impedes far too many in theChurch of England, needs to be overcome. Even in secular terms, people expect agarage to offer them cars and a clothing shop to offer them clothes. Why then would they not expect a church to offer them Christ?”“We inhabit an individualistic consumer culture.”“Evangelism without discipleship borders dangerously on hypocrisy.”A Missionary Church is relational p72“Believers do not so much as “go” to church as “be” church.”