Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Post-Christendom

So I'm basically a slacker who doesn’t like doing my Hebrew homework, and will do almost anything to avoid doing it, including doing work on a papers.

I'm writing a paper for my independent study with Dr. Burgess that was supposed to be entitled:

"Evangelism through Service Karl Barth’s Theology of the Active Life as a Paradigm for Evangelism in the Postmodern Context"

I realized tonight that that title isn't complete enough.  The new title is

Evangelism through Service: Karl Barth’s Theology of the Active Life as a Paradigm for Evangelism in the Postmodern/Post-Christendom Context.  

What I realized tonight is that part of the problem when it comes to evangelism, particularly that which is done by the church, is that it is not only the Postmodern world but also the Post-Christendom world that has made evangelism especially difficult.  No longer does the church occupy the space it once did, so the philosophy of "build it and they will come" or "open the doors and they will come" or "let them know when our services are through advertising and they will come" just won't work anymore.  Now, don't get me wrong, people do come to church by knowing when services are and us opening our doors, but at least in my experience that's becoming less and less effective.  And, it tends to attract the same type of people who are already part of the church.  We must adopt a missional approach to everything we do in the church.

With that in mind – can anyone point me to good resources on Post-Christendom ?  I was able to snag the first chapter of Stuart Murray's Book, "Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World"

1 Comments:

At 2:05 PM, Blogger bj woodworth said...

The Shapping of Things to Come by Frost and Hirsch. The opening chapters of the Missional Church by Darrel Guder, check out Gospel in our Culture Network and their online articles, http://www.gocn.org/newsletter.htm#authors.

Ask Sunquist too.

 

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