Читать книгу Church for Every Context - Michael Moynagh - Страница 57

This chapter has shown how the four characteristics of new contextual churches – being missional, contextual, formational and ecclesial – have been repeatedly expressed in new ways during the history of the church. They have not always been present at once. At Little Gidding and Eversley the missional, contextual and formational marks were evident, but because the church was already present in the village, the ecclesial characteristic (existing church giving birth to new ones) lay dormant.

However, ‘new contextual churches’ were brought to birth on plenty of other occasions. Think of Antioch, the Celtic and Augustinian missions, the evangelizing work of the Benedictine communities and their mendicant successors, the Beguines, and John Wesley. So although the new churches emerging today may – once again – take a different shape to what we have seen in the past, they are nothing new. They belong to a long line of ‘mission-shaped church’.