Читать книгу Church for Every Context - Michael Moynagh - Страница 7

New expressions of the church are springing up in many parts of the global North. Going under a variety of names – church plants, emergent church, fresh expressions of church, missional communities and many more – they are making a significant mark on the ecclesial landscape. Though notoriously difficult to count, they have attracted a growing literature, generated extensive debate and changed denominational strategies. It is widely recognized that something significant is afoot. Church for Every Context offers a theological rationale of what is becoming a global trend. It proposes some methodologies for starting these new types of churches and growing them to maturity.

A report for the Church of Scotland declared that the emergence of these churches ‘has every appearance of being one of the most significant missional movements in the recent history of Christianity in these islands’ (Drane and Drane, 2010, p. 3). Alongside an expanding flow of nonacademic books, the academic literature is taking steadily more notice of the phenomenon. Academics have begun both to critique it, such as – in the UK – Hull (2006), Milbank (2008), Davison and Milbank (2010) and Percy (2010), and to provide more sympathetic treatments, such as – again using UK examples – Ward (2002), Williams (for example 2006), Dunn (2008) and Drane (2010). Fresh expressions of church have become a topic of study in many of Britain’s theological colleges and courses (Croft, 2008a, p. 47), and the subject of a growing number of MA and PhD dissertations.1

We begin with an introduction to these new types of church – what I shall call ‘new contextual churches’. It describes four ecclesial currents that are giving rise to these churches. It offers a definition of new contextual church, provides some examples and supplies a rationale for the definition. It then summarizes the concerns these churches are raising, and against this background outlines the purpose and shape of the book.