Who is the church?
Subtitle: an ecclesiology for the twenty-first century
By: Cheryl M. Peterson
Publisher: Fortress Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Minneapolis
Language: eng
Number of pages: 153
ISBN-13: 9780800698812; 9781451426380
Subjects: Mission of the church; Church
Description: Many congregations today are beset by fears, whether over loss of members and money, or of irrelevancy in an increasingly pluralistic society. To counter this, many congregations focus on strategy and purpose--what churches "do"--But Cheryl Peterson submits that mainline churches need to focus instead on "what" or "who" they are--to reclaim a theological, rather than sociological, understanding of themselves. To do this, she places the questions of the church's identity and mission into a conversation with the primary ecclesiological paradigms of the past century: the neo-Reformation concept of the church as a "word event" and the ecumenical paradigms of the church as "communion." She argues that these two paradigms assume a context of cultural Christendom that no longer exists--focused on the church that is gathered--rather than the missional church that is sent out. Peterson suggests instead that we understand the church as a people created by the Spirit to be a community, and that we must claim a narrative method to explore the church's identity--specifically, the story of the church's origin in the Acts of the Apostles. Finally, here is a way of thinking of church that reconciles the best of competing models of church for the future of mainline Protestant theology.
Notes: Minimal Level Cataloging Plus.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: Asking the right question; title: 1. Ecclesiology and context in Protestant America; title: 2. The church as word-event; title: 3. The church as communion; title: 4. Ecclesiology post-Christendom: the missional church; title: 5. Starting with the Spirit: a narrative method for ecclesiology post-Christendom; title: 6. An ecclesiology that "starts with the Spirit": the ecumenical creeds; title: Epilogue: A vision for revival.