Thursday, August 5, 2010

What Gospel and Community Centered Might Look Like…

In their groundbreaking work Total Church authors Steve Timmis and Tim Chester outline what “being gospel-centered and community-centered might mean”:

  • seeing church as an identity instead of a responsibility to be juggled alongside other commitments
  • celebrating ordinary life as the context in which the word of God is proclaimed with “God-talk” as a normal feature of everyday conversation
  • running fewer evangelistic events, youth clubs, and social projects and spending more time sharing our lives with unbelievers
  • starting new congregations instead of growing existing ones
  • preparing Bible talks with other people instead of just studying alone at a desk
  • adopting a 24-7 approach to mission and pastoral care instead of starting ministry programs
  • switching the emphasis from Bible teaching to Bible learning and action
  • spending more time with people on the margins of society
  • learning to disciple one another—and to be discipled—day by day
  • having churches that are messy instead of churches that pretend

If these get your attention you may want to dig a little further by buying this excellent book for just a little over 10 bucks.

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