E-NEWSLETTER OF THE REDEEMER CHURCH PLANTING CENTER 
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  ISSUE :: WINTER 2006 RESOURCES
  :: Ministry In The New Global Culture of Major City-Centers
:: Church Planting in Brasilia
:: Launching the New Church
:: Books: Missional Church
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BOOKS: THE MISSIONAL CHURCH

 
 

Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America
Darrell L. Guder (Editor)
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (February 1998)

Missional Church is one of the better books currently available introducing church leaders and lay ministers to ecclesiology from a missional perspective. Guder and his fellow writers do a worthy job of synthesizing contemporary perspectives on church in post-Christian North America and provide valuable lessons for pastors who seek to grow in cultural discernment. In addition, this book offers an excellent treatment of the relationship between church life and missional practice. It argues that the church does not have a mission per se but rather is a missional community. This idea leads to a total revamping of the traditional approaches that churches have taken to "missions." Typically, missions have been seen as something that takes place in areas outside of Western cultures which are not "Christianized." But the authors of Missional Church clearly illustrate that the church operates in a missionary mode in every culture, and therefore, cannot consider itself to be “at home” in any culture.

 
 

Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission
(American Society of Missiology Series, No. 16)
David Jacobus Bosch
Orbis Books (April 1991)

From the Back Cover: Seldom does one come across a truly magisterial book. Transforming Mission, though, is such a one. Bosch examines the entire sweep of Christian tradition to show historically how five paradigms have encapsulated the Christian understanding of how God saves and what human beings should do in response. With the considerable talents that make him the foremost theologian of Christian vocation and mission today, Bosch then outlines the key characteristics of an emerging postmodern paradigm dialectically linking salvation’s transcendent and immanent dimensions…A well-informed and courageous study of the theology of mission and the first to implement paradigm theory for the understanding of mission
 
 

The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church
Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch
Hendrickson Publishers (November 2003)

Frost and Hirsch have created a gripping exegesis of culture, church and history with some careful theological reflection added in for good measure. In fact, this book must be put down often in order to reflect on the meaty insight that Frost and Hirsch provide in this critical contribution to the dialogue of re-imagining ecclesiology against the backdrop of emerging culture. The book challenges the very foundations of western Christendom, especially how and why we “do church.” The authors (who are knee deep in the application of their theories) challenge almost every aspect of the modern church. They take great effort in getting the reader to think outside the box and imagine what church could be.

 

 
 

Breaking the Missional Code: When Churches Become Missionaries in Their Communities
Ed Stetzer, David Putman
Broadman & Holman Publishers (To be published May 2006)

Across North America, many pastors are excited to see churches growing as they achieve their mission to connect the message of the gospel with the community at large. Still others are equally frustrated, following the exact same model for outreach but with lesser results. Indeed, just because a "missional breakthrough" occurs in one place doesn't mean it will happen the same way elsewhere.

One size does not fit all, but there are cultural codes that must be broken for all churches to grow and remain effective in their specific mission context. Breaking the Missional Code provides expert insight on church culture and church vision-casting, plus case studies of successful missional churches impacting their communities.

"We have to recognize there are cultural barriers (in addition to spiritual ones) that blind people from understanding the gospel," the authors write. "Our task is to find the right way to break through those cultural barriers without removing the spiritual and theological ones."