Book: The Virtual Body of Christ

The Virtual Body of Christ.....


We live in a wired world where 24/7 digital connectivity is increasingly the norm. Christian megachurch communities often embrace this reality wholeheartedly while more traditional churches often seem hesitant and overwhelmed by the need for an interactive website, a Facebook page and a twitter feed. This book accepts digital connectivity as our reality, but presents a vision of how faith communities can utilize technology to better be the body of Christ to those who are hurting while also helping followers of Christ think critically about the limits of our digital attachments.    

This book begins with a conversion story of a non-cell phone owning, non-Facebook using religion professor judgmental of the ability of digital tools to enhance relationships. A stage IV cancer diagnosis later, in the midst of being held up by virtual communities of support, a conversion occurs: this religion professor benefits in embodied ways from virtual sources and wants to convert others to the reality that the body of Christ can and does exist virtually and makes embodied difference in the lives of those who are hurting.


The book neither uncritically embraces nor rejects the constant digital connectivity present in our lives. Rather it calls on the church to 
a) recognize ways in which digital social networks already enact the virtual body of Christ; 
b) tap into and expand how Christ is being experienced virtually;
c) embrace thoughtfully the material effects of our new augmented reality, 
and d) influence utilization of technology that minimizes distraction and maximizes attentiveness toward God and the world God loves.

About the Author
Dr. Deanna A. Thompson is professor of Religion at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She teaches classes in African American Studies, Women's Studies, and Social Justice. During her almost twenty years at Hamline, in addition to being awarded Faculty of the year by faculty and students, she has also received awards for her advising. She is a respected scholar in the study of Martin Luther and feminist theology. Thompson is also an active member of the American Academy of Religion, where she served for eight years on the Board of Directors, six years as Director of the Upper Midwest Region, and six years as co-chair of the Martin Luther and Global Lutheran Traditions Program Unit.

5 minutes of church history - October=Luther month

In October 2017 gain 31 segments of Church History focussed on Luther from 5 minutes in Church History hosted by Dr Stephen Nichols.

5 Minutes in Church History, hosted by Dr. Stephen Nichols, is a weekly podcast that provides an informal and informative look at church history. Join us each week as we take a brief break from the present to go exploring the past. Travel back in time as we look at the people, events, and even the places that have shaped the story of Christianity. Each podcast offers an easily digestible glimpse of how the eternal, unchangeable God has worked in the church over prior generations, and how this can encourage us today. This is our story—our family history. 5 Minutes in Church History is an outreach of Ligonier Ministries.

Available at https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/5-minutes-in-church-history-weekly-christian-podcast/id684370851?mt=2

Book: Seven disciplines that shape the church for mission

In our quest to renew the church, Christians have walked through seeker-friendly, emergent, missional, and other movements to develop new expressions of the body of Christ. 
Now in the post-Christian world in North America we're asking the question again: Is there a way to be the church that engages the world, not by judgment nor accommodation but by becoming the good news in our culture? 
In Faithful Presence, noted pastor and scholar David Fitch offers a new vision for the witness of the church in the world. He argues that we have lost the intent and practice of the sacramental ways of the historic church, and he recovers seven disciplines that have been with us since the birth of the church. 
Through numerous examples and stories, he demonstrates how these revolutionary disciplines can help the church take shape in and among our neighborhoods, transform our way of life in the world, and advance the kingdom. 
This book will help you re-envision church, what you do in the name of church, and the way you lead a church. It recovers a future for the church that takes us beyond Christendom. 
Embrace the call to reimagine the church as the living embodiment of Christ, dwelling in and reflecting God's faithful presence to a world that desperately needs more of it.

 

View the table of contents

What others are saying
"David Fitch continues his constructive work in ecclesiology by emphasizing the presence the church makes possible in a world that desperately needs God's presence. The disciplines he calls attention to are life giving because they are the disciplines God has given us to be a faithful presence. Hopefully this book will be widely read and used in churches everywhere."    Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus, Duke Divinity School

"David Fitch can write this book not just because he has a heart for mission, but because he has attended faithfully to the presence of the Spirit of the living Christ poured out on all flesh. If you want to know more about Spirit-empowered mission, read this book. But be careful, as it will transform—discipline, even!—your life, your family, and your church according to the shape of the coming reign of God."  Amos Yong, professor of theology and mission, Fuller Theological Seminary, author of Hospitality and the Other

"Do you want some practical, pastoral, and theological wisdom and encouragement on how to be the church, rather than merely go to church? Do you want to be a people for God's name and faithful presence—for one another and the world? Read this book. Learn nonnegotiable practices that Fitch and his communities have learned through their communion with a faithful God. These disciplines (including being with and for children), practiced together by the power of the Holy Spirit, will conform us to Jesus. Joined to him, one another, and those he's given us to love with him, we are intentionally shaped for God's missional life among us."  Cherith Fee Nordling, associate professor of theology, Northern Seminary

"Like leaven in the dough, like a mustard seed in the soil, like light in the darkness, the church must be faithfully present in our communities as an outpost of heaven. David Fitch's new book will help us all to practice the kingdom lifestyle now. I encourage you to read, share, and live it!"  Krish Kandiah, founder and director, Home for Good, author of Paradoxology

"Are missional churches merely traditional churches with some justice projects added on? In Faithful Presence David Fitch says no. Instead, Fitch argues, following the missio Dei and living incarnationally only occurs as we practice faithful presence in the world. And such presence requires disciplines. Faithful Presence is a meaty and delicious book."  Michael Frost, author of The Shaping of Things to Come and The Road to Missional

"In Faithful Presence, a book long overdue, David Fitch provides a corrective to the work of James Davison Hunter. He offers a winsome vision for following Jesus into the world that Christians across multiple traditions will find challenging, compelling, and inspiring."
Anthony B. Bradley, associate professor of religious studies, The King's College

"When I get up on the average day, I don't know how to transform the world. But I know how to pray, show hospitality, and proclaim truth. With scholarly care and pastoral zeal, David Fitch reminds us that it's in long-term, communal devotion to small but transformative practices that we both discover and reflect the faithful presence of God. Faithful Presence gives us permission to step aside from our own efforts at greatness, encouraging us to give our time and attention to disciplines that reveal and proclaim God's presence in our churches, homes, and neighborhoods."Mandy Smith, lead pastor, University Christian Church, author of The Vulnerable Pastor

"In Faithful Presence David Fitch brings heard-it-all-before church leaders both profound insight and a new imagination for spiritual practices that lead seamlessly to an authentic, faithful presence with God in the world—a faithful presence that results in intuitive and organic mission in all aspects of our everyday lives."   
Todd Hunter, bishop, Churches For the Sake of Others, author of Giving Church Another Chance

"The relationship between worship and mission, between the life and practices of the church and its witness to the world, is a matter of continual debate. David Fitch has done us a great service by identifying a holistic pattern of worship and witness rooted in disciplines given by Christ, to be practiced in the different contexts of our lives as disciples. Faithful Presence is both theologically grounded and very practical. The only problem with books like this is that you can't just read them, you have to live them."
Graham Cray, former leader, Fresh Expressions, Church of England

"Faithfulness is an intimidating idea, so the church can be tempted to find speedy shortcuts to growth, mission, and relevance. David Fitch is helping the church outgrow its obsession with fads to break open space for the reappearance of God's real-time presence in our neighborhoods. There is certainly unflattering press about the church in today's headlines, but Faithful Presence gives me genuine hope about what the body of Christ can be when it gathers around these seven practices. This book is appropriately critical at times, but it is fundamentally grounded in inspiring the shaping of a community for God's witness in the world. David Fitch has laid out a pathway for the church being the church again!"  Dan White Jr., cofounder, The Praxis Gathering, author of The Church as Movement

"Fitch's Faithful Presence is . . . timely and extraordinarily helpful. As churches shrink, as 'spiritual but not religious' postures become more widespread, as American Christendom wanes and it becomes weirder, more inconvenient, and less comfortable to commit oneself to a local church, the need to recover this 'faithfully present' vitality is more urgent than ever."   Brett McCracken, Christianity Today, January/February 2017

500 years of Global Protestanism infographic

Center for the Study of Global Christianity has developed a 2 page infographic focussed on the 500 years of Protestanism.   This is available from here

An analysis of Fresh Expressions in UK Anglican churches

Fresh Expressions has been movement in some mainline congregations that has helped congregations be different in the way they express church, as is part of what is helping some mainline churches be renewed.

The Small Things report is an analysis of Fresh Expressions in 21 dioceses of the Church of England.

Introduction to Small Things Report
The title reflects a view of today’s context and the report’s content.
Some will immediately recognise it is part of a quotation from Zechariah 4:10 which is a text from the exilic period. The relevance of this is that there is writing, across the theological spectrum, arguing that, within Europe, the Church of England finds itself in a period that could be called post-Christendom. As a Church we find ourselves once more at the edge rather than the centre of society, at its margins rather than in power or control. Exilic texts address such a context.
Zechariah 4:10 holds two factors in tension. The pull one way is the call to resist the temptation to despise what are only small things, and the hint to rejoice in the sign they convey, which is the beginning of a needed rebuilding process. The pull in the other direction is that all that can be seen is only small. In writing this report we were aware of a Church of England context in which our leaders have become more candid about past decline, and the sharp nature of the challenges for the future, as well as calling for a constructive response, going under the title of Renewal and Reform.
Our conviction, from our researched data, is that the Church of England’s fresh expressions of Church (fxC) are one of the small things in our day which are signs of renewed hope. The phrase, ‘the day of small things’ can be unpacked in several ways in relation to our findings. We know that ‘small’ is a relative term and the fxC types do vary in size. However, the broad picture from the data shows the majority of fxC (61%) fall in the range of 15-55 people with only 9% of them being of over 100 attenders. No one of these small young churches is going to make a dent in a century of ecclesial numerical decline. It would be easy to despise this feature. However, the term ‘the day’ suggests the language of a ‘kairos’ moment, a season when something’s time has come. Although not all fxC in our report are small, the burden of our report is about a large number of small things which we think, as the data shows, taken together are making a positive difference.
The differences are not solely a numerical addition in the face of decline, though they are that. They are also about a reforming re-imagination of the Church, by which faithfulness to the past and contextual engagement with the present are held together. It is sign of creativity, not just of growth, but also of partnership with the disturbing but renewing Spirit of God. Among the clearest signs is the sheer presence of 1109 young Church of England churches and also the emergence of the 574 lay-lay leaders of fxC. The existence and effectiveness of this group of largely untrained and unauthorised leaders is unpacked in Chapter 11. They were unknown before this research.
The title of the report invites the Church of England not to despise what is growing within its family, but has not yet been given due sympathetic attention. The invitation is to notice a phenomenon whose time has come and which has quadrupled in the last ten years. Now may be the day of small things: a diverse set of small, sometimes frail, mainly young churches that lay a claim to being among our best hopes for the future. They are not the whole answer, but they are one sign of reform as well as renewal within the Church of England.
To view a copy of this report visit here

For the love of God - how the church is better and worse than you imagined

For the love of God is a documentary film currently in production on the influence of Christianity on the West by CPX.
CPX’s forthcoming documentary won’t shy away from the hard topics and the chequered past of the church. Watch grabs from global experts talking about violence, slavery, human rights, art and more.  

An introduction video

For the Love of God from CPX on Vimeo.

Some sneak previews

To receive regular updates and further information about the project including its release date visit https://fortheloveofgodproject.com

Christian and Church governance

Recently good governance has been the flavour of the month throughout the Western World.

Many denominations and Christian groups have been 'forced' to relook at their governance.

Unfortunately at times, some of their responses have been merely to pick up Governmental or Corporate governance models without testing to see whether they are consistent with what it means to be church, with their theology and how Christians should be living.
For Lutheran churches we say everything needs to be tested against scripture, and many Lutheran Churches go even a little further, in that, everything needs to be tested against the Confessions (Book of Concord) and scripture, with scripture having precedence.

Some Christians argue, that there is the kingdom on the left and the kingdom on the right these are separate, so we are exempt from what the scripture says when 'living and carrying out activities in the world.'  But a Lutheran and Christian understanding of scripture highlights this is not the case and it is not so clear cut, in fact we can't ignore scripture even when living in the kingdom of the left.    For a more indepth discussion on the doctrine of the two kingdoms visit LCA TWO KINGDOMS  , LCMS TWO KINGDOMS,  Biblical Training - Two Kingdoms nd Paul Althaus review of Two Kingdoms .

The complication for many congregations is that we are constantly operating in both kingdoms and so we need to consider what this means and how we respond to the various responsibilities we have.

A good starting point is to keep in mind what good governance is:

1. Making sure we are meeting and working towards meeting our objectives (Mission Statement, Vision Statement and Goals, Great Commission and Great Commandment should also be important here)
2. Making sure we are meeting our legal responsibilities
3. Making sure we are meeting our financial responsibilities

Some things to think about:

What issues are taking up most of your time, discussion and meeting....Objectives, Legal, Finances???

Are ALL the people on your board passionate about your organisation meeting its objectives?

(A good way to gauge this is listen to what people talk most about)

This is highly critical...otherwise it will become more important to meet legal and financial issues than your objectives (and in fact people may lose sight of why they are being church)...which will cause problems down the track because people will be burdened by financial and legal matters rather than their objectives....It is also important that we don't neglect the financial and legal responsibilities....but view them as things that should serve us and be viewed in the light of our objectives.

Another issue that is becoming increasingly common is the need for skill based boards. Some Christian organisations have become so obsessed with getting skill based boards that they neglect to set any minimum criteria or checking regarding who should be on this boards relating to a person's beliefs and commitment to the objectives of the organisation.  So what can and has happened is that the objectives of the organisation and therefore the reason for its existence is secondary at best as a result of people who focus on the legal expertise, financial expertise or their expertise .   Appointing people based on skill without a minimum commitment to the objectives of the organisation also seems to go against Acts 6:1-4 , which says to appoint people even for hospitality roles, who are full of the Spirit.  Check out Willowcreek's approach to appointing Board members

Some great books on governance relating to churches and Christian organisations

 

Articles on Church governance:
What the bible says?
Lutheran Church Polity in USA
Mark Connor
Theopedia article
Willowcreek article

Paper: Lutherans and Pentecostals in dialogue

This handbook was produced by members of a six-year Lutheran-Pentecostal Study Group initiated by the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France. The handbook is designed to facilitate dialogue between Lutherans and Pentecostals. Drawing on the study
group’s experience, it presents insights gained and lessons learned and aims to provide a resource for further dialogue initiatives.
This handbook has three main sections. The first explores goals of Lutheran-Pentecostal dialogue. The second presents an analysis of the the topics that the study group covered, including a number of key insights gained in the process. The third section is more historical and seeks to introduce members of the two church families to each other— Lutherans to Pentecostals and Pentecostals to Lutherans. Much more could be said, of course. As rewarding as this initiative was, its members also recognized that they were merely scratching the surface. Our agenda was preparatory; if we had succeeded in answering every question, there would be no need for further dialogue—and further dialogue between Pentecostals and Lutherans is something all the Study Group members wish to encourage very strongly.

Main areas of dialogue include:
GOALS
To think and speak appropriately about the other, not bearing false witness against each other.
To be mutually enriched by each other’s tradition.
To provide opportunities for mutual correction.
To enable cooperation in ministry, mission, and social outreach.
To resolve and avoid conflicts between our churches.

INSIGHTS
Identifying the dialogue Partners
Method for dialogue
How do we encounter Christ?
    The pure Gospel of Christ
    The full Gospel of Christ
Differences in church culture
How do we encounter Christ in proclamation?
    Necessity of discernment
    Proclamation as the task of the whole community
    Hermenuetics of scriptural interpretation
How do we encounter Christ in sacraments and ordinances?
    Terminology and heritage
    Water Baptism
    Rebaptism
    Presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper
    Areas for further discussion about the Lord's Supper
How do we encounter Christ in charisms?
    Spirit Baptism
    Gifts of the Spirit
    Fruit of the Spirit
    Lutheran responses

HISTORY
Lutheranism to Pentecostals
Pentecostalism to Lutherans
Lutheran reaction to Pentecostalism in the USA

The paper is available here

Sermons (video, text and audio) from Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Campbelltown

Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Campbelltown NSW offers sermons and training online visit their site at http://www.gslcc.org.au/

Book: Christianity's dangerous idea

The radical idea that individuals could interpret the Bible for themselves spawned a revolution that is still being played out on the world stage today. This innovation lies at the heart of Protestantism''s remarkable instability and adaptability. World-renowned scholar Alister McGrath sheds new light on the fascinating figures and movements that continue to inspire debate and division across the full spectrum of Protestant churches and communities worldwide.

CHAPTERS
Origination
The Gathering Storm 
The Accidental Revolutionary - Martin Luther
Alternatives to Luther - The Diversification of the Reformation
The Shift in Power - Calvin and Geneva
England - The Emergence of Anglicanism
War, Peace, and Disinterest - European Protestantism in Crisis, 1560–1800
Protestantism in America 

Contents
The Nineteenth Century - The Global Expansion of Protestantism
Manifestation 
The Bible and Protestantism
Believing and Belonging - Some Distinctive Protestant Beliefs
The Structures of Faith - Organization, Worship, and Preaching
Protestantism and the Shaping of Western Culture
Protestantism, the Arts, and the Natural Sciences

Transformation
The Changing Shape of American Protestantism
Tongues of Fire - The Pentecostal Revolution in Protestantism
The New Frontiers of Protestantism
The Global South
Protestantism
The Next Generation

book review available here
synopsis available here
ebook available here

Church to visit: ichurch (Immanuel Buderim Lutheran Church)

Immanuel Lutheran Church Buderim

Mission
To be a growing community of Christ in response to God’s love.

Vision Of The Future
Uniting generations and cultures,
Pursuing fully alive relationships,
Free in fearless faith,
Reaching out, walking with, and serving,
As Christ serves us!

Five Core Values
Jesus is Lord. -“He is the image of the invisible God.” (Col 1:15)
Everyone is Welcome  - “Because God has no favourites!” (Acts 10:34b)
Love Changes People - “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.” (1 John 4:16)
Everyone Has Something to Offer - “We all have different gifts, according to the grace given us.” (Rom 12:6)
Everyone Needs Jesus - “God so loved the world…” (Jn 3:16)

On their web site you will find:

• Information about Baptism
• Information about Marriage
• Details of upcoming events
• Information to hep children connect and grow in faith
• Bible available in mp3
• Planning your funeral
• Bible Study tools
• Life transforming groups
• Team covenants
• How to serve Holy Communion
• How to lead prayer
• Information about Groups
• plus more

Visit their web site here

Also visit their pastor's site:  http://www.gracespace.info/ for sermons, confessions and bible studies