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Church on the edge

Brinkmanship

CHURCH ON THE EDGE
By Chris Stoddard & Nick Cuthbert
Authentic Media. 198 pages. £7.99
ISBN 1 86024 551 X

This book explores culturally relevant mission. The first section is a view of our society — post-Christian but with spiritual longings, declining church attendance, consumerist and individualist and how the Church could respond to these challenges.

Next is a series of chapters encouraging the reader to think about being outward looking and church not just being a club for the benefit of its members.

The third section explains why mission, spirituality and community are an essential part of being in a church followed by 22 case studies from all over the country (actually, one comes from Spain) in rural and urbanised settings.

The book is described by its authors as an ‘everypersons guide to missions church’ and is supposed to be ‘closer to a manual than a book’.

I found this book easy to read because of the short chapters and enjoyed the case studies, as I like reading biographies. As a church planter I agreed with a lot of the thrust of the second section, as our focus has always been on making our church accessible for people coming in and not putting people off with activities they can’t relate to.

I was concerned, however, when I read evangelism involves ‘seeking to understand another person’s spiritual journey…We are there to help them in their journey not to tell them they are wrong and demand they believe what we believe’. It’s not clear whether this means not to be aggressive in evangelism or not to challenge erroneous beliefs and tell of the need of repentance. With testimonies from people who were attracted by the fact they could just ‘be myself’ rather than they had found forgiveness from God, it appears to suggest that the gospel itself needs to be watered down to be accepted. The history of the liberal church proves this doesn’t work.

Overall, this seems a useful book for anyone in the church to read to raise questions about how relevant/attractive your church is to its surroundings and making sure you haven’t got barriers which are man-made and drive outsiders away. The only barrier we can’t remove is the gospel itself.

Sarah Harmer,
New Life Community Church, Brighton (wife, mother of three, crecheworker!)