Salt, Light, and a City: Introducing Missional Ecclesiology

by Graham Hill, Michael Frost (Foreword by)

Overview

Enormous challenges and opportunities face the Christian church in our globalized, rapidly changing world. It is becoming increasingly clear that the church and its leaders need a missional self-understanding.

In this volume, Graham Hill asks: "What does it mean for the church to be truly missional?" This book outlines the thought of twelve leading thinkers, and puts their thinking into conversation with a missional understanding of the church.

Most of the missional literature of the past twenty years is practical, telling us how to be a missional church, rather than why certain theological themes compel the church toward a missional self-understanding and existence. This book takes a different approach. It outlines a basic missional understanding of the church by engaging theology and Scripture. It examines some of the key theological themes that are foundational for a missional church, and does this in conversation with twelve leading thinkers.

This book provides indispensable foundations for a Christ-centered, gospel-shaped, theologically informed, and systematic missional view of the church.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608997565
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	05/03/2012
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Graham Hill is Professor of Leadership and Pastoral Theology at Morling College in Sydney, Australia (affiliated with the MCD University of Divinity). His ministry experiences include church planting, pastoring in a large growing congregation, and coaching pastors and planters of missional experiments.

Table of Contents

Foreword Michael Frost ix

Introduction: Forming a Missional Theology of the Church xiii

Part 1 Surveying the Euro-American Landscape Roman Catholic

1 Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI): The Church as Communion 3

2 Karl Rahner: The Church as Community of Witness 14

3 Hans Küng: The Church as Eschatological Community of Salvation 27

Eastern Orthodox

4 Thomas Hopko: The Church as Fullness of God 39

5 Vigen Guroian: The Church as Peculiar, Ethical Community 52

6 John Zizioulas: The Church as Eucharistic Communion 62

Protestant

7 Letty Russell: The Church as Household of Freedom 75

8 Jürgen Moltmann: The Church as Messianic, Relational Koinonia 86

9 John Webster: The Church as Communion of Saints 98

Free Church

10 John Howard Yoder: The Church as New, Redeemed Community 109

11 Barry Harvey: The Church as Altera Civitas 122

12 Miroslav Volf: The Church as Image of the Trinity 134

Part 2 Introducing Missional Ecclesiology-Through Conversation

13 The Thinking-in-Community Church: Encountering a Life-Giving Theology 149

14 The Mission-Forged Church: Participating in the Mission of God 151

15 The Christ-Centered Church: Following the Messiah and His Eschatological Mission 180

16 The Spirit-Empowered Church: Responding to the Spirits Power and Presence 205

17 The Trinity-Imaging Church: Reflecting Trinitarian Communion and Mission 230

18 The Courageous and Future Church: Being Salt, Light, and a City 263

Resources: Practicing Missional Ecclesiology 275

Bibliography 281