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Constants in Context
Stephen B Bevans & Roger P Schroeder
Orbis Books Maryknoll New York 2004.
ISBN 1-57075-517-5 (pbk.)
This book is an important and essential read for people, who like me, value context as a driving theme in the way we see mission. I am indebted to David Lloyd who drew my attention to it.
The demolition of any Missiology dependent on a kernel and husk division where some elements of our faith are thought of as core and unchangeable, and others as cultural and peripheral, is well recorded by Bosch in Transforming Mission (449ff). Those wedded to the notion of context are sometimes left wondering what remains of continuity through time and coherence across the varieties of place. Bevans and Schroeder chart the constants throughout the history of Christianity. What is it in every generation and setting to which Christian theology gives attention? |
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The shaping of things to come: innovation and mission for the 21st- century church. |
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Michael Frost and Alan Hirsh.
Jointly 2003. Hendrickson Publishers Massachusetts USofA. Strand Publishing. Erina. NSW. Austrailia.
I found this book very exciting because it seems to enable evangelical Christians to engage with the enculturation debate in a positive way. The authors will insist that it is called contextualisation in line with their tradition but it is culture with which they engage. In fact it is the advent of post modern culture that seems to trigger and motivate their thinking.
The book presents a very lively form of incarnational ecclesiology that is very persuasive and compelling. I think it is very exciting to find this approach coming out of the evangelical tradition.
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Faith in Suburbia – a brief response. |
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Brown, M. (2005):Faith in Suburbia -Completing the ContextualTtrilogy (Contact Monograph No. 15.)
I was excited to see that Malcolm Brown should write the Contact Monograph, Faith in Suburbia[1]. It does at last widen the scope of urban theology. And yet like its companions, Faith in the City[2] and Faith in the Countryside[3] it doesn’t quite make the connection between Geography and Faith. I have argued elsewhere that this may be because that we pay too much attention to geography and not enough to the cultures that occupy them [4]. Implicitly all the parts of the trilogy have a cultural emphasis. The city report deals with ‘ethnic’ and ‘working class’ cultures and the countryside report with ‘rural’ culture. Brown’s suburbia deals with ‘professional and managerial’ culture. Yet in all three the link, between these cultures and faith is never quite made. They get us to the threshold but not to the theological content. |
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