CRITICAL ISSUES IN ECCLESIOLOGY...
Seeking to Shape Christian Common Life
Critical Issues in Ecclesiology: Christian Community and Ministry in the Third Millennium was the 'sexy' title for a re-vamped Harvest Bible College (Victoria) course (their version: "Church and Ministry") that I taught in first semester 2001 at Harvest West Bible College in Belmont, WA.
The course sought to go behind the multiple meanings of �church� in order to find out about Christian community, with a practical concern to seek reform and renewal in Christian common life, and especially to foster and embody practices that witness to the presence of God�s kingdom. Guiding this was a theological-ethical vision of the people of God rather than a pragmatic "what works" 'Church' program. That theological-ethical vision held that following Jesus commits us to a live as an alternative counter-cultural disciple community.
The liveliness of the course was due to an extraordinary class of open-minded and questioning students who were concerned with the real-life implications of what they learnt. Visit Wellspring Christian Community's Web Page for one example.
Some useful readings along the way were:
- John Howard Yoder, Body Politics.
- Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society.
- Alan Kreider, The Change in Conversion and the Origin of Christendom.
- Tom Sine, Mustard Seed vs McWorld.
- Duane K. Friesen, Artists, Citizens, Philosophers: Seeking the Peace of the City: An Anabaptist Theology of Culture.
- Marva Dawn, Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down.
- Rodney Clapp, A Peculiar People.
- Articles by Richard Hays, John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, N. T. Wright... and others...
The Course Outline and an extensive course Bibliography are available here. [Formatting still to be done properly though -- sorry!]
Some of my tutorial topics are available for On-line Discussion at Ecclesial Visions, a forum supported by our discussion group network, the Dead Apologists' Society.
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