Stuart Murray (Paternoster 2004)
In this book Murray continues his helpful analysis of post-Christendom churches. Part 1 explores issues of ‘Shape’ taking Acts 11 v1-18 as a paradigm to consider the shifts from Christendom to Post-Christendom. The key question is How might the church emerge or evolve? Murray teases out the issues of belonging, believing and behaving after Christendom and the complexities of this. I especially found helpful the clarity of his analysis and critique of the notions of centred, bounded and fuzzy set models of how we understand church. In particular, he considers the degrees of alienation and the language we make use of here, e.g. Semi-churched, de-churched etc. Rightly, I think, perhaps because I personally have issues about such language, he states,
‘This language is problematic, not least in its omission of any reference to other faith communities and its Christendom-orientated assumption that ‘churched’ is the cultural norm, rather than a counter-cultural experience. And it categorises attitudes towards church rather than Christian faith.’(25/6)
There is a chapter that critiques matters of leavers and joiners, which picks up on the works of James Fowler, Alan Jamieson and others. Murray then explores matters of church emerging or evolving. In some ways this is irresolvable at present, but I did like the probing, questing and the search for wisdom that we might learn from both inherited and emergent church.
Part 2 takes Ephesians 4 as biblical paradigm and Murray wants to ask the question What kind of church can survive and flourish in post-Christendom? The chapters that follow explore mission, community and worship. Within each, Murray takes terms and phrases that have become common use language in today’s church scene eg. Maintenance to mission, institution to movements, etc.. Across these chapters he considers evangelism, church discipline, leadership, rhythms and resources. He concludes,
Post-Christendom is a new environment…Ephesians 4 envisages a church united in hope(v4) confident in its destiny (v13) and getting on with the simple day-to-day business of speaking the truth in love (v15) and doing works of service (v12). If the church does survive the demise of Christendom, it will surely be a church sustained by simplicity and hope. (231 italics mine)
I say yes to that. I reckon that this second book (to what is now a series) is an invaluable that should help us frame our questions better in the new environment we find ourselves in. I appreciated the deep challenge, yet the refreshing ways that Murray provides open, honest analysis and critique. I found I couldn’t put this book down. It is a book I will probably need to keep returning to.
