Evg'08: Total Church Quotes

p56 - "Evangelism is best done out of the context of a gospel community whose corporate life demonstrates the reality of the word that gave her life."

"People need to encounter the church as a network of relationships rather than a meeting you attend or a place you enter.  Mission must involve not only contact between unbelievers and individual Christians, but between unbelievers and the Christian community."

p61 - "Most gospel ministry involves ordinary people doing ordinary things with gospel intentionality."

p74 - "...we are failing to reach the working class with the gospel.  Evangelicalism has become a largely middle-class, professional phenomenon.  When we invite people to our dinners and our churches, we invite our friends, our relatives and our rich neighbors. We do not invite the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.  What is at stake is the grace of God."

p76 - "Social action without proclamation is like a signpost to nowhere."

"...evangelism cannot be separated from social action because mission takes place through relationships and relationships are multi-faceted."

Comments

[68guns]

Highly recommend this book.

Have given it to a number of my friends.

Interesting that a lot of full time workers are now taking a "part time" status to find work in the community and build up relationships with those at work in order to relate and to reach for Christ.

Sell your shirt and buy this book!(then read it of course!)
The illustration on pages 42-43 of the man juggling his activities in life( work, family, church, free time etc) and then of the church as a community (all) relating to these things together, is something that needs to be learnt and emphasised in our churches.

The Christian life is a not an individual race....it is a life meant to be lived and run together within a church family.

[Heather]

Sounds like this book has a good balance. I'll have to add it to my reading list.

[Charles]

I keep hearing "bivocational" is the trend. Been doing it 20+ years and it's a drag!! Sometimes it seems like the ones touting being bivocational pastors are still full time Christian workers in some capacity. Sorry just venting. Sounds like a good book, but Amazon has no reviews!

[Charles]

Here's a great review of TOTAL church (my name linked to it.)

[Brady Hardin]

What amazing quotes!
Several friends and I have been dwelling on the same things...

[Michael Foster]

Its an amazing book and I plan to blog through it when I return to blogging in a few weeks. It will be publish in the States sometime this year.

[real live preacher]

Sounds like a great book. And I agree completely with those statements. The problem lies with existing churches. They are old wineskins. Trying to change them expends more energy than starting new. And it usually doesn't work.

I think the thing to do is be the church you think you should be. And let time and God take care of the rest. Perhaps the old wineskins will eventually be gone.

[Steve McCoy]

Thanks RLP. Appreciate your perspective.