Total Church - A radical reshaping around gospel and community
Review by David Couchman
Emerging church movements can be strong on community but weak on truth; conservative evangelicals can be strong on truth but weak on community. Chester and Timmis call for a new approach which has the best of both worlds. They say:
'Christians are called to a dual fidelity: fidelity to the core content of the gospel and fidelity to the primary context of a believing community. Whether we are thinking about evangelism, social involvement, pastoral care, apologetics, discipleship or teaching, the content is consistently the Christian gospel and the context is consistently the Christian community.'
Unpacking what it means for the church to be gospel-centred, they go on to say:
'First, it means being word-centred because the gospel is a word - the gospel is news, a message. Second, it means being mission-centred, because the gospel is a word to be proclaimed - the gospel is good news, a missionary message.'
Outline
The book has two parts:
- Gospel and community in principle (which looks at 'Why gospel?' and 'Why community?'), and
- Gospel and community in practice
The second part, on Gospel and community in practice, has chapters on:
- Evangelism
- Social involvement
- Church planting
- World mission
- Discipleship and training
- Pastoral care
- Spirituality
- Theology
- Apologetics
- Children and young people
- Success
... and a conclusion on 'a passion for God.'
I highly recommend this book! It is something to give to your church leaders, and something for your church members to read. It is seriously provocative, and challenges us to think through how much of what we do is truly biblical, and how much is just a tradition we have grown up with.
Spirituality
Having said that, I don't agree with everything in it. The 'gospel and community' framework is excellent and biblical. But problems arise where Chester and Timmis try to force everything through this particular grid. In particular, the chapter on spirituality is weakened because it tries too hard to force spirituality into the 'gospel and community' framework. In doing so, it unnecessarily downgrades the place of solitude and reflection (after all, Jesus himself found it necessary to get away from people for extended periods of time when he could pray alone).
Apologetics
The chapter on apologetics is also weakened because it downplays the place of reasoned apologetics, in order to play up the role of the Christian community as the central apologetic. To say that the community is the best apologetic is valid and biblical. (Jesus said that people will be able to judge the reality of what we believe by the reality of our love for each other.) It's also particularly important in today's world where people are cynical and weary of truth claims. But to suggest that because of this there is little or no place for reasoned arguments for the faith seems to be unnecessarily negative.
Vital message
These are small niggles. Overall, this book has a vital message for the church today. Buy it. Read it. Give it to your pastor.
David Couchman, Focus Radio, www.facingthechallenge.org
Total Church - A radical reshaping around gospel and community
By Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, foreward by Ian Coffey, published by IVP, 2007
Tim Chester and Steve Timmis are involved in The Crowded House in Sheffield, and are leaders of The Porterbook Network training programme.
