Christianity Today Book Award winner
Golden Canon Leadership Book Award winner
Feeling caught between the traditional church and the emerging church? Discover a third way: deep church.
C. S. Lewis used the phrase ‘deep church’ to describe the body of believers committed to mere Christianity. Unfortunately church in our postmodern era has been marked by a certain shallowness. Emerging authors, fed up with contemporary pragmatism, have offered alternative visions for twenty-first-century Christianity. Traditionalist churches have reacted negatively, at times defensively.
Jim Belcher knows what it's like to be part of both of these worlds. In the 1990s he was among the pioneers of what was then called Gen X ministry, hanging out with creative innovators like Rob Bell, Mark Oestreicher and Mark Driscoll. But he also has maintained ties to traditionalist circles, planting a church in the Presbyterian Church of America.
In Deep Church, Belcher brings the best insights of all sides to forge a third way between emerging and traditional. In a fair and evenhanded way, Belcher explores the proposals of such emerging church leaders as Tony Jones, Brian Mc Laren and Doug Pagitt. He offers measured appreciation and affirmation as well as balanced critique. Moving beyond reaction, Belcher provides constructive models from his own church planting experience and paints a picture of what this alternate, deep church looks like–a missional church committed to both tradition and culture, valuing innovation in worship, arts and community but also creeds and confessions.
If you've felt stuck between two extremes, you can find a home here. Plumb the depths of Christianity in a way that neither rejects our postmodern context nor capitulates to it. Instead of veering to the left or the right, go between the extremes–and go deep.
विषयसूची
Foreword by Richard J. Mouw
Introduction: Is a Third Way Possible?
Part I: Mapping New Territory
1. There from the Start: How to Be an Insider and an Outsider at the Same Time
2. Defining the Emerging Church
3. The Quest for Mere Christianity
Part II: Protest, Reaction and the Deep Church
4. Deep Truth
5. Deep Evangelism
6. Deep Gospel
7. Deep Worship
8. Deep Preaching
9. Deep Ecclesiology
10. Deep Culture
Conclusion: Becoming the Deep Church
Notes
Acknowledgments
Endorsements
About the Author
लेखक के बारे में
Richard J. Mouw (Ph D, University of Chicago) now serves as professor of faith and public life after twenty years as president of Fuller Theological Seminary. He has written over twenty books on topics of social ethics, philosophy of culture and interfaith dialogue, including Uncommon Decency, The Challenges of Cultural Discipleship, Praying at Burger King, The God Who Commands, Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport, The Smell of Sawdust and Talking with Mormons: An Invitation to Evangelicals.A leader in interfaith theological conversations, particularly with Mormons and Jewish groups, Mouw served for six years as co-chair of the official Reformed-Catholic Dialogue and as president of the Association of Theological Schools. For seventeen years he was a professor of philosophy at Calvin College and in 2007, Princeton Theological Seminary awarded him the Abraham Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Life.