Eddie Gibbs - The Rebirth of the Church: Applying Pauls Vision for Ministry in Our Post-Christian World

I n most places in the Western world, churches are declining in membership and in social influence. As they find themselves increasingly marginalized and unable to count on the support of the communities they are meant to serve, they are finding that long-established approaches to ministrywell-publicized, attractive services and a range of activities to meet the needs of individuals and families from the cradle to the graveno longer have the broad appeal that they had for previous generations. Becoming increasingly nervous about the future, more and more church leaders are asking themselves, Where do we go from here?

But this is not the first time that this question has arisen. Throughout the centuries, the church has encountered times of crisis as it battled the storms of profound cultural and political upheavals. It must have been a question in the mind of the apostle Paul as he responded to Gods call to take the gospel to non-Jewish peoples. He was himself a leading Jew with a reputation for zealous persecution of the new messianic movement that was causing alarm throughout the land of Israel and increasingly among the Jews of the Diaspora. How was he to translate Jesus the Jewish Messiahs message, focused on Jesuss inauguration of the reign of God, for a Greco-Roman world that was required to acknowledge Caesar as lord?

Much has been written on the need for Western churches to embrace a missional ecclesiology. But what will that look like in post-Christendom Western settings? This book outlines key responses to that question. As we endeavor to reimagine the church for the twenty-first century, we must look for models that are both biblically rooted and culturally engaged. There will be both continuity and discontinuity with the churchs previous centuries of ministry and mission.

One of the serious issues concerning the church under the influence of Christendom, which has inhibited the vitality of churches throughout the Western world and beyond, has been the separation of ecclesiology from missiology. Mission became a department of the church that has often been marginalized and starved of human and financial resources. By contrast, a missional ecclesiology recognizes that mission is the heartbeat of the church precisely because the God that Christians worship is the God of mission. From Genesis to Revelation, God is the sending God, with all three persons of the Trinity engaged in that mission.

We begin by examining the cultural and political challenges facing the church today and comparing and contrasting them with those that faced churches birthed in the first century through the mission endeavors of Paul and his companions. We recognize the urban priority that characterized his missionary journeys as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles and affirm the same priority for today. At the same time, we recognize that the urban world of Pauls day was very different from urbanization in the twenty-first century. Having described the cities addressed by Paul in his letters, we identify the recurring issues he encountered in the pluralistic, neo-pagan, preindustrial cities in which he labored. These issues we then relate to the challenges facing churches today by asking to what extent they are relevant to contemporary contexts.

While we cannot reproduce pre-Christendom first-century models of church, we may have much to learn from them as we seek ways of birthing new faith communities in order to reach the 90 percent or more of the population who no longer darken the doorways of churches in most countries and in many regions within countries with higher average attendance rates.

I offer this volume with some hesitancy, in that I am neither a Pauline scholar nor a church planter. But I have been informed and inspired by a large number of biblical scholars, together with groundbreaking apostolic missionaries to the Western world. The number of these individuals and the networks they are developing are increasing significantly in our day. They are not content to simply ask the question, Where do we go from here? They are determined to embark on bold journeys of exploration. I pray that what I have written will serve to affirm them in many of the directions they are heading and perhaps provide a few course corrections along the way!

Eddie Gibbs