Abunga.com<\/a>, a new internet book provider that I will support. I hope that you support Abunga.com as well. They now have almost 1.4M books in their database, which is growing.
\nWe need to think more about the church. Low church evangelicals have turned the church into little more than a voluntary association society; church is not necessary and it is not central enough to low church perceptions. So, Jonathan\u2019s book should provide for many of us the opportunity to converse together about what the Church is and how we are summoned by God to participate in the redemptive society God creates.
\nNow to Jon Wilson\u2019s fine book. The first chapter is about \u201cpractices\u201d \u2014 and he will discuss in detail the following: worship, witness, discipleship, baptism, eucharist, footwashing, confession, and suffering. Essentially, this 1st chp is a chp that introduces the theory of the book: that \u201cpractices\u201d define what the Church is and does. Here\u2019s his nice way of putting it: \u201cAre we churching together? Did we \u2018church\u2019 today?\u201d He doesn\u2019t like the grammar or the words, but he puts it this way to get us to think. What do we mean when we say we are \u201cchurching\u201d? Good question.
\nNow here\u2019s an important observation: what \u201cpractices\u201d make \u201cchurch\u201d? Many, I fear, think of the same practices that make up an individual Christian life. But is this so? What practices do you think \u201cconstitute\u201d the Church? What do practices actually \u201cdo\u201d and \u201ccreate\u201d?
\nFirst, Jonathan contends that the gospel is \u201cfundamentally not a set of ideas or a system of belief but the grace of God made known in human lives\u201d (11) and that the greatest threat to the church today is \u201cabsence of vibrant and vital practices of the gospel\u201d (11).
\nNow I like this: \u201cIn the absence of such vibrancy, the church becomes more wordy\u201d (11). What do you think of this claim?
\nHere are his central theses:
\n1. Practices embody a concept of the good.
\n2. Practices constitute a community.
\n3. Practices are oriented to internal goods (Jesus, God, etc).
\n4. Practices extend our conception of the good.
\n5. Practices enable us to participate in the good.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We now turn to a new book for our Friday is for Friends series: Why Church Matters by Jonathan Wilson. Those in low church traditions need this book, and those in stodgy high church traditions need this book,and those in the emerging movement need this book. I have been reading Jonathan\u2019s stuff for years, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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