Defining the Church for Our Time

Description: The church is broken and we cannot fix it. Faith in God is disconnected from churches. Mainline churches are deeply divided, and their budgets and congregations have diminished, with no agreement for recovery. So what shall we do? It is time to stop talking about the problems and to consider a new vision of the church for our time. This book is a celebration of the church as the community of new life in Christ. It assumes Christ intended to create a community on earth embodying grace and holiness. It begins with a new and inclusive definition of the church as a community enduring in time. It affirms the great variety of churches, all as valid expressions of the new life, and explains how and why churches are formed in different ways. The goal is for churches to celebrate the saving power of Christ and to see the glory of God revealed in the world in our time. Endorsements: "Is there an award for the ecclesiology book of the year? If so, Peter Schmiechen should receive it. He is lucid, theologically informed, pastorally minded, practical, and responsibly ecumenical. The Church, he argues, is not a voluntary society of the like-minded, but a community of God's gift and promise. The empirical Church is flawed, and church-dividing issues abound; yet, the Church remains a community of hope and an agent of transforming power." --Alan P. F. Sell, author of Convinced, Concise, and Christian "Peter Schmiechen wades into the current crisis of the church. He is peculiarly equipped to do so, deeply grounded in the ecumenical theology of Mercersburg and long situated in the matrix of dispute in his (and my) own church. He reflects upon the ways in which our pet notions have often reduced the gospel to manageable ideology, and the capacity and readiness of the gospel to take many forms, formulations, and practices. This is a sober and realistic, but powerfully hopeful invitation to rethink the faithfulness of the church in its great diversity." --Walter Brueggemann, author of The Prophetic Imagination "Though many today distance themselves from institutional expressions of religion, saying they are 'spiritual but not religious,' Peter Schmiechen argues convincingly that faithfulness to Christ necessarily involves an affirmation of the church and its institutional forms. Schmeichen believes we are at a place today where we can appreciate, without defensiveness, the diverse ways in which Christians have sought to embody the central Christian message. He draws on this diversity to propose a unified, inclusive, and transformative form of the church." --Jackson Carroll, author of As One With Authority "Peter Schmiechen boldly declares that the current malaise of North American Protestant churches is not a failure to develop new programs, worship styles, or evangelistic strategies. Rather, the problem is theological: it is a lack of clarity about the basic good news of Christianity. Schmiechen's proposal that churches need to incarnate the theme of new life in Christ in their institutional practices is both shockingly simple and richly provocative." --Lee C. Barrett, author of Kierkegaard About the Contributor(s): Peter Schmiechen is President Emeritus of Lancaster Theological Seminary in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He holds a PhD in Christian Theology from Harvard University and is the author of Saving Power: Theories of Atonement and Forms of the Church (2005) and Christ the Reconciler: A Theology for Opposites, Differences, and Enemies (1996). He lives with his wife, Janet, in Lancaster.