Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Monday, February 3, 2014

Five paradoxes of Church

Since the year 2000 there seems to have been an avalanche of books on the Church. I have books on on my shelf called Emerging Church (2006), Re-Emerging Church (2008), Deep Church (2009), Gospel-Driven Church (2004), Intelligent Church (2006), Missional Church (2011) and finally a Just Church (2011). I've even got one that's simply called The Church but that's rather earlier (1968) and by Hans Küng! I was interested when John Stott, in his one of his last books, The Living Church (Nottingham: IVP, 2007, pp. 91-102), posits five paradoxes of the church. The church should be 
  1. Biblical and contemporary
  2. Authoritative and tentative
  3. Prophetic and pastoral
  4. Gifted and studied
  5. Thoughtful and passionate
The first is challenging. How do we measure up?

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