Author Hannah Steele
Publisher SCM pbk £25
Format pbk
ISBN 9780334054900 2018
If you are exercised by questions of what it means to be church today, you might find this book interesting. It is a detailed and fairly academic study (a published PhD thesis) giving an analysis of what in the USA is called the emerging church. Since that is largely an American phenomenon, the book’s appeal is likely to be limited, although the points raised in the chapter on ecclesiology may well be a challenge to those in the UK involved in experimenting with new ways of being (or doing?) church. There may also be a challenge there to all of us in our own thinking on what it means to be church in our very mixed economy culture. The main thesis of the analysis is that the emerging church in the USA is largely a protest movement against a failing church, rather than an attempt to be church in a new way per se – distinguishing it from the ethos of Fresh Expressions or Pioneer Ministry in this country.
MARION GRAY
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