Barnabas File

Community is at the center of what it means to be church.  A missional church that is engaged with its culture is constantly renegotiating exactly how community will be manifested but it will always be central.  In this second volume of the Missional Wisdom Library, Larry Duggins draws on Wesleyan theology to show how both prevenient grace (preparation for salvation) and sanctifying grace (growing in holiness) can be manifested in various types of community.  He writes, “As people of God, we cannot ‘save’ other people . . .  But we can work to bring people together in a way that makes it easier for them to encounter the grace of God in an environment that is encouraging, with people who can help interpret their experiences.” (pp. 80-81) Duggins points out that any community can be a place of grace and gives examples from churches, the workplace, around food (growing, cooking and consuming it), children’s activities and schools, and affinity groups....

Those who take the time to examine the history of the Christian church over the last two thousand years recognize that the church has always been in the process of reinventing itself.   Manifestations of the church that start out as fresh, creative approaches to impacting the surrounding culture ultimately become commonplace and stale as the world changes.   This calls for renewal and reimagining the way that we “do church.” Missional, Monastic, Mainline:  A Guide to Starting Missional  Micro-Communities in Historically MainlineTraditions by Elaine Heath and Larry Duggins is both a call to action and a guide for renewing the church by implementing a contemporary expression of a renewal methodology that is very familiar in the church—the monastic tradition. The first part of the book deals with the rationale for this approach—the need, the theological basis, and possible concerns.   Heath and Duggins are proponents of a missional ecclesiology, defin...