Author- Craig Van Gelder
Publisher-Baker Book House.
ISBN- 0-8010-9096-2
The subtitle of this book is “A Community Created by the Spirit” and this helps to point the direction which the author takes throughout the chapters. It is written with church leaderships in mind particularly and is scholarly but not excessively so. Craig Van Gelder has pastoral experience and is frequently consulted by churches. He currently is professor of Congregational Mission in St Paul Minnesota. The main premise is that the church is called to be a community of people governed by the Word of God and led and taught by the Holy Spirit. The book brings together insights from theology, management theory, missiology and sociology and underlying all is a thoroughly biblical foundation. “The Church is, the Church does what it is,and the church organizes what it does” are three statements he makes. There are historical perspectives which have shaped the various churches and cultural perspectives have contributed to the church of today also, but the cultural must not compromise the biblical foundations. There is a breadth in this book which challenges the reader to consider the larger picture of what church really is and to examine those things in which it needs to be reshaped. Today the tendency of many church leaders is to seek after the latest ministry trend instead of discerning the Spirits leading. Others bury their heads in the sand and protect the bastion of their inherited church traditions. Instead, the book encourages us to change and see a union of church and mission so that we might become truly engaged in God’s mission amongst us. The “either” of “mission” and the “or” of the “church” are examined to show that these are joined together where the Spirit is at work in a community of people. In this book there is a genuine wrestling with the fact that the church is both spiritual and social, and is the result of the work of the Holy Spirit and an organization involving human beings set in the society of today. The relationship of the Kingdom and the Church is helpfully examined. The church is the window where the Kingdom might be seen in the “now” until the ‘not yet’ comes. It is the place where the rule of the Lord Jesus is manifested, until He comes in the final day. All in all this is a most helpful book for all church leaders to patiently work their way through.
