Abstract
Michael Moynagh and Philip Harrold,
Church for Every Context: An Introduction to Theology and Practice
, SCM Press: London 2012; 490 pp.: 9780334043690, £30.00 (pbk)
By any account this is a timely and important book. Indeed, it can lay claim to being the first comprehensive attempt to provide not only an apologia for the fresh expressions movement but also a handbook for those involved in planting and developing new forms of church. It will be impossible to engage in the current debates about fresh expressions and new forms of church without taking Moynagh's book seriously.
Divided into four parts, its overall aim is ‘to introduce the theology and practice of new contextual churches, drawing on recent British experience’ (p. xviii). But at nearly 450 pages of text (and 27 pages of bibliography), it does far more than this, and Moynagh (a member of the UK Fresh Expressions Team) indicates that two further aims motivated its writing. The first is committed apologia. In the context of recent debates about the legitimacy of fresh expressions as proper forms of church, he makes a conscious attempt to provide a theological rationale for them, exploring such questions as their legitimacy as forms of ‘church’, their relationship to the tradition, the question of whether culture-specific churches are legitimate, and whether they can be said to express true kingdom values. Parts 1 and 2 explore these questions in wide-ranging and multi-disciplinary detail. Parts 3 and 4 seek to fulfil the second aim, which is to contribute to reflection on the developing practice of contextual churches, drawing on largely British experience to draw lessons for genuinely ‘new’ forms of church in contexts where there has been little or no previous encounter with the church.
It is impossible to do justice to this book in a review of this size, except to offer one or two overall comments. First, I liked the author's style. He is clearly committed in what he writes, but is irenic in tone, and his writing manages to combine ‘commitment’ to an argument with an attractive ‘detachment’ which enables the reader to engage with the questions that he raises. Such questions punctuate the text itself, and are summed up at the conclusion of each chapter. As a result, I nearly always found myself interacting with this material in creative ways, and suggest that such an approach will facilitate constructive dialogue with the issues Moynagh raises, even by those who may strongly disagree with some of the initiatives he describes. Second, Moynagh has done an important service to contemporary mission by broadening the scope of his book from ‘Fresh Expressions’ to ‘new contextual churches’. This effectively extends the relevance of his work, and suggests that the questions that he raises are of fundamental importance not just to those pioneering new forms of church but to all churches concerned to reach our post-Christian culture. If this book provides something of a ‘bible’ for church planters and pioneers for years to come – as I'm sure it will, I sincerely hope that its contents will be seriously addressed by others too. They are simply too important to ignore.