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Church After Christendom
How will the western church negotiate the demise of Christendom? Can it rediscover its primary calling, recover its authentic ethos and regain its nerve?If churches are to thrive--or even survive--disturbing questions need to be confronted and answered. In conversation with Christians who have left the church and with those who are experimenting with fresh expressions of church, Stuart Murray explores both the emerging and inherited church scenes and makes proposals for the development of a way of being church suitable for a postdenominational, postcommitment and postChristendom era. With chapters on mission, community and worship, Church After Christendom offers a vision of church life that is healthy, sustainable, liberating, peaceful and missional.
252 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 15, 2023
This book is nearly 20 years old and it feels it too. This is seen very clearly in the first part and the conversation about emerging and evolving church, which now seems very quaint. Also Murray's thoughts regarding Mission, Community and Worship are very thought provoking but by far the best chapter is on the need to be both Simple and Sustainable which will require ongoing thought and prayer.
February 22, 2014
Church After Christendomoriginates from a very particular place and time. A place and time that is now past (which isn't to say that we're not still figuring out what comes after Christendom). In other words, this book is dated.
Maybe the picture of the Pickle on the cover should have warned me that much of Stuart Murray's text would focus specifically on the church and culture of the UK in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. Much of the book deals with specific examples and experiments in church adaptation that only make sense in the UK context.
That said, Murray does provide a few useful tools for understanding churches experience in other Western context. First of all, in ch 1, Murray rehashes and elaborates on the classic believing/belonging/behaving paradigm. While this feels a bit overblown to me in the complexity he develops, the alternative po-chrome configurations Murray offers at least alert the reader to the changing and complicated nature of identification and institution now.
Chs 2-4 are the most UK-centric of the text. First Murray examines the research on why folks across the pond are joining, sticking with, and leaving congregations. While some of the factors translate, many fail to make the jump from a nation with church history stretching back millennia and one maybe including a couple of centuries (fewer than that here on the Northern Prairies). The following two chs examine some of the fresh expressions of church, both in "emerging" (hey dude, it's the 2000s, all over again) and "inherited" congregations. These conversations about alternative church structure feel like they have limited applicability in my NA context.
While discussing emerging experiments, Murray uses three categories to explore the variety of forms. Emerging congregations may be oriented around "mission," "community," or "worship." These categories each receive special reflection in chs 5-7, with a bonus ch on the need for a "simple and sustainable" church.
Murray has an axe to grind particularly with po-chrome (I'm really hoping that will catch on!) approaches to worship. In his narrative, worship was the predominant emphasis during Christendom. Mission and community were assumed either to be negligible or monolithic, so they were neglected. Po-chrome congregations will try to right this imbalance, apparently by recognizing that of the three worship is actually most dispensable.
I'm not sure I can follow Murray in this direction. (I'm thankful for the correction provided by Alan and Eleanor Kreider in Worship and Mission After Christendom.) To me, worship structures and provides ballast for both mission and community. Worship is where we tell and retell our (po-chrome) counternarrative, where we are counter-formed against the prevailing impulses of our po-chrome culture.
Overall, this is an okay read. But I'm tempted to shelve it with historical theology rather than with practical theology. I suspect that in the intervening years, better and more nuanced analyses of the church's situation have been produced.
Maybe the picture of the Pickle on the cover should have warned me that much of Stuart Murray's text would focus specifically on the church and culture of the UK in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. Much of the book deals with specific examples and experiments in church adaptation that only make sense in the UK context.
That said, Murray does provide a few useful tools for understanding churches experience in other Western context. First of all, in ch 1, Murray rehashes and elaborates on the classic believing/belonging/behaving paradigm. While this feels a bit overblown to me in the complexity he develops, the alternative po-chrome configurations Murray offers at least alert the reader to the changing and complicated nature of identification and institution now.
Chs 2-4 are the most UK-centric of the text. First Murray examines the research on why folks across the pond are joining, sticking with, and leaving congregations. While some of the factors translate, many fail to make the jump from a nation with church history stretching back millennia and one maybe including a couple of centuries (fewer than that here on the Northern Prairies). The following two chs examine some of the fresh expressions of church, both in "emerging" (hey dude, it's the 2000s, all over again) and "inherited" congregations. These conversations about alternative church structure feel like they have limited applicability in my NA context.
While discussing emerging experiments, Murray uses three categories to explore the variety of forms. Emerging congregations may be oriented around "mission," "community," or "worship." These categories each receive special reflection in chs 5-7, with a bonus ch on the need for a "simple and sustainable" church.
Murray has an axe to grind particularly with po-chrome (I'm really hoping that will catch on!) approaches to worship. In his narrative, worship was the predominant emphasis during Christendom. Mission and community were assumed either to be negligible or monolithic, so they were neglected. Po-chrome congregations will try to right this imbalance, apparently by recognizing that of the three worship is actually most dispensable.
I'm not sure I can follow Murray in this direction. (I'm thankful for the correction provided by Alan and Eleanor Kreider in Worship and Mission After Christendom.) To me, worship structures and provides ballast for both mission and community. Worship is where we tell and retell our (po-chrome) counternarrative, where we are counter-formed against the prevailing impulses of our po-chrome culture.
Overall, this is an okay read. But I'm tempted to shelve it with historical theology rather than with practical theology. I suspect that in the intervening years, better and more nuanced analyses of the church's situation have been produced.
November 4, 2013
The first chapter is unnecessarily complicated by over-nuanced definitions, most of the book is given to repetition, but Murray's insights, over-all perspective, and final chapter more than make up for these. I believe he is precisely on point. I fear, however, that the Christendom-minded will appreciate the book only to co-opt it in their usual way. What this book advocates is not a "how-to grow your church" program, but an analysis of shifting societal paradigms that demand a new way of being church.
January 7, 2009
Welcome to where the US christian church is heading (or is depending on where you live).
February 25, 2013
Very good summary of where we're at now and why.
May 4, 2016
A very insightful and important read for 'such a time as this'!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews