BLOG 5/11/18. MY ‘GADFLY’ JOURNALS

BLOG 5/11/18. MY ‘GADFLY’ JOURNALS

I was surprised by the several comments I received about my recent blog on Frodo as a model of faithfulness. I agree, and I identify with him since I am also an unlikely bearer of a valuable message. But, maybe more in on my mind as a writer is a comment by the late South African missiologist, David Bosch, when he noted that missiologists (the study of the church’s mission) are always gadflies in the field of ecclesiology (the study of the church’s calling). So, for these past couple of decades of my life I have been provoked to write several books, which are, in essence, my own gadfly journals through which in several contexts I have explored the church’s frequent forgetfulness about its primary calling. Let me list for my readers those books that are in print (and available from my publisher Wipf and Stock, or from Amazon).

  • At a period of very difficult engagement with destructive factors and personalities in my pastoral career, I wrote a book on the spiritual warfare one engages  as a faithful pastor. It was published as A Door of Hope: Spiritual Conflict in Pastoral Ministry, first by Herald Press, but then it was picked up by a theological seminary as required reading for their D.Min degree, and was republished by Wipf and Stock (my introduction to them).
  • Subversive Jesus, Radical Grace is an engagement between a skeptical/agnostic graduate student and some perceptive young adult believers whom he stumbled across when curiosity took him into an Episcopal church. They, in turn, extended an invitation to a meal and as the book unfolds is an exploration into the radical demands of the gospel with this grad-student’s telling questions of them.
  • Enchanted Community: Journey Into the Mystery of the Church is my first foray into a critical rethinking of ecclesiology, or the church’s essence. It would be the first of what I consider, in my gadfly role, as a trilogy into missional ecclesiology.
  • Refounding the Church from the Underside addresses the fact that for traditional churches, which have displaced, diluted, or forgotten their true essence, ‘renewal’ is not even an option—rather what is required is a radical refounding, i.e. going back to the church’s essence and beginning all over again, and that this is almost never accomplished by church professionals, but rather from the grassroots.
  • Third in this trilogy is the reality of church’s inevitable and ongoing engagement with the forces of darkness, i.e., taking seriously the malice of the satanic dominion of darkness. I attempt to unpack this in: The Church and the Relentless Darkness, and written as a dialogue with a company of young adults who raise the question with me.
  • I had assumed that that work might well be my last, … until a series of encounters with some young university students and urban professionals at a favorite coffee shop revealed that they had no idea of what the church was, or what my career as a teaching-pastor was all about. With their questions in mind I wrote: What On Earth Is the Church? An Inquirer’s Guide.
  • Again, I assumed (at my advanced age) that would be my last book, until more and more evidence began to surface that, on one hand, older and more traditional church institutions were dying of age, and that the emerging generation was not into institutions but were more into relationships in smaller groups. With that in mind, and the evidence behind it, I hi-jacked an episode from the emergence of the whole computer era from a creative group of six in Menlo Park, California who became known as the homebrew computer club, and wrote: Homebrew Churches: Reconceiving the Church for Tomorrow’s Children.

So, there you have it. These are my gadfly journals in which I attempt be encouraging to God’s people struggling with the phenomenon of the church. Now you know. I’d love your comments. (And I really do think there will be no more, … but then …)

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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