Customer Reviews

Evangelizing Church

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This is not an easy book, but it is an important book for any Lutheran who, having received the loving grace of a God Who comes down to save us from our sin, wants to return a portion of that love by helping God in His mission to save all of mankind.

The motto of the book is "With the gift comes a call." The gift, of course, is that of faith and grace, which alone account for our salvation. The call is to move out of our comfort zone and share the remarkable Lutheran message of God's loving and saving grace with those who have not heard it.

The authors draw a distinction a church that engages in "evangelism" as one of the things a church does and an "evangelizing church." Evangelism is something we do, they say, whereas an evangelizing church is what a church is - or should be, or should at least be in the process of becoming. They make the point that Lutherans have historically not been very good at evangelism, and the counter-point that evangelizing is the reason for the church.

This is not a how-to book for increasing church attendance or church membership. It is a call to action for those of us who profess to be Lutherans but who have forgotten that we are commanded to follow Christ and become fishers of men.

The book arrived before the eta and was in excellent condition. I will buy from this seller again.

I think this book represents a good start, (I really do!!!) but lutherans have a long way to go in missional thinking and praxis. I beginning to understand that the theological categories, maybe especially for the Lutherans, represent language barriers that hinders us in communicating the content of our case adequately, even to young lutherans in a postmodern world. That is a challange! But this challange is not an underlying principal in this book, and therefor it might just end up regaining evangelizing living in a context that's no longer here, even if this is a good shot.