In this FREE book I’ll be exploring how the gathered church and the home need to be seen in equal partnership. What does it look like for a church to partner well with the home? What might change about our practice if we recognised the impact of the home and spent as much resource and energy on supporting ministry in and from the home as we do in and from a church building?
Re - Imagining the Church :
Gathered community and the home
in equal partnership
So much of the evidence based research from the last 25 years shows that the home is the incubator of faith - yet, we have continued to rely upon event driven activities based in our church buildings. This needs to change if we are to see a vital and living faith among this generation of children and young people.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Check out the different chapters + suggested additional reading
Chapter 1 : Why This Book? AND The Stats!
In this introductory chapter, I outline why I think this book is needed by drawing on stats and research from the last 30 years and my own experience as a children’s and youth minister and parent.
Chapter 2 : Household Then, Household Now
I’ll be exploring the nature and understanding of household in the Bible and early church with how this differs from “households” today – but asking questions about our theology and whether we need a shift that rediscovers their importance in our contemporary culture.
Chapter 3 : Who, Where and Why is Church?
I’ll be unpacking the who, where and why of Church. This is not a complete overview of – but in the context of the book important to give my picture of who Church “is” where and why it gathers. This is deliberately different from “What is church”.
Chapter 4 : Family in the Bible
I’ll be doing a deep dive in to some passages from Old and New Testament which give us some concrete examples of the significance of family to God and how He uses family to work out His purposes and suggest we have lost something of this dynamic in our practice of church today.
Chapter 5 : Fable and Faith
I’ll be using a motif from the story of The Three Trees (a fable used to describe the impact of the incarnation) to explore three key ideas that spin off the Sermon of the Mount and Jesus’ statement to his followers, “You are the light of the world.”
Chapter 6 : Growing Faith
With a stronger faith environment in the home we will have a stronger gathered community – a stronger gathered community, built from the ground up through our homes, will equip the church to reach and engage homes beyond the worshipping community. I will, in this chapter, be critiquing and exploring the national picture of how the Church is trying to address the challenge of engaging with the spaces children inhabit (church, school, home) – where the language used continues to distinguish “church” as a separate space we come to rather than who we are, wherever we are.
Chapter 7 : Practical Nudges
These will be included in a chapter dedicated to shifting the conversation and inspiring change in practice that brings about greater partnership and synergy between gathered community and the household. In addition to a dedicated chapter on these, I’ll be including questions for reflection and discussion after each chapter with some “action tips” included.
Chapter 8 : A re-imagined Church
This final chapter will suggest that we need to re-imagine what the church looks like in practice in light of what I’ve already discussed in the preceding chapters.
So much of the evidence based research from the last 25 years shows that the home is the incubator of faith - yet, we have continued to rely upon event driven activities based in our church buildings. This needs to change if we are to see a vital and living faith among this generation of children and young people.
In this FREE book I’ll be exploring how the gathered church and the home need to be seen in equal partnership. What does it look like for a church to partner well with the home? What might change about our practice if we recognised the impact of the home and spent as much resource and energy on supporting ministry in and from the home as we do in and from a church building?
