Books
A New and Right Spirit: Creating an Authentic Church in a Consumer Culture
In A New and Right Spirit, Rick Barger argues passionately for congregations to reexamine what it means to be an "authentic church" in a culture where authenticity is hard to come by. He demonstrates the pitfalls of technical solutions to congregational problems and shows the way to making adaptive change.
Recognizing the spiritual needs of a success-oriented society, he exhorts leaders to turn away from the story of our culture and to return to the story of the church that is grounded in Christ and the resurrection. Driven by that authentic story, the church becomes a powerful witness to God's love for all and an effective minister to the needs of the world.
A New and Right Spirit is a hope-filled book on church renewal and vitalization that can be used by pastors and church leaders of congregations of any size. In this post-modern, post-Christendom, and emerging post-denominational era, this is a very exciting and opportune time to be the church. We are living in the midst of two very different happenings with the church in North America.
On the one hand, the institutional church whose identity and sense of mission were forged out of the Constantinian-constructed European church and mindset-a mindset that was imported into North America-is imploding and crumbling. On the other hand, there is a new kind of emerging church across the landscape of North America. This emerging church exists in all kinds of different expressions and is having great traction with the culture. These emerging and vibrant congregations have discovered that church renewal and revitalization is really not about new strategies, programs, or tactics but is rather about a recovery of the DNA of the ancient and authentic church and the appropriation of that DNA in the life and mission of congregations today.
A New and Right Spirit examines the lifestyles, values, and attitudes of North Americans and how it is that our spiritually seeking culture stubbornly exists in a consumer relationship with the church. It exposes how Constantinian-bred assumptions about the church make both the church and the culture co-conspirators in inadvertently keeping the relationship consumer. It names and articulates movements that need to happen in order to construct a congregational cultural architecture that is both faithful to the gospel and works to transform persons from being in a consumer relationship to the church to actually being grasped by the church and inculcated into its identity and calling. It further names the nature of leadership, both paid and unpaid servants, needed to create an authentic church in this consumer culture.
The book is published by The Alban Institute: Herndon, Virginia 2005. Find it here.
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Comments on this Entry:
Rick is Senior Pastor of one of the fastest growing churches in the ELCA, Abiding Hope, in Littleton, Colorado. He created a Transformational Leadership Academy at his church, and is doing wonderful work.
Posted by: Gregg Burch at October 5, 2005 10:26 PM
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