Course Introduction
A fresh look at how the Biblical story shapes the way the church engages with the world in times of tumultuous change.
The world is changing around us—in some ways very slowly, in some ways at an alarming rate. An old world in which we felt at home is passing away. A new, very strange world is emerging, and the church is struggling to get its bearings in an unfamiliar landscape. We are at a turning of the ages, and that is a very biblical experience.
In this six week course we will explore together how the biblical narrative shapes the life and purpose of God’s people, especially at moments of crisis and change such as we face now. We will begin by roughly mapping the profound, civilisational transition that the church in the West is currently having to negotiate—globalisation and the reaction against it, the loss of the Judeo-Christian consensus, mind-blowing technological advances, the revision of our understanding of what it means to be human, ecological degradation, climate change. We will give some thought to claims that a “quiet revival” is under way and whether with Gen Z we are finally crossing the boundary between the past and the future?
But we will then go back to the beginning and work through a biblical storyline that tracks the journey made by God’s new creation and priestly people through history. What was the fundamental vocation? What was the significance of the land? Why did ‘kingdom’ become so important? How did the clash with powerful pagan civilisations change things? What was the ‘good news’ proclaimed by Jesus and his followers? How did the future appear from the perspective of the New Testament churches? What did it then take for these communities to be fit for purpose?
In conclusion, we will ask about the lessons to be learned by the church in the West as we seek to live in and live out this long story of God and his people in history. In biblical terms, here is the basic prophetic task: to make sense of what the living creator God is doing in and through his servant people in the present and in light of everything that has gone before. Thinking that through should help us to grasp better what it takes for churches to be fit for purpose today.
