Product Description

All the statistics make glum reading - 77% of under 18 year olds have no faith in God. During the Decade of Evangelism the rate of decline in church attendance actually doubled. It is not enough to quote parallel declines, some organizations such as Friends of the Earth have enjoyed astonishing growth over the same period. Yet it may not be a crisis of belief, though that is part of the problem. The heart of the matter seems to be that "church" just doesn't fit our consumer-orientated lifestyle these days. Yet some churches - or at any rate, Christian groups - are adjusting their focus with unusual results. Youth churches such as Soul Survivor are making real headway. ASDA in Liverpool opens 30 minutes late one day each week so staff can attend communion. London's Docklands has a Thursday Church. Work churches are springing up. One Anglican minister has started a well-attended service for mums dropping off schoolchildren, at 9.30 in the morning. Post Alpha churches are developing, as are cell churches. The strategy behind these developments is rich in detail but clear in principle. We live in a culture where choice is king, where customers expect individual attention. To address this culture the church must adapt.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #266604 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Customer Reviews

The Church has to change; Is this the way to change it?
Michael Moynagh wants to see a church that is fully engaged with culture. He has a vision for the church to reach the ever increasingly fragmenting society in which we live. But he can't see the church in it's present setting ever accomplishing it. He knows only too well that trends and statistics point to an ever diminishing out of touch church. His faith in the church however is not shaken, only faith in the way we have traditionally done church. He insists that the church is going to have to engage with people where they are, nothing new here, but his conclusions offer a new paradigm for doing church.

Where is present day culture and where is it headed are the first questions. He looks to where the money is being spent to gain a clue and suggests that if you look at the economy over the last 200 years it has evolved from an agricultural economy to a manufacturing one and now to an economy based on services, even more pointed is the suggestion that this is an experience economy! He makes the obvious point that this is therefore a time of opportunity for the church to point to the life changing experience of an encounter with the living Christ.

In this new economy there will have to be an ever increasing degree of co-operation between companies to provide the consumer with what they want. The days of 'off the peg' purchasing are fading and we now live with an 'it must fit me' world. Hence ever increasing choice for everyone to have exactly what they want. So as organisations develop a more personalised relationship with their users, they are helping them to manage choice. Whether organisations use their position to exploit people or benefit them will be a major Christian concern.

All of this will produce a culture clash as people will live within two contrasting sets of values, one shaped by consumerism - 'I want' and the other by the workplace - 'I serve'. The church will have to engage in these two worlds and become the 'church that fits me' As Moynagh begins to work all this out, showing that the church at present is failing to engage with people and is disconnected from where they are but also showing that this is still a spiritual nation that can be reached, alarm bells are going to ring for a number of readers. Much of what is suggested will mean 'fragmented church'. Various types of groups of varying sizes will emerge as 'congregations' as people are reached in the groups they are already in.

For those who are advocates of all age integrated church this book will not be a pleasant read. But the question we must answer is one of the nature of the church local. Does it have to be made up of every age group and every social setting or is that just the requirement for the church universal? Is our preference just for what we have been used to or is it non negotiable for a local expression of the body of Christ. If its not it may be that some of us will be able to carry on. There will, no doubt, continue to be the sort of churches we are used to but we will have to learn how to support and network with the fragmented churches that will continue to emerge and flourish.

This is a challenging read but makes a great deal of sense. There are a lot of echoes in this approach from the ways in which missionaries are likely to engage with groups of people in the situations to which they are sent, particularly in what can be termed 'non Christian countries' but then are we really still in a Christian country!?! Might these suggestions actually work then?

I guess much of this will depend on culture continuing to unfold in the way that is predicted here, every indication is that it will. However there always things that can happen that will radically change society's outlook. There has come into vocabulary just recently 'before and after twin towers'. Just how much the way world events will play out into the immediate future will have a bearing on many things. Who knows what will happen to the economy? The 'it must fit me' world could become a past luxury. What of a nation's spirituality? In times of crisis experiments are often ditched as people fall back on traditional safe havens. The church may still fall in this category. The question remains, is the church able to engage right now with where people are and with the questions they are asking.

Essential reading for 21st-century Christians
Every now and then a book comes along that has something profound to say to its age, a book that really adds to our knowledge of our world. This is one such work.

This book should be read by every church leader and, indeed, every member of a church today. Michael Moynagh who, among other things, teaches at St.John's College, Nottingham, has written a work which is both deeply scholarly and hugely readable at the same time. His is a prophetic call to the church of the 21st Century to see how the world is, and how God can work in that world.

Moynagh refers a great deal to the 'Tomorrow Project', a 'Future Studies' exercise carried-out in the UK, partly to imagine what life is going to be like in the year 2020. The conclusions are a challenge and an encouragement to us all - if we are prepared to act on them.

Make no mistake, this is no lightweight 'new millennium' pseudo-apocalyptic scare-story, nor is it a diatribe against all things modern. It is a piece of prophecy.

If one of the prophet's task is to show how things can be in our future with God and how they might be without him, this is possibly one of *the* prophetic works of this decade.