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Church after Christendom

Author:	Stuart Murray
Published By:	Paternoster (Milton Keynes)
Pages:	235
Price:	£8.99
ISBN:	1 84227 292 6

Reviewed by Alun Brookfield.

Although this book has been available for some time, I only came across it recently and bought it with enthusiasm, having read Murray’s previous volume, Post-Christendom, a year or two ago. This second volume picks up all the same themes of the earlier volume and attempts to put some flesh on the bones of his vision of a post-Christendom church in the UK. In particular, Murray “offers a vision of a way of being church that is healthy, sustainable, liberating, peaceful and missional.”

As with Post-Christendom, Murray is trying to imagine the future, which, like all such imagining, assumes that present trends will continue in a more or less straight line. Since that never actually happens, all such imaginings should be taken with a pinch of salt! Murray recognises this reality and aims to explore possibilities rather than make prophecies, and therein lies much of the strength of this book.

The book is divided into two sections, each with several chapters. Section 1 is entitled “Shape” and Section 2 is entitled “Ethos”. Again Murray’s strength lies in the fact that he realises that these two are always in a dynamic inter-relationship, and thus avoids the danger of focussing on models and styles. Instead he is looking for the core values which will need to be at the heart of any and all kinds of church in a post-Christendom culture. He comments that young, emerging churches are in danger of “cherry-picking interesting practices without understanding their significance, searching for answers but not wrestling with the missiological questions”.

This book should be on the desk - not the bookshelf - of every Christian leader who claims to have a vision for the future of his or her church. It should be referred to regularly. My copy is already well-thumbed and extensively underlined.