Why Church?: A Basic Introduction

Is a church just something we create to serve our purposes or to maintain old traditions? Or is the church something more vital, more meaningful, and more powerful? This can be hard to believe when we look at what happens in any one congregation or denomination. Certainly not all churches act like Jesus in the world, and in fact many churches in the West are dying. When it's so easy to be confused, frustrated, or simply apathetic about the church, how should we understand its purpose today? In this appealing introduction to the nature of the local church, set in the context of Christian history and global diversity, historian and missionary Scott Sunquist brings us a portrait of the church in motion. Why Church? clarifies the two primary purposes of the church: worship and witness. Sunquist unpacks what the church is--and ought to be--using five movements of worship:

• come together
• stand to praise God
• kneel to confess
• sit to listen to the Word of God
• go out into the world

Packed with stories and insights from experiences in churches around the world, this book explores issues such as cultural contextualization, the meaning of conversion, worship in both personal and communal aspects, and how mission should combine telling the good news with being good news as a community. This primer on "what is church?" comes from Fuller Theological Seminary's renowned church-planting program and is well suited to church leaders and their core teams to read together and share with new attenders as they catch the spirit of the dynamic gathering that is the local church.