Concern for Church Polity and Discipline
Essays on Pastoral Ministry and Communal Authority, 1958–1969
- Church Leadership & Ministry
- Publisher: Wipf and Stock
- Published: 2022
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Publisher's Description
CONCERN: A Pamphlet Series for Questions of Christian Renewal was born in the 1950s of shared concerns over a gap between an Anabaptist vision and contemporary, North American Mennonite reality. The initial group views the increasingly hierarchical denominational structure, the emergence of centralized, professionalized, pastoral ministry, and the resultant changes in polity and practice as fundamentally incompatible with a Believers' Church ecclesiology. Essays here present that critique and discussion of the reconfiguration of pastoral and communal authority, as well as the assertion that reclamation of a disciplined priesthood of all believers is the path of Christian renewal. Today the question of what institutional forms best structure the leadership, authority, and shared life of congregations persists, marked by particular concern to attend to the exercise of power within actual communities of faith.
Endorsements (2)
“The historical essays from over fifty contributors in these volumes reflect diverse and richly textured discussions concerning Christian renewal in the mid-twentieth century. Especially noteworthy are the inclusion of critical and engaging response essays, which point to a developing Mennonite theology on the way, underline the importance of dialogue across differences, and highlight the necessity for raising new questions.”
“We are indebted to Roberts for her invaluable (and considerable!) labor exhuming, contextualizing, re-presenting, and thus preserving the distinctively Anabaptist Concern pamphlet series, published during the height of the Cold War. These volumes provide snapshots of a then-rising generation of North American Mennonite thinkers ‘workshopping’ important theological, ethical, and ecclesial issues amidst their fraught social and historical moment. An enlightening resource for all of us attempting similar discernment of our own calamitous epoch.”
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