Van Gelder, The Essence of the Church

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Craig Van Gelder, The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit. Baker Books, 2000.

Sequels:

Referenced in:

LifeandLeadership.com Summary

A Field Guide for the Missional Congregation

Other works by Van Gelder such as The Missional Church in Context (2007), The Missional Church and Denominations (2008), The Missional Church and Leadership Formation (2009), while entitled in a way that may attract the interest of congregational leaders, are designed primarily for those who train church leaders on a college/seminary level.

Although not all of Van Gelder’s works are officially part of the Gospel and Our Culture Series, each is certainly of that ilk. Van Gelder is recognized as one of the most outstanding strategists in the missional conversation.

Summary: This volume provides the theological grounding for the rest of Van Gelder’s works. He begins by describing the state of the twenty-first century church in North America. This includes a succinct description of the various ways churches have tired to regain ground.

1. The Church is the Solution: A Functional Approach – e.g. seeker-sensitive, purpose-driven, small groups, user-friendly, seven-day-a-week, church for the 21st century (21)

2. The Church is the Problem: An Organizational Approach – e.g. denominational cultures, congregational studies, church growth and decline, reinventing denominations, quality evaluations, systems management (22)

While both approaches have accomplished considerable good, they can lead to a number of problems.

Defining the church functionally – in terms of what it does – can shift our perspective away from understanding the church as a unique community of God’s people. In place of this, the church tends to become a series of ministry functions such as worship, education, service, and witness. Defining the church organizationally – in terms of its structures – can shift our perspective away from the spiritual reality of the church as a social community. The church becomes a patterned set of human behaviors to be structured and managed. These approaches reduce the church to a set of ministries administered through management skills to maint effectiveness, or to an organization designed to accomplish certain goals. These functional and organizational approaches can seduce leaders to into placing too much confidence in their managerial skills or in their use of organizational techniques. (23)

By contrast, Van Gelder suggests

The church is not just another human organization that happens to have a different mandate for its life and ministry. The church is about human behavior that is being transformed through God’s redeeming power, and about patterns of life that reflect redemptive purposes. …Therefore it is critical that we consider the nature of the church before proceeding to define its ministry and organization. To do so, we must start with a theological perspective. (24)

Such is the purpose of this book. The author draws on two theological disciplines: missiology, the study of how to proclaim the gospel and grow the church in different cultural contexts; and ecclesiology, the study from scripture, theology, history, and church polity on how people in a particular context understand the nature, ministry, and organization of the church. When these two are integrated, one derives a missional ecclesiology, i.e. understanding the church as missional by nature.

In this view, the Spirit-created church lives as the very body of Christ in the world. Its existence declares that the full power of God’s redemptive work is already active in the world through the Spirit. It lives as a demonstration that heaven has already begun for God’s people. This Spirit-led community possesses all the power of God’s presence, even while it awaits the final judgment of evil that will lead to the creation of the new heavens and the new earth. (32)

Van Gelder’s approach to a missional ecclesiology divides into three parts. He introduces these in chapter two as the structure of his book, and then provides separate chapters on each aspect:

What the church is – its nature – The church is (chapters 4 and 5) – These chapters present the church as an expression of the redemptive reign of God as inaugurated by Jesus in the Gospels and implemented by the Spirit in Acts. They discuss the core biblical images of the church in the New Testament – people of God, body of Christ, communion of saints, and creation of the Spirit. This is followed by implications of the four historical understandings of the church as expressed in the Nicene Creed: “one holy catholic and apostolic church.”
What the church does – its ministry – The church does what it is (chapter 6) – This is a helpful description of how ministry should express the theological realities:
- The ministry of the church flows out of the church’s nature
- The ministry of the church is a power encounter between God and the evil one
- The ministry of the church is based on God’s disarming other powers through Christ
- The ministry of the church is about unmasking the powers that have been disarmed
- The church’s ministry is to bring God’s redemptive reign to all of life
- The church’s ministry is to be governed by the Word as is led and taught by the Spirit (156)

Van Gelder traces the implications of this understanding for the sacraments (baptism and the Lord’s Supper), worship, discipling, fellowshipping, serving, witness, visioning, and stewarding.

How the church is to structure its work – its organization – The church organizes what it does (chapter 7) – This provides an overview of the various levels and functions of organization. This is addressed more fully in Van Gelder, The Ministry of the Missional Church.

From the Publisher

Rather than beginning with successful contemporary models of what churches are doing, The Essence of the Church encourages readers to rethink the nature of the church. The author draws on three decades of experience to address the challenges facing todays church and urges readers to think deeply yet practically about the church.

Thoughtful and readable, this book integrates insight from a variety of disciplines and enables readers to root their methods and programs in sound biblical, theological, and theoretical principles. Diagrams help to illustrate the concepts.

About the Author

Craig Van Gelder is professor of congregational mission at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is a church consultant, coeditor of The Church Between Gospel and Culture, and editor of Confident Witness-Changing World.

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