Thursday, 21 April 2011

A message to the English Church...

During the Bonhoeffer Conference I had the privilege of talking to Dr Clifford Green over lunch and I asked him what could the English Church learn from Dietrich Bonhoeffer?

He replied by saying that the church needs to follow Jesus Christ but realised that was a little vague, so he expanded these are his three points:
  1. The Church needs to know what it exists for.
  2. The Church needs to take seriously the sermon on the mount and that faith is the flip side of obedience.
  3. The Church needs to live discipleship out daily
I think that all three of these points are challenging, I am particularly struck by the first one. I am thinking this through.
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2 comments:

  1. Andii22 April 2011 at 21:41

    No.2 is the one the Northumbria community have taken up. I suspect it answers number 1. -that would be the anabaptist answer, as it happens. But I rather suspect that, on this , they are right.

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  2. Unknown23 April 2011 at 15:03

    Hi Andii,
    I think this is also a key principle of "New Monasticism" too (see Pete Greig's book). Bonhoeffer is quoted extensively in it. What is even more interesting is that the more I dig into the foundational teachings of my early Christian life the more Bonhoeffer pops up, David Watson's "Discipleship" and Loren Cunningham's writing. I had a flick through my bookshelf when I wrote my essay on Bonhoeffer and Barth on discipleship and a quick glance showed he crops up in Henri Nouwen and Richard Forster too. Maybe it is no coincidence I feel led to write my dissertation on him.

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