Hva handler menighetsutvikling egentlig om?

Abstract

What is Church Development Really About? A Critical Analysis of Various Strategic Approaches to Church Development in Light of a Comprehensive Ecclesiological Model This article aims to provide an academic founded answer to the question why it is imperative that considerations concerning church development should be grounded on a holistic ecclesiological thinking – and not only on the attempt to develop one or a selective range of church developing fa to church development thinking and practicrtant ecclesiological and strategic issues concerning church development – but it also shows that the strength of each approach is their weakness too – namely one-sidedness. In light of a holistic ecclesiological thinking, each approach can be judged as reductionist, since they all restrict the congregation’spotential for development to a specific part of church life. The last part of the article argues for the importance of developing the church: a) both as a Spirit-made, unique entity and a "real" human community, and b) as simultaneously biblically and historically rooted and culturally relevant. One main standpoint defended here is that the church's theological dimension must never be detached from the sociological context – and vice versa. If this happens, it may have serious consequences – not only for views on the organization and management of the church, but also for the spiritual character of the church. Regarding the question of how one can conceive a congregation in the sense b) above, the article argues for what might be called a normative-contextual approach. This implies that the church always must relate itself to contemporary culture – and at the same time must show resistance to elements in contemporary culture which conflict with essential biblical values.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 8 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.