Who Is the Church? An Ecclesiology for the Twenty-First Century: An Ecclesiology for the Twenty-First Century

Cheryl M. Peterson

May 2013 · Fortress Press

About this ebook

Many congregations today are beset by fears, whether over loss of members and money, or of irrelevancy in an increasingly pluralistic society. To counter this, many congregations focus on strategy and purpose-what churches "do"-but Cheryl Peterson submits that mainline churches need to focus instead on "what" or "who" they are-to reclaim a theological, rather than sociological, understanding of themselves.

To do this, she places the questions of the church's identity and mission into a conversation with the primary ecclesiological paradigms of the past century: the neo-Reformation concept of the church as a "word event" and the ecumenical paradigms of the church as "communion." She argues that these two paradigms assume a context of cultural Christendom that no longer exists-focused on the church that is gathered-rather than the missional church that is sent out.

About the author

Cheryl M. Peterson is associate professor of systematic theology at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio. Her scholarly works include contributions to Transformative Lutheran Theologies: Feminist, Womanist, and Mujerista Perspectives(Fortress Press, 2010) and Critical Issues in Ecclesiology (2011), in addition to numerous articles for professional journals.