Comments on: Church vs Parachurch 1

By: Church vs Parachurch 3 « fresh expressions…

Church vs Parachurch 3 « fresh expressions… — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 09:53:07 +0000

[...] Steve Timmis, Jonathan Dodson and Neil Cole) were posting on this subject. For those thoughts see part 1 and part [...]

By: John

John — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:41:13 +0000

running out of time today so here is a little thought – if Dave (and I think he is) is right then the best of churches partnering together in mission is a helpful, healthy definition of a parachurch, then is a denomination not a parachurch structure?

(Broughton Knox seemed to indicate as much in his writings – but arguing a different point)

By: dave bish

dave bish — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 22:53:32 +0000

Michael – I’d venture that that’s exactly what ‘the best of’ parachurch is really, churches partnering together in mission.

Naturally to do this the churches involved set aside members of those churches to work within the partnerships and take responsibility for them, and the partnerships take on some sense of identity in themselves, not as a church, or just a part of a church, but as a part of all the partnering local churches in a particular location – or even across regions and nations. Seems entirely possible. Always existing for the good of the partner churches.

There are decent arguments (such as those by Mike Reeves in his paper on CU & Church at UCCF.org.uk) for ‘parachurch’ ministries biblically.

By: John

John — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 18:50:05 +0000

Hey Dave and Micheal

Thanks for your thoughts I am planning to post part 3 tomorrow where I will try to give some of my thoughts rather than just interact with others. I will give my take on some of the thoughts above, let me know what you think

By: Michael

Michael — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 17:21:26 +0000

It’s interesting stuff. I agree that there are benefits given by parachurch organisations, but I also agree with John that historically para-church organisations have arisen when the church is not doing the job it was made for.

Now for some splurging…

Given that there will always be naff churches, and that no church is ever what it is meant to be, does that mean we will always need parachurch organisations helping the churches?

As I’m writing, a thought has just struck me… In the New Testament we obviously don’t find para-church organisations… and we know that the early church wasn’t always what it was meant to be.
So if this is the case, why didn’t Paul institute para-church organisations to help deal with the deficits?

My sugggestion (for further discussion) is how about dropping the para-bit and get churches resourcing churches?
Since no church gets everything right, but we tend to get different things wrong, why don’t churches assist, challenge, encourage and resource each other to do gospel ministry? If para-church organisations can do this, but aren’t found in the NT, then why can’t churches?

(One example of where this does happen is the Radstock network…)

Any thoughts?

By: dave bish

dave bish — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:37:18 +0000

I grew up in a fairly dead church setup – then became a Christian later, i guess i decided to confine my comments to looking for the best of things, when comparing i find that helps debate be constructive. Anyone can find a bad church and a bad parachurch to compare, but if we look at best-cases then we get to see if the principle itself is valid. Having experienced a number of best-case senarios I think the principle of ‘parachurch’ holds – though i grant it takes a lot of work to have that… but then heck, trying to get local church to be the beautiful bride she’s meant to be is possibly even harder, but i don’t want to ever advocate giving up on the bride.

I figure anyone really interested ought to have the faith that God can bring about the good senarios… if we haven’t got that sort of gospel optimism then we give up any gospel work.

Steve Timmis has done us all a favour by getting us talking, and like you say – we all agree on a lot of the stuff.