Contemporary Church Collection (5 Vols.)

A Ministry Shaped by Mission

• Paul Avis
• 152 pages | 01 Aug 2005

This volume falls into three symmetrical parts, each of which is subdivided. The first part draws on the missiological insights of Karl Barth and the Second Vatican Council concerning the missio Dei, and directly relates this theme to the tasks entrusted to the Church in “The Great Commission” of Matthew 28: the ministry of the Word, the celebration of the sacraments and the exercise of pastoral responsibility. It shows how Christians share in the ministry of Christ himself.

In the second part, the argument is carried forward by clarifying the much abused term “ministry” and offered is a more rigorous and somewhat controversial definition of ministry as work for the Church that is mandated by the Church and explicitly related to its core tasks. Ministers, therefore, represent both Christ and his Church.

The final part applies the insights of the earlier parts to ordained and lay ministry and offers a cogent answer to the question, What difference does ordination make? The book concludes with an agenda for the reform and development of ministry in the light of the arguments advanced.

Dr. Paul Avis is General Secretary of the Church of England's Council for Christian Unity, Sub-Dean of Exeter Cathedral, and Director of the Centre for the Study of the Christian Church.

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A Church Drawing Near: An Applied Theology of Mission and Ministry

• Paul Avis
• 224 pages | 01 Jan 2004

By first defining the core tasks (or mission) of the Church in biblical and theological terms, Paul Avis then goes on to ask how these tasks can best be carried out in the conditions of modernity and post-modernity. Avis describes and evaluates contemporary expressions of spirituality, drawing on many empirical studies; the functions of the Church’s “occasional offices” or rites of passage; the ways in which the Church and its ministers can engage constructively with the community and with civil society; the pastoral method in mission and its practical, policy consequences.

Throughout the book Avis urges the imperative for the Church and its ministers to break out from the privatization of Christian values into full participation in contemporary social issues and public life. This book is an authoritative and interdisciplinary study of theology and practice: a much needed applied theology of mission and ministry for today.

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Seeking the Truth of Change in the Church: Reception, Communion and the Ordination of Women

• Paul Avis, ed.
• 160 pages | 01 Jan 2004

This timely book, which arises out of consultations under the auspices of the Centre for the Study of the Christian Church, examines the Church of England's decision to ordain women to the priesthood and to make pastoral provision for those opposed. It attempts to discover and define the theological principles underlying both the ordination of women and the determination of the Church to maintain communion when these developments provoke fundamental disagreements.

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Losing the Sacred: Ritual, Modernity and Liturgical Reform

• David Torevell
• 256 pages | 01 Jan 2002

This book argues that the liturgical reforms initiated by the second Vatican Council may have seriously undermined contemporary Roman Catholic worship. Drawing on important works by Durkheim, Bauman, Foucault, Turner, Duffy, Flanagan and Pickstock, David Torevell focuses on the most crucial element of Catholic worship - the experience of the sacred - and examines how it has been eroded since pre-modern times, largely due to the marginalization of ritual expression, and its consequences. A devastating critique of the loss of the sacred in worship, this striking interdisciplinary study is a call for revitalization of Roman Catholic liturgy through a “reform of the reform” and the reclamation of the importance of the body in ritual expression.

Dr. David Torevell is Senior Lecturer in Theology, Liverpool Hope University College.

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Older People and the Church

• Canon Ian Knox
• 256 pages | 01 Oct 2002

The phenomenal growth in the numbers of old people around the world is a demographic revolution. This goes hand in hand with a great decline, particularly in Britain and the West, in the numbers of people attending church. As churches eagerly seek to evangelize the younger generations, how does this impact on their attitude to older people? The book seeks to explore the relationships between older people and the church, sociologically and theologically. How will the church view older people in the 21st century? Will churches collude in the ageist attitudes of so many, or seek to attract - and nurture - older members?

Canon Ian Knox was a lawyer before becoming a full-time evangelist. He is a founder member of the Anglican College of Evangelists and is the author of five books to date.

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