The Congregation in a Secular Age: Keeping Sacred Time against the Speed of Modern Life (Ministry in a Secular Age)
Overview
Churches often realize they need to change. But if they’re not careful, the way they change can hurt more than help.
In this culmination of his well-received Ministry in a Secular Age trilogy, leading practical theologian Andrew Root offers a new paradigm for understanding the congregation in contemporary ministry. He articulates why it is so hard for congregations to change and encourages an approach that doesn't fall into the negative traps of our secular age.
Living in late modernity means our lives are constantly accelerated, and calls for change in the church often support this call to speed up. Root asserts that the recent push toward innovation in churches has led to an acceleration of congregational life that strips the sacred out of time. Many congregations are simply unable to keep up, which leads to burnout and depression. When things move too fast, we feel alienated from life and the voice of a living God.
The Congregation in a Secular Age calls congregations to reimagine what change is and how to live into this future, helping them move from relevance to resonance.
This is a Logos Reader Edition. Learn more.
- Offers a new paradigm for understanding the congregation in contemporary ministry
- Articulates why it is so hard for congregations to change
- Encourages an approach that doesn’t fall into the negative traps of our secular age
Part 1: Depressed Congregations
- The Church and the Depressing Speed of Change
- Speeding to the Good Life, Crashing into Guilt: Why 1.6 Billion Dollars Isn’t as Good as You Think
- Fullness as Busyness: Why Busy Churches Attract and Then Lose Busy People
- The Strip Show: When Sacred Time Is No Longer the Time We Keep
Part 2: Examining Congregational Despondency; Our Issue Is Time
- When Time Isn’t What It Used to Be: What’s Speeding Up Time?
- When Brains Explode: Dimension One: Technological Acceleration
- Minding the Time: Why the Church Feels Socially Behind
- Dimension Two: Acceleration of Social Life (Part One)
- Why The Office Can’t Be Rebooted: The Decay Rate of Social Change
- Dimension Two: Acceleration of Social Life (Part Two)
- When Sex and Work Are in a Fast Present: The Church and the Decay Rate of Our Social Structures
- Dimension Two: Acceleration of Social Life (Part Three)
- Why Email Sucks and Social Media Even More: Reach and Acceleration
- Dimension Three: The Acceleration of the Pace of Life (Part One)
- Reach and the Seculars
- Dimension Three: The Acceleration of the Pace of Life (Part Two)
Part 3: Moving from Relevance to Resonance
- Time-Famine and Resources Obsession: Another Step into Alienation
- Why the Slow Church Can’t Work: Stablization, Alienation, and Loss of the Congregational Will to Be
- Alienation’s Other: Resonance
- When Bonhoeffer Time Travels: Resonance as Carrying the Child
- To Become a Child: Matthew 18 and Congregation That Is Carried
- Ending with a Little Erotic Ecstasy
Top Highlights
“He believes that what it means to be living in a modern age (in modernity) is to have our lives continually and constantly accelerated. This acceleration has the effect of stripping the sacred out of time.” (Page xii)
“The church keeps time by anticipating the return of Jesus. Unlike in our epoch, this anticipation does not compress but lengthens the present.” (Page 92)
“depression is an ailment of speed, the feeling of not being able to keep up.” (Page 6)
“this accelerating of time has had a huge impact on the congregation” (Page xii)
“If a congregation wants change, it will start not by being concerned with relevance and resources, but with the good life of resonance, seeking for the living Christ where Christ can be found, in the disclosure of personhood, where time is not made to accelerate but becomes full and sacred.” (Page 261)
- Title: The Congregation in a Secular Age: Keeping Sacred Time against the Speed of Modern Life
- Author: Andrew Root
- Series: Ministry in a Secular Age
- Volume: 3
- Publisher: Baker Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Logos Release Date: 2020
- Pages: 268
- Era: era:contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- Subjects: Church renewal; Change › Religious aspects--Christianity; Christianity and culture
- ISBNs: 9781493429745, 9780801098482, 9781540963949, 9781493429721, 1493429744, 0801098483, 1540963942, 1493429728
- Resource ID: LLS:CNGRGTNSCLRG
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T22:51:58Z