Dynamic Diversity: The New Humanity Church for Today and Tomorrow
Overview
From the footpaths of our cities to the chat rooms of the Internet, people are connecting today as never before. As the planet shrinks through the multiple forces of immigration, travel, electronic communication and more fluid employment patterns, we will find ourselves increasingly forced into contact with those who are significantly different from ourselves. Sadly however, the stranger is often a threat to be resisted rather than a friend to be embraced.
In this context of in-your-face diversity, it is time to revisit the heart of the New Testament, with its claim that in Jesus Christ a new quality of human relationship is possible. In his letter to the Ephesians, the apostle Paul claims that Christians are a new kind of people, part of a new community: a “new humanity” in Christ (Ephesians 2:15). We exist not in isolation, but in relationship.
Dynamic Diversity contends that all Christian congregations everywhere are called to be bridging places, centres of reconciliation, where the major diversities separating human beings are overcome through the presence of God’s Holy Spirit.
Bruce Milne presents a biblical model for today and tomorrow where the diversities of gender, generation, ethnicity, colour and socio-economic status present exciting and challenging opportunities to demonstrate practical oneness. When this happens, churches become wonderfully alive. In Christ we can be one people, one new humanity, one life.
Key Features
- Illustrates the biblical vision of the church as a ‘new humanity’
- Invites the reader to rethink church and encourages inclusivity
Contents
- What’s This ‘New-Humanity’ Thing?
- It’s More than Race: Other Major Diversities Overcome
- Underpinnings: Doctrinal Confirmations
- An Idea whose Hour Has Come: Into the World of Today
- It’s Happened Before: The First-century World
- Widening the View: Other Dimensions of Community
- Down to Earth: Worship and Leadership in the New-Humanity Church
- Down to Earth: Discipleship and Fellowship in the New-Humanity Church
- A Heart for the World: Mission and Evangelism in a New-Humanity Congregation
- Riding the Wave: The Challenges and Opportunities of New-Humanity Churches in Today’s and Tomorrow’s Worlds
Top Highlights
“The list is endless; the doors into the kingdom are as multiple. Our experience in such a congregational context was that the more doors into the kingdom we opened, the more people came through them. But only a diverse congregation can operate such a multi-faceted mission.” (Page 161)
“The phrase ‘all things together under’ translates a single Greek word with a vivid usage in Greek mathematics. When the Greeks wished to add a series of numbers together, they habitually listed these, rather as we still do (assuming no calculator is to hand), by writing them one under the other in a column. However, whereas we today tend to draw a line at the foot of the list, and write the total beneath the line, the Greeks tended to draw the line above the column and put the total above the line. Hence they (literally) ‘summed up’. Paul here sees God drawing a line across the entire human and superhuman story, and writing ‘Jesus Christ’ ‘above the line’ as his ‘summing up’ of all things.” (Page 19)
“In the area of church, more than any other, simply inviting others to ‘do things the way we did it’ has led too many congregations into fruitless bypaths. So, ‘Speak Lord …’—which brings us back to Ephesians.” (Page 18)
“The Christian anticipation of the future, as expressed in Ephesians 1:10, is that that reign, already entered upon, will be fully realized for, and acknowledged by, all conceivable orders of existence. This does not imply that all will acknowledge Christ’s reign in glad submission (cf. 5:6, ‘God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient’). Nonetheless, whether with ecstatic joy (in the case of the redeemed) or in trembling dread (for those beings, both human and superhuman, who continue in rebellious impenitence), all in earth and heaven, whether in joy or in judgment, will acknowledge this King. The final goal is therefore profoundly Christ-centred and comprehensive.” (Pages 19–20)
Praise for the Print Edition
This is an invaluable, scholarly and accessible tool for all leaders and thinking Christians who want to grapple with the challenges and privileges of holding unity in diversity.
—Joel Edwards, general director, Evangelical Alliance
- Title: Dynamic Diversity: The New Humanity Church for Today and Tomorrow
- Author: Bruce Milne
- Publisher: Inter-Varsity
- Print Publication Date: 2006
- Logos Release Date: 2016
- Pages: 185
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Christian life; Globalization › Religious aspects--Christianity
- ISBNs: 9781844741588, 1844741583, 9780830828067, 0830828060
- Resource ID: LLS:DYNAMICDIVERSITY
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T23:27:08Z