Review and Reflection for “The New Parish”

The subtitle of this book is “How neighborhood churches are transforming mission, discipleship and community.”

This is an excellent book that helps congregations think through the future of what it means to be a congregation. It offers a model, but it does not pigeonhole congregations into a specific way of being a congregation.

And while the book was published in 2014, the concepts and ideas presented by the authors are very relevant. That’s because even though the pandemic has seen an increase in people leaving churches and churches struggling for meaning and purpose and mission, all that really did was accelerate what was happening before the pandemic. Congregations have been needing to figure out who they are and why they exist for some time now. The way things were is no longer working. It’s not a judgement of the way things were — it’s a statement of fact because the world has changed along with the assumptions, expectations, and values of the world. The church is not the center of the culture and the culture is no longer interested in telling the story of the church any longer (it’s debatable as to whether the culture told the right story in the first place). It’s time for the church to adapt. And that adaptation includes some interesting things from the past and a look at the future. Paul Sparks, Tim Soerens, and Dwight J. Friesen have done a great job with this book. If a congregation is interested in exploring what it is called to…