A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future

Some of you might be familiar with Robert Webber of "Future Ancient" fame. Webber is a prof at Northern Seminary whose writing, speaking and teaching has focused on the relevance of the ancient church- a refreshing perspective in all the highly caffinated ideas about being relevant and contextualized. Most recently, Webber has been working on a project that combines the old and the new, a web-based research project to determine the state of Evangelicals in the U.S. and how to call them to ancient reform.

An article in CT provides a quick glimpse into what this is all about. Webber comments on how the gospel story should impact the church:

"God has always been about the business of creating a people to witness to himself. God calls a family into being with Abraham, calls a nation into being with Moses. And now God has called a universal body of people, the church, to be a continuation of the presence of Jesus in the world and thus a witness to the reality of God and to God's story.

I'm asking people to see all of history through the story of God. God's story is the substance of the church, its worship, its spirituality, and its life in the world."

The project calls for a return to living in the narrative of Scripture in a bolder, more counter-cultural way. This is detailed in the online document called, "A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future."

Here is the TOC:

Prologue


1. On the Primacy of the Biblical Narrative

2. On the Church, the Continuation of God's Narrative

3. On the Church's Theological Reflection on God's Narrative

4. On Church's Worship as Telling and Enacting God's Narrative

5. On Spiritual Formation in the Church as Embodiment of God's Narrative

6. On the Church's Embodied Life in the World

Epilogue


It's worth skimming through to get a pulse where people think N. American Evangelicals need reform and for a model of applied biblical theology.

Read the whole thing here.