Books
Total Church
Total Church pleads for two key principles for church and mission. First, the gospel as content: being word centred (for the gospel is truth) and being mission centred (for the gospel is truth to be proclaimed). Secondly, the community as context: sharing our lives as Christians and offering a place of belonging to unbelievers.
a course on how the Bible really works
edited by Steve Timmis
by Steve Timmis and Tim ChesterFrom Creation To New Creation: Understanding the Bible Story
by Tim Chester
(Paternoster, 2003)
Large parts of the Bible are unfamiliar territory for many people. We're not sure what to make of them, still less how to live by them. From Creation To New Creation gives us a route map. By tracing the unfolding promises of God, it enables to make sense of the Bible story. The result is a book that not only shows us how to understand the Bible as a whole, but also how it continues to speak to people in the twenty-first century. Based on talks given a Spring Harvest Word Alive 2002, this book aims to enable people to understand the big picture of the Bible and how the different parts of the Bible fit into God's saving purposes. It takes the key themes from the promise to Abraham and the covenant with David and traces them through the Bible: (1) a people who will be his people, (2) a place of blessing, (3) a king and a kingdom, and (4) blessing to all nations. In each case, the principles are applied to the book of Nehemiah to illustrate how biblical theology enables us to read the Bible in the light of Christ.
by Tim ChesterAwakening to a World of Need: The Recovery of Evangelical Social Action
by Tim Chester
(IVP, 1993)
In the first half of this century, evangelicals largely withdrew from the public arena, in which they had previously been very active, to concentrate on cultivating holiness and saving souls. In the second half, many evangelicals have recovered their 'temporarily mislaid social conscience' (as John Stott puts it in his Foreword), and they have begun to discover how much the Bible has to say about holistic evangelism and a just society. This books tells the story of the growth of evangelical social concern from the 1960s to present day - a story of compassion responding to need, of new organisations such as Tearfund and World Vision, and of theology catching up with action. It explores the influence of key Western and non-Western thinkers such as John Stott and Rene Padilla, of political activists such as Jim Wallis and of major conferences such as Lausanne (1974), as well as grassroots initiatives. He also tackles the tensions that have arisen as evangelicals have thought about the relationship between proclamation and service, and about the biblical basis of social ethics.
by Tim Chester