Be the Community: Baptist Ecclesiology in the Context of Missional Church

Abstract

In the face of the apparent decline of the church in the West, advocates
for the ‘Missional’ church and the ‘Emerging’ church have called for
reform. This essay critiques these influential movements for their
historically and sociologically naive analysis of the church’s decline and
their lack of sustained theological reflection. Drawing on the work of
Paul Fiddes, the essay explores what an appropriate Baptist missional
ecclesiology might be, arguing that what defines the church’s role in
mission is not primarily what it does or needs to do functionally to be
relevant in mission but who it ontologically is in Christ.