Salvation and Church Renewal: An Investigation into Practices of Sourcing and Sharing

Description

Salvation is more than a concept – it is a divine practice that can be experienced in its transformative power both within local church communities, and beyond. This paper describes a framework of six fields of Christian practice, and its use in several Dutch churches that engage in a renewal process towards the year 2030 (www.kerk2030.nl). These fields of practice, which form a coherent framework informed by research on lived theology, can be described as means by which Christians experience and embody salvation in a church setting, with an eye to their missiological task for society.
Churches that participate in the church renewal program ‘Kerk2030’ are asked to build an infrastructure of continuous reflection on these six practices, which helps them grow in their sustainability and vitality towards the year 2030. Here we (1) present and critically discuss the six fields of practices regarding their internal and external empowerment, and (2) reflect on some preliminary findings from the empirical research. We also scrutinize some of the possibilities in which reflections on these six fields of practices may be used by churches to foster their own transformation so they can become more ‘Christ-like’ (3). Lastly, we will reflect on the question what the terminology of ‘salvation’ may bring for this infrastructure of reflection (4).

Period	9 Jun 2022
Event title	Visions of the Good Life: Salvation in the Twenty-First Century
Event type	Conference
Location	Kampen, NetherlandsShow on map