Thinking carefully about parachurch

Arthur and Tamie are blogging through these issues at the moment.

• Office: Take 2 (exploring Ralph Winter's stuff on modalities and sodalities)
  
• Going parachurch 1: Mirco-ecclesiology (exploring the right way to frame parachurch: "groups unhinged from the local church for mission")
• Going parachurch 2: Ordination?
  

In Australian Christian circles that have been strongly influenced by the Knox-Robinson thesis of church, there is an awful lack of thoughtfulness about parachurch organisations - whether small groups, uni ministries, Bible Colleges or denominations.

Knox-Robinson thesis is, as Andrew Heard says, 'a desert island theology of church'. It's not a complete definition and it's irresponsible to brandish it around recklessly. Just because people 'gather around Christ in the word' at small group or campus ministry doesn't make it a church in every way that a local church is. Just because Acts 29 and the Anglican denomination are both networks of local churches, doesn't mean that they are both equally denominations, either.