Prodigal Christianity

Prodigal Christianity offers a down-to-earth, accessible, and yet provocative understanding of God's mission of redemption in the world, and how followers of Christ can participate in this work. It speaks into the discontent of all those who have exhausted conservative, liberal, and even emergent ways of being Christian and are looking for a new way forward. It offers building blocks for missional theology and practice that moves Christians into a gospel-centered way of life for our culture and our times.

• Offers a compelling and creative vision for North American Christians
• Puts forth a theology and ten critical signposts that must be observed to follow a missional way of life: post-Christendom, missio Dei, incarnation, witness, scripture, gospel, church, sexuality, justice, pluralism
• Asks questions and points to issues that trouble many leaders in the post-modern, post-denominational, post-Christendom church

This book can fill the gap for the average Christian left discontented with the current options "after evangelicalism."

About the Jossey-Bass Leadership Network Series xi

Preface and Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction: Following Jesus into the Far Country—the Winter of Our Discontent xix

Signpost One: Post-Christendom 1

Into the Far Country: The Journey into Post-Christendom

Signpost Two: Missio Dei 16

With the Prodigal God: The Journey into God’s Mission

Signpost Three: Incarnation 31

On the Ground: The Journey into Everyday Life

Signpost Four: Witness 48

In the World: The Journey into the World

Signpost Five: Scripture 66

Living Our Story: Journeying by the Book That Is More Than a Book

Signpost Six: Gospel 83

Making All Things Right: The Journey into Redemption

Signpost Seven: Church 96

In Kingdom Communities: The Journey as the Body of Christ into the World

Signpost Eight: Prodigal Relationships 114

With Our Brokenness: The Journey Toward Sexual Redemption

Signpost Nine: Prodigal Justice 131

Among Our Neighborhoods: The Journey Toward Local Justice

Signpost Ten: Prodigal Openness 148

For the Good News: The Journey into Diverse Worlds

Epilogue: The Prodigal Returns 163

Notes 167

About the Authors 183

Index 185

The Authors

DAVID E. FITCH is a copastor and founder of Life on the Vine Christian Community and coaches church-planting for the Midwest District of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. He is the B.R. Lindner Chair of Evangelical Theology at Northern Seminary, Chicago, and is author of The Great Giveaway and The End of Evangelicalism?

GEOFF HOLSCLAW is a copastor at Life on the Vine Christian Community and an adjunct professor of theology at Northern Seminary. He is the Mid-West regional coordinator for Ecclesia Network.

Prodigal Christianity asks the questions that point to the issues troubling church leaders in the newly secularized post-Christendom cultures of North America. How is God revealed? What is the gospel? Where is the kingdom of God? And, most importantly, how do we live these realities amidst the sexualities, pluralism, and injustices of our time? Faced with these questions, many are looking for a way beyond the Emergent and Neo-Reformed movements, which seem to speak only to the people already convinced. Prodigal Christianity moves us beyond Christian-culture-bound ways of being Christian to living radically as Jesus’s people present in the world.

Using ten “signposts,” Prodigal Christianity charts the journey every Christian must take into “the far country.” It is a journey that is radical and yet generous, defined by the very way God has come to us in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. Nothing is compromised as this journey breaks down boundaries around the postmodern, post-Christian, relationally scarred, sexually broken, economically marginalized peoples of our day. Exploring the depths of the Christian faith, Prodigal Christianity opens the pathway for every Christian and every church to journey forward into the missional frontier God is calling us to in these new and different times.

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