The local church and evangelism

Posted on March 18, 2011 
Filed under Theology

“Back in 1974 Donald Robinson (second from the left in this photograph of the four most recent Archbishops of Sydney) addressed a conference on evangelism with a paper entitled ‘The Doctrine of the Church and its Implications for Evangelism’ (Selected Works, II, 103–113).

I was too young at the time to know whether or not it caused a stir among evangelicals in Sydney and elsewhere (though I later learnt there was a subsequent correspondence between Francis Foulkes and Donald Robinson on the subject in the AFES journal Interchange). However I do suspect that its argument, if taken seriously, would certainly cause a stir today. Patterns of thinking and church practice have developed which move in an entirely different direction and I am not at all sure that these have been as well thought-out theologically as Robinson’s article back in the 1970s…”

– Read all of Mark Thompson’s article at Theological Theology.