Following her Sunday Times bestselling volume on evangelism as a way of life for individuals, Hannah Steele seeks to inspire the local church to understand itself as a community of missionary disciples in this riveting new book.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Church and mission: Does the church have a mission?
2 Church on the move: Engaging with the world around us
3 Church as presence: Being a successful church
4 The Church as community: Being the body of Christ
5 The Church as witness: Living the gospel story
6 Church as dependent: The role of the spirit in mission
Following her Sunday Times bestselling volume on evangelism as a way of life for individuals, Hannah Steele seeks to inspire the local church to understand itself as a community of missionary disciples in this riveting new book.
'Elegant, wide-ranging, and encouraging . . . a masterful book, which could and should be read by every church family whose members care about their engagement with the world.' CHURCH TIMES In Living His Story (2020), Hannah Steele wrote 'with an infectious understanding of her subject' (Mark Oakley, Church Times). Now, in Living His Story Together, she turns her attention to mission and evangelism that is not only for individuals but for the whole local church. Offering an inspiring mandate for the church to see itself as a missionary community, Hannah considers the practical outworkings of that identity through engaging with scripture and current theological thinking, and sharing real-life stories from churches on the front line. Living His Story Together isn't an argument for a particular model of church (plant or parish, for example) but an exciting exploration of what can happen when two or three of God's missionary disciples are gathered together, empowered by the Spirit and seeking to be good news in the world today. It covers contemporary missional themes, such as hospitality, cultural engagement, presence, diversity and spoken witness, and offers practical principles - vividly enlivened by relating the imaginative and disarming ways in which ordinary churches and individuals are sharing the gospel - to help us embrace the great privilege to which we have been called.
The Revd Dr Hannah Steele is Director of St Mellitus College, London. As well as Living His Story, she is author of New World, New Church? (SCM Press, 2017). Alongside her academic work, Hannah has spent time engaged in mission and evangelism among students in central London as a staff worker with UCCF. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s 2021 Lent Book, her first devotional study, was a Sunday Times bestseller.
