Musings on Spiritual Matters

Lesslie Newbigin considered the conversion of Cornelius to be paradigmatic for his personal work as a missionary.  He felt that he was most successful when he was in line with God moving into new areas.  This method was not part of a church’s strategy as it was totally guided by the Spirit of God.  But in the aftermath, it had great success because Cornelius was converted as well as the household.  This perspective is interesting in light of the perspective of the churches of Christ.  The church seems to spend the majority of the time arguing that the conversion of Cornelius was an exception to the pattern of salvation.  Though, this model is because of the history with the five steps of salvation, but nevertheless it probably has influenced the church in a negative way.  Instead of seeing Cornelius’ salvation as a missional model, it has been set aside as an anomaly.  Lesslie Newbigin , The Open Secret (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 64

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2. Theology at the Fringes
3. Popular Models in Congregtional Leadership

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This entry was posted by Matthew on Tuesday, April 19th, 2011 at 10:24 am and is filed under Church News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.