The 2027 Lent book reflects on building community as an act of creativity, brought about by God generating and shaping social life.
 
In the secular world, building community is a functional strategy to promote cohesion or wellbeing. Even in today’s Church, it’s often reduced to a strategy for growth. This book argues that the task of building community is always an act of creativity. This is because, whatever function it may serve, building community is a participation in the creativity of God. From the calling of the people of Israel to the calling of the disciples, God is always generating and shaping social life to bring about the flourishing of all creation.
 
This is the life of the Church and the task of the Church, not merely to disseminate a message or to grow in numbers for its own sake, but to foster redemptive human community that integrates self, society and nature. Today’s Church is called to that task in the context of forces that push hard in the opposite direction: an atomised consumer society, communities disrupted by mass migration, acrimonious culture wars, and the escalating threat of war. Technologies that optimists had believed would enhance community life – even renew the Church – now seem more obviously to be fuelling polarisation and alienation.
 
This book offers short theological reflections on core elements of the task of community building as a resource for Christian people in today’s world. It seeks to draw out the essential creativity in traditional Christian community and presents it as more relevant and more urgently needed than it has ever been. Each chapter begins with a micro-ethnography of an existing church project that illustrates the theme, and biblical reflections drawn from the Holy Week stories. The five chapters are designed to be read over the first five weeks of Lent and include questions for group discussion.