Journal of European Baptist Studies, Volume 7, No. 3, 2007

wo functions - doxological and missional - he is essentially right. 40 Community today, based upon covenant and commitment, is essential, but needs to demonstrate an outward focus and priority. As a membership we don’t live for ourselves; we live for others. In much of what Nigel Wright says he unashamedly follows the contemporary ecclesiological thought of Jurgen Moltmann. For example, Wright speaks of Moltmann’s book, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, as ‘the best “Baptist” book on the church available despite not having been written by a Baptist’. 41 In both that book and his later work, The Open Church, Moltmann calls for the friendship of Jesus to be the key to 35 P Ward, Liquid Church (Peabody: Hendrickson / Carlisle: Paternoster, 2002), pp. 24, 46, respectively. By ‘liquid modernity’ he refers to what others speak of as ‘post-modernity’. 36 Ibid., p. 88. Also, p. 90. See also, S. Radley, Place: Church and Mission (Cambridge: Grove Books, 1997), pp. 7-9, 16. 37 See, for example, B.S. Harris, ‘From “Behave, Believe, Belong” to “Belong, Believe, Behave” - A Missional Journey for the 21 sl Century’ in M. Parsons (ed.), Text and Task: Scripture and Mission (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2005), pp. 204-217. 38 C. Walker, Seeking Relevant Churches for the 21 s ' Century (Melbourne: JBCE, 1997), p. 30. See, particularly, pp. 25-38. 39 See the seminal work, P.S. Minear, Images of the Church in the New Testament (London: Lutterworth Press, 1961), particularly, chapters 3-6. 40 M. Jinkins, ‘The “Gift” of the Church. Ecclesia Crucis, Peccatrix Maxima, and the Missio DeT in J.G. Stackhouse, Jr. (ed.). Evangelical Ecclesiology. Reality or Illusion? (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker, 2003), pp. 179-209, particularly p. 208. 41 Wright, New Baptists, p. 64. See J. Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit (London: SCM, 1977). An understanding of covenanted church 13 42 membership in a missional context. The following statement is worth quoting, ‘The church will not overcome its present crisis through reform of the administration of the sacraments, or from the reform of its ministries. It will overcome this crisis through the rebirth of practical fellowship.’ 43 James McClendon also writes concerning membership in the light of the church’s missional calling, but he does so with a realistic, helpful and biblical concern for our pneumatological-eschatological situation. 44 He, too, insists on an intentional church membership, speaking of ‘a disciple church’ 45 - however, he does not explicitly speak of covenanted church. His concern is on the time in which we find ourselves, and the presence of the Holy Spirit among us, significantly, speaking of this as ‘the Spirit’s koinonic presence’. 46 The community ‘lives between the times’; but notice that its task is in ‘adapting, adjusting, transforming, interpreting so that the church can be the church even as it helps the world to see itself as world’. 4