Most of what I know about Sheffield came from The Full Monty. I knew it as a city where jobs were scarce since the closure of the steelworks and decent fellows have to resort to becoming male strippers.
Of course, I should have known better than to trust the movies. There is quite a bit going on in Sheffield these days: not the least the development of "The Crowded House', a network of churches led by Steve Timmis and Tim Chester (we'll call them T&C). Neither of these gentlemen have had to resort to disrobing to make a difference in the world.

The intention of the The Crowded House is to plant and grow missional churches " churches that take seriously the task of being both "missional" and "church".

T&C are now the authors of Total Church: A Radical Reshaping Around Gospel and Community, in which they seek to outline their deep convictions about the gospel and church life. Though the book is brief to the point of being terse, and offers theological sketches more than extensive discussions of its main themes, the authors give an excellent account of the nature of the gospel and the authoritative place of Scripture for the churches of Jesus Christ.

They rightly argue, for example, that Christian spiritual experiences need to arise from God's word.

So far, so theologically sound. But it's what they do with it that makes the difference. T&C assert that Christian life and mission should be framed according to two principles: the gospel on the one hand, and community on the other. These two foci are overlapping, interlocking and mutually informing of one another in every way. The gospel is a true word, and objectively true, but its truth is realised by the life of the church as it lives out the love of God for the world in practice.

T&C write: "If the gospel is to be at the heart of church life and mission, it is equally true that the church is to be at the heart of gospel life and mission" (p 37).  Or to put it another way: "The church exists both through the gospel and for the gospel" (p 32).

This is what is really exciting: T&C are challenging Christians who claim to be gospel-centred to take seriously the gospel as a missionary word.

Living out that gospel means being community-centred. Which is to say, "church" is less about a Sunday meeting and more about sharing a common life " which will of course be expressed in the way we meet. This means less emphasis on programmes and courses, and on producing a glamourous and exciting Sunday event, and more emphasis on developing and deepening people's relationships with one another.

This fits with my own ministry experience. In ministering to Gen Y people at the Cathedral, I found there was a strong expectation that church would be a high octane event. With only 30 people to start with, this was very hard to achieve! And yet, I eventually learned that what helped us to grow, spiritually and numerically, was whatever helped us to learn to love one another " mutual hospitality, sharing food and fun together, pouring over God's word together, and so on. This was, it turned out, our best mission strategy: we were able to invite non-Christian friends to discover Jesus not only in abstract, but also in something of the way we lived together.

T&C are not, I think, saying that the church has some kind of subsidiary rights over the gospel. But they do tie the gospel very closely to the church.

Though I think this is generally right, we must be clear that the church is entirely the creation of, and answers to, the word of God. In the book of Acts it seems that, at least some of the time, the church was formed as a result of the activity of the Spirit and the preaching of the gospel, after the event. The evangelisation and baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch, for example, happens without an apparent ecclesiology, or an encounter with the Christian community. The churches, it seems, are just trying to keep up with the spread of the gospel! The important thing is not membership in an earthly community in and of itself, though it is certainly important, but that membership in an earthly community is an expression of the heavenly gathering of God's people.

But I think in my own teaching that the church is primarily a heavenly reality, I have allowed the significance of the church on earth to be downgraded. I felt particularly convicted by T&C's insistence that this should never be the case: churches must be living expressions of the heart of God for the world if they are to be true to their heavenly identity. As they say:

We need to be communities of love. And we need to be seen to be communities of love. People need to encounter the church as a network of relationships rather than a meeting you attend or a place you enter. Mission must involve not only contact between unbelievers and individual Christians, but between unbelievers and the Christian community. (p 56)

Nothing could be more earthly " or more heavenly. But this involves asking some difficult questions of ourselves and of our church communities, and of our evangelistic strategies. Are they really a reflection of the gospel we preach? Do we really invite people into a network of relationships rather than a timetable of programmes?

I have been the pastor of a small church and I know how hard it is to get evangelism going if we think of it primarily in terms of big events.

T&C have good news for small churches: it isn't the success of your events but the quality of your life together as you live under God's word that is the best advertisement for the gospel of Jesus.