what it means to be apostolic church

(85) (in the marketing the church approach/aka church exclusively as PLACE) The clergy are the church’s sales representatives, religious doctrines (and programs? RP adds) its products, and evangelization practices its marketing techniques.

 

Jurgen Moltmann: “The historical church must be called ‘apostolic’ in a double sense: its gospel and its doctrine are founded on the testimony of the first apostles, the eyewitnesses of the risen Christ, and it exists  in the carrying out of the apostolic proclamation, the missionary charge.  The expression ‘apostolic’ therefore denotes both the church’s foundation and its commission.”  In a recent study of the understanding of the word APOSTOLIC within the early church, Robert Scudieri concludes the same: “The church is apostolic not just because it represents the apostles’ teaching, but because it re-presents Christ.”   (83)

 

 

A global church now recognizes that the church of any place bears missional calling and responsibility for its own place as well as for distant places.  The church of every place is a mission-sending church, and the place of every church is a mission-receiving place.

 

Unlike the previous notion of the church as an entity located in a facility or in an institutional organization and its activities, the church is being reconceived as a community, a gathered people, brought together by a common calling and vocation to be a sent people.  (81)