I have had the opportunity to read The Gospel and the God Forsaken: The Challenge of the Missional Church in Suburbia by Todd Hiestand. You can download the PDF document here. A summary of the paper and my response are below.
Summary
In this paper, Todd presents an overview of missional church, challenges to missional church in suburbia and areas of focus for the suburban church moving toward missional ministry. Todd provides a solid vision of the missional church and the sending of the church being central to the identity of the church. Particularly here:
“A more helpful and biblical view of mission is seen when the church understands itself as sent into the world as set apart and unified.”
After outlining some basics of the missional church, Todd gives a brief history of the development of suburban life. Todd then outlines four necessary challenges to suburban life which the church could bring forward. They are:
- Reject Individualism
- Deconstruct Comfort
- Confront Consumerism
- Pursue Justice
Response
I believe that Todd accomplished what was laid out in the thesis. Todd does a good job of outlining some key concepts of the church understanding mission as central to its identity. I found the history of the development of suburban life to be interesting and informative as it was mostly new information to me. The paper could be much stronger with more practical application for churches in suburban areas. I appreciated the four areas of focus, but was finished each section wondering what might be suggested to address these areas and further resources which may help in that endeavor.
I recommend this paper for those interested in the missional church, suburban context and their intersection.
Rev. Andrew Conard 
2 replies on “Response to “The Gospel and the God-Forsaken””
Hey, thanks for these thoughts. I too agree that my paper was short on practical and heavy in theoretical. That was my complaint with the paper too 🙂 Really though, there were two reasons for that. First, the paper had to be 17 pages long so there was little room. Second, how this works out in a church community is not that easy 🙂 At my church we are in the midst of experimenting with some things and some have bombed and some have been successful. I hope to write a follow-up to this with some more practical stuff we have tried at The Well sometime this summer.
but, thanks again for the feedback
Todd – Thanks for your comments. Again, I really enjoyed the paper. You are right 17 pages does give constraints on what to include and sure enough working things out in the local community is where the rubber hits the road, so to speak. Thanks for pushing this conversation forward!