We must admit that Christendom, particularly its ecclesiological and its missiological manifestations, amounts to something of a failed experiment. To reiterate, by the term Christendom, we are referring to a period in history when the church assumed influence by its connection to temporal, secular power. Its high watermark occurred in the Middle Ages and continued beyond the Reformation well into the 1700s. Since the emergence of the Enlightenment it has been in decline, disappearing in the latter part of the twentieth century. It is time to move on and find a new mode of understanding and engagement with surrounding contexts. We can no longer afford our historical sentimentality, even addiction, to the past. Christendom is not the biblical mode of the church. It was/is merely one way in which the church has conceived of itself. In enshrining it as the sole form of the church, we have made it into an idol that has captivated our imaginations and enslaved us to a historical-cultural expression of the church. We have not answered the challenges of our time precisely because we refuse to let go of the idol. This must change! The answer to the problem of mission in the West requires something far more radical than reworking a dated and untenable model. It will require that we adopt something that looks far mare like the early church in terms of its conception of the church (ecclesiology) and its core task in the world (missiology).
From The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church, by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, page 15.
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