The twenty-first century church exists within a postmodern, post-Christian culture that espouses relativism, embraces pluralism, and greets claims of religious experience with skepticism. While scholars continuously spill ink articulating models for mission based on sociological or cultural data, Fuller Seminary professor and church growth expert Eddie Gibbs challenges us to examine our biblical foundations for mission. In The Rebirth of the Church, Gibbs finds a conversation partner in the apostle Paul, whom Gibbs believes provides principles and insights into ministering within our post-Christendom culture. He puts forth a robust vision for ministry in a postmodern world that revitalizes and enables the church today to recover the practices that caused the early church to grow exponentially.

In his introduction, Gibbs is quick to note that we cannot extract the early church’s ministry model verbatim and adapt it to accommodate our ministry needs today, though we will find principles that readily apply (p. 6). In the opening chapters, Gibbs substantively engages the cultural contexts of both the early church and the contemporary church. He concludes that while both contexts differ significantly in certain respects, many of the same religious and social challenges are congruent, including pluralism and a cultural rejection of Judeo-Christian morality. “Despite the two millennia that separate them, both missions continue as expressions of the ongoing mission of the ascended Christ” (p. 26). Gibbs proceeds to name the challenge that ministry practitioners have always faced: “how to translate the message of Jesus originally proclaimed in a Jewish, rural, Galilean context, into the pagan and pluralistic world of either the Roman Empire or contemporary secular society” (p. 26). With these cultural understandings in place and his goal well-articulated, Gibbs inductively explores the book of Acts and the Pauline epistles, seeking to ascertain the dominant themes and cultural issues Paul and his companions faced during their ministry endeavors.

Gibbs organizes his book categorically, zeroing in on numerous big picture concepts derived from the life and ministry of the apostle Paul. Gibbs intersperses biblical analysis with reflections on the state of ministry practices within the contemporary church. For instance, in a chapter entitled “Urban Engagement,” Gibbs explores Paul’s ministry in Thessalonica, a ministry season replete with social and spiritual tensions, such as the trial of Jason for (allegedly) subverting the Pax Romana through his adherence to Christianity (pp. 76–78). Gibbs comments, “some of the negative publicity experienced by churches today may be well-deserved, and for this we must admit responsibility. However, where misrepresentations arise from . . . falsehoods generated by biased opinions or vindictiveness, they need to be challenged with carefully reasoned responses” (p. 77). At the end of each chapter, Gibbs provides an overarching conclusion to the chapter based on the principles he discusses. Careful analysis of Paul’s ministry practices, including incorporating new members into the church, engaging the broader culture, and firmly adhering to the gospel, as well as the practical implications of these themes for the church today, compose the majority of this work.

This book finds its place in a rich and ever-expanding literature on the missional church, dominated by theorists such as Alan Hirsch, Alan Roxburgh, Darrell Guder, and Craig Van Gelder. The book is different theologically and culturally from the works of these theorists, and diverges significantly from Gibbs’s previous works, such as Emerging Churches. While those books gave unbridled support to emergent church theology and practices, The Rebirth of the Church is more historical in nature and allows the missiological thought and practice of Paul to speak into our current context. While many a missiological text will look at contemporary realities and extract biblical principles to meet current needs, Gibbs does exactly the opposite, first exploring the biblical text then applying biblical principles to our current context.

Readers of a more conservative evangelical ilk will resonate with much of Gibbs’s theological conclusions related to mission. For instance, speaking of atonement, Gibbs writes, “When the very idea of atonement is downplayed or rejected outright, we lose sight of a whole range of key terms that lie at the heart of the gospel, including grace, adoption, redemption, justification, and regeneration” (p. 178). Elsewhere, Gibbs expounds rich Trinitarian theology and evangelical soteriology and eschatology, concluding that in times of persecution “the church must humbly and boldly stand its ground with conviction, clarity, and credibility” (p. 199). He even chides contemporary churches for fostering biblical illiteracy, accommodating heterodox theology, and losing evangelistic fire (p. 74). Thus, while conservative evangelical readers may have concerns approaching Gibbs due to his emerging church affiliation, his exploration of the biblical text undergirded with orthodox theological conviction and missiological insight make this work a refreshing entry into literature on missional church thought and practice.

My main concern with this book is its applicability—will churches continue to build their missional approaches based on non-biblical principles, or will they turn, as Gibbs has, to the missiological practices the Bible prescribes? While the book does not give much in the way of simple, practical applications, it will be up to thoughtful practitioners to put those principles into practice in their particular ministry context.

The Rebirth of the Church is an exciting entry into the literature on the missional church, providing principles and lessons from the thought and practices of Paul and the early church for use in our contemporary context. An expert missiologist, Gibbs has a finger carefully placed on the pulse of the contemporary church, and as a result his cultural analyses are insightful and his conclusions pertinent to ministry needs today. Pastors, seminarians, missiologists, and practical theologians in various areas of ministry will greatly benefit from Gibbs’s thorough biblical analysis, penetrating insight, and engaging style.

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