Here is why Tim Chester and Steve Timmis wrote the book "The Church in Daily Life"
In 1915 Tim's grandmother moved into a modest home in Darlington, an industrial town in northern England. She was one year old. The neighborhood was still under construction, as was the Methodist Church, two streets down the road. This house was hers for the next 90 years and the Church became a second home.
When my mother was a child, the congregation had 100 members, a choir of 20 people, and about 50 children attended Sunday school. Better yet, the Church was at the heart of neighborhood life. Church concerts, Church snacks, Church trips. For the working classes, these were the only possible alternatives to the bistro. The Church has always been at the center of my grandmother's and my mother's life.
At 90, my grandmother still played the piano on Sunday mornings. His growing deafness prevented him from hearing the chants, but no one took over. Today, the assembly numbers only a dozen members, none of whom are under the age of 50. People have other things to do on Sunday morning. The choir’s concerts cannot compete with a game console, series, social media, internet videos or the latest hottest TV show. The building, brand new when my grandmother began to visit it, has become a vestige, a witness to an old way of life. He doesn't play a role in anyone's life except for a handful of people. It is part of the history of the neighborhood, but not of its present.
Christians today increasingly think that we are on the margins of our culture. In fact, we live in a post-Christian culture. Most people in the West have no intention of joining a church. To them, the name of Christ sounds like a dirty word. A few prominent churches are growing, but much of this increase is due to mobility more than to real evangelical growth. Much of our evangelistic endeavor, however, still assumes a Christian spirit. We believe that ringing the church bell or providing quality worship is going to get people coming. But the vast majority of them are disconnected. Changing our practices in the Church does not affect them. We must meet them in their daily life.
In our previous book, Total Church 1, we affirmed that the gospel and the Christian community should be at the center of every aspect of our life and our mission. This book develops this principle. He calls us to to be each day a Church with a mission for each day . We must stop creating attractive events to create attractive communities. Our image of marginalized people is a lever to rediscover the missionary call of the people of God. We can become witnesses of Christ again, free from lip service. Let’s also take the opportunity to reconnect with our Bibles. The New Testament is a collection of missionary documents written in missionary contexts. They were written by Christians living on the fringes of their culture.
In this book, we will dialogue with the first letter of Peter. Peter wrote to "foreign and exile" Christians in the first century of the Roman Empire. They suffered more slander and ill-treatment than we did. This is not a commentary on Peter's letter. Rather, we want to offer reflections on 1 Peter, to find out in this part of God's Word what the Holy Spirit would say to the Church today. In this book we have first of all tried to show concretely what the Church and the daily mission in the field can look like.In calling the Church to accomplish her mission every day, we are aware that many Christians are already doing so: they are good neighbors, good colleagues, good parents, they respond to hostility by doing good, they bear witness to Christ in everyday life Far from wanting to ignore it, we want to underline it and put it back at the center of the Church's mission. And maybe also make it more meaningful by showing how it can be more intentional.