"The Mission of the Church in an Age of Zombies"

Pastor Gregory Alms (Redeemer Lutheran Church, Catawba, North Carolina) has written a very helpful essay on the mission of the Church in our age. He calls it "an age of zombies."

Here's a snippet to whet your appetite:

The images that are used to speak about the church and the mission of the church are important. It is vital that the words and practices used to describe that mission match the actual situation. In a time of when Christianity is shrinking in the West and is under serious attack, popular arts provide a framework and a language for the mission challenge. Understanding that phenomena such as zombies, vampires, and fear of epidemics reveal in society an intuitive knowledge of deep-seated evil and the reality of demonic forces can help the church re-orient its missional stance. Mission in an age of zombies uses prayer seriously as a real outreach tool; so the church must remember the nature of prayer as an outgrowth of salvation through faith alone. We have no resources to combat Satan other than to ask our Father in heaven to deliver us. Such mission thinking also takes the reality of evil seriously and seeks both to protect the truth from error and contamination while also seeking to bring the lost into the church. The church can be seen as a place of safety in the midst of spiritual plagues and a sort of “monastic” fortress where the gospel is both protected and proclaimed.

How does Pastor Alms reach this conclusion? Read the whole thing!

You can access the entire article at http://media.ctsfw.edu/. Search for Concordia Theological Quarterly, volume 77, number 1, year 2013. Click on "Theologcial Observer 77:1-2," and download the PDF file.