EMQ » October–December 2020 » Volume 56 Issue 4
By Michael T. Cooper
William Carey Publishing, 2020
226 pages
USD $15.99
Reviewed by Tom Steffen, Emeritus professor of intercultural studies, Biola University
While much has been written on church planting movements in the past few decades, a foundational piece was missing – until now. Much like the Church Growth Movement that began without theological underpinnings until Alan Tippett delivered, so Ephesiology supplies the same for today’s church planting movements (CPMs).
But the author does not stop with theology. Former missionary, outreach pastor, CEO of an international NGO, and present missions executive, Michael Cooper adds to the discussion history, anthropology, strategy, reflection, and creative critique and challenge. Ephesiology offers a missiological perspective of contemporary CPMs through first-century eyes of what transpired generationally in Ephesus.
Ten chapters comprise Ephesiology. Chapters 1 and 2 introduce the book and discuss CPMs in Acts. Chapters 3 through 5 investigate launching a movement. Here Cooper highlights exegesis, reflection, and theology, all from a missiological perspective. Chapter 6 explores how a movement is grounded through missiological theology. Chapters 7 and 8 address leading and multiplying a movement. Cooper concludes the book by probing how movements are sustained (Chapter 9) and providing an anatomy of a movement (Chapter 10). Each chapter ends with a QR (bar code) that directs to related resources. Two appendixes and two indexes follow.
If readers think they have a good grasp of Paul and John’s ministry and the church in Ephesus, Ephesiology may make them rethink some assumptions. Folloiwng are a few examples of Cooper’s interesting ideas and observations. (1) Cooper begins by examining Ephesians, Acts, and Revelation through missiological theology (“God’s self-revelation to the nations” [42]), a theology missing in most contemporary commentaries and which stands above other systems of theology (89). (2) Paul is a missiological theologian who connects God’s story with the story of people. (3) Ephesians is best outlined with a center surrounded with connecting subtopics rather than the typical linear outline. (4) Reading Ephesians this way results in an indigenous theology which is the result of the hermeneutic community and Church history. (5) John connected with the Ephesians on “philosophical, religious, cultural, and ethnic levels to communicate Jesus’ story in a way that it . . . become their story” (88). (6) Ephesians is written to groups of believers, not to individuals. (7) The type of deacons in Acts 6 were different from those described in 1 Timothy 3, which included women. (8) Paul’s reason for writing Ephesians was not to produce a systematic theology. (9) Learning through orality was necessary then and remains so for the majority of the world today. (10) Paul’s ministry approach did not include contextualization or redemptive analogies. Ephesiology is not a commentary on Ephesians, rather it is a “missiological theology of the Bible” (2) focused on Ephesians that will challenge the basic assumptions of many pastors and church multipliers at home and abroad.
For Further Reading
Schattner, Frank. The Wheel Model: Catalyzing Sustainable Church Multiplication Movements. William Jessup University, 2014.
EMQ, Volume 56, Issue 4. Copyright © 2020 by Missio Nexus. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from Missio Nexus. Email: EMQ@MissioNexus.org.
