The Disciple Church

Author: Lewis Benson

Format: 8.5" x 11" Downloadable PDF

Description: In his introduction to the six lectures, Lewis Benson gave his reason for these lectures on the nature of the church. He wrote: 

"Several factors have combined to bring the church again into the forefront of interest. The first of these is the breakdown of the thousand-year synthesis between Christianity and  Western culture, known as Christendom. The church was once a vital part of Western civilization. Today she finds herself a stranger in a secularized world . . . A second factor has been the extensive growth of new churches in lands that have never had a Christian culture . . . A third factor has been the reaction from the individualistic Christianity of the  19th century. “We are rediscovering,” says J. H. Whale, “that so far from the church’s being a decorative appendage to Christianity, the church is Christianity; and that faith without community . . . would be a contradiction in terms.” . . . Quakerism contains within itself a  message about the nature of the church of the greatest importance. It is this discovery that has provided the incentive to re-examine and re-evaluate the original Quaker message concerning the nature of the church. I wish to maintain that the church of the New  Covenant is a disciple church, and that early Quakerism furnishes one of the most important historical examples of the disciple church." 

Benson’s topics are: 

• Lecture 1: The People Of God In The Old Covenant. 
• Lecture 2: The People Of God In The New Covenant. 
• Lecture 3: The Church’s Fall And Restoration. 
• Lecture 4: Quakerism – The Flowering Of The Disciple Church. 
• Lecture 5: The Order That Belongs To The Gospel. 
• Lecture 6: The Disciple Church Today.