160 pp. "Many U.S. churches are model "success stories." Yet, Christianity, a a whole, has failed to demonstrate a new, life-transforming way of living for the people of our time. Dr. George W. Webber challenges churches in our affluent society to reexamine the radical nature of Christian obedience in order to establish alternative biblical faith communities. Citing Jeremiah 29 as a prophetic call to God's people today (as it was to the Babylonian exiles), he encourage Christians to seek the welfare of the city in which God has placed them as his witnesses. As exiles, Christians are indeed called to be a peculiar people. As pilgrims, God's people have no fixed resting place for they must remain free to follow the leading of their Lord. The alternatives to this call are escape, rebellion, survival (merely existing), or joining the enemy. The error of compromising Christian beliefs in order to alive in harmony with the surrounding community has been the choice of many twentieth-century churches. The challenge of demonstrating a life-transforming way of living in the midst of secular society now faces contemporary Christendom."
