The Shape of the Church
The Seven Dimensions of Ecclesial Wholeness
By Ephrem Arcement, O.H.C.
Wipf and Stock, 186 pages, $39
What do Anglican churches need right now? Is there something we can learn from another denomination that our churches are missing? In The Shape of the Church, Ephrem Arcement looks at seven aspects of Christianity that he sees as necessary for a complete church, and how each aspect can help or hurt the promotion of the faith.
The dimensions he identifies are evangelical, Pentecostal, sacramental, intellectual, mystical, pastoral, and prophetic. Each chapter starts with an explanation of how that dimension can be found in both the Old and New Testament, followed by a Scripture-based explanation of how Arcement defines the dimension. The firm rootedness in Scripture is one of the best parts of the book: it reminds readers that the way to understand the needs of the church is not through the latest trend or church marketing consultant but the Word of God.
He then provides examples of people and movements throughout church history who either best exemplified the dimension or who took it in a bad direction. Arcement takes great care to explain how the evangelical and Pentecostal dimensions are necessary for the church’s success, even if sometimes they can be used in harmful ways.
Drawing on Scripture and church history is fruitful here, to remind people that, for example, Paul talks extensively about the necessity of evangelism, or that John Wesley’s celebrated Aldersgate experience of conversion was also an example of the grace of the Holy Spirit, just as more contemporary examples of Pentecostalism are. Other chapters provide explanations of different intellectual movements, such as medieval scholasticism, in an accessible but nuanced style. This is enhanced with quotations from a variety of 20th-century theologians, making a complicated theologian like Edward Schillebeeckx intelligible to an everyday reader.
The book ends with a chapter on how these different dimensions can be brought together, and how Christians should seek a healthier church in a broad sense. He reminds readers that small churches can criticize megachurches, but should also strive to understand why megachurches experience so much growth.
Overall, this book would be helpful for people looking to understand the church without an excessive focus on intellectual theology, or being a prophet, or charismatic gifts, or other specific areas. Arcement explains throughout how each dimension can build on and support the other dimensions, and how having one without the rest leads to problems.
Arcement’s examples, however, can be frustrating. He tells his backstory in the introduction: he was raised Roman Catholic, became a charismatic evangelical, returned to Catholicism and became a monk and seminary professor, and then, within the last few years, became an Episcopal monk.
This is an obvious perspective throughout the book: plenty of affirming descriptions of popes and medieval Catholic monks and far fewer of Anglicans or Protestants in general, as well as evident disdain for contemporary American evangelicalism (and, to a lesser extent, Roman Catholic traditionalism) without any criticism of mainline Protestantism.
In a book that is ostensibly geared toward helping people in contemporary ministry, focus on more recent ecclesiastical leaders who dealt with contemporary problems would have been more useful than references to Gregory of Nyssa or Seraphim of Sarov.
I was also disheartened that there were very few examples of women, and that Mother Teresa was the only woman mentioned outside of the mystical dimension. Women throughout church history have so often been relegated solely to mysticism, so this was disappointing to me.
I was likewise disappointed that the only person of color mentioned was Martin Luther King Jr. A book on ecclesial wholeness should offer a fuller picture of the ecclesia, and there are many people who could have been included (Howard Thurman comes to mind).
Nevertheless, there is value in learning from the examples of the Fathers and the great medieval thinkers, especially in a Protestant context, in which they can be sidelined, and it shouldn’t be surprising that an author who was a Catholic monk for a decade and has a doctoral degree from the Catholic University of America feels more comfortable explaining the writings of Pope Francis than Rowan Williams. This is still an interesting and worthwhile book, whether one is an ecclesiastical leader or not.
Greta Gaffin is a freelance writer based in Boston. She has a master of theological studies degree from Boston University and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.