What is a church? Allison presents a working definition of what the church is. The emphasis in the definition is that the people of God, or the communion of saints, are sojourners and strangers. The church is characterized by several attributes: doxological, Christocentric, Spirit-empowered, covenantal, confessional, missional, and temporal and eschatological. The first chapter focuses on questions of method, noting the sufficiency of Scripture. The chapter ends with a discussion of a few basic approaches to an understanding of the church.

Source: John S. Feinberg, ed., Sojourners and Strangers: The Doctrine of the Church (Crossway, 2012), 27-59.

This material is made available with the permission of Crossway.

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