The Integrity of the Body of Christ: Boundary Keeping as Shared Responsibility

For religious communities to have integrity and credibility they must flourish as places of love and respect. Every aspect of church life is defined and protected by essential boundaries: boundaries around space, time, thought, speech, will, emotion, and behavior--both for clergy and church members. Lack of awareness and attention to boundary keeping diminishes the integrity of the church and harms its mission, whereas insight and vigilance about best practices lend freedom and energy to the calling of the church to care for others and to reach out to the world. In a flourishing Christian community, a wide array of boundaries must be recognized, celebrated, and navigated--from the boundaries that define and protect us as individual persons to role boundaries and the boundaries that define essential communal functions, such as worship. This book is no conventional account of boundaries. It takes a comprehensive approach to the challenge of understanding and creating healthy boundaries. It applies the lessons from the emerging field of behavioral ethics to the rich and rewarding complexity of boundaries in church life, helping us to be more loving and responsible in how we think, speak, and act, so that the church can be true to its identity and mission.

Author: Arden Mahlberg,Craig L. Nessan
Publisher: Cascade Books
Published: 05/23/2016
Pages: 236
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.11lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.69d
ISBN: 9781498235389

About the Author
Craig L. Nessan is Professor of Contextual Theology and Ethics and Academic Dean at Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. He is the author of Beyond Maintenance to Mission (2nd ed., 2010), Shalom Church (2010), and The Vitality of Liberation Theology (Pickwick, 2012).

Arden Mahlberg is a practicing psychologist whose career has focused on the interface between psychotherapy and spirituality with the purpose of helping increase people's capacity for doing good in the world. With a substantial part of his counseling and consulting practice being with clergy, he has written extensively for clergy wellness publications. He has done research and writing questioning the bipolar assumption in Jungian personality theory and received a Terrytown Prize for his test of a new theory of archetypes.