What People Are Saying

Dr. Alastair MacLeod

(D.Th., University of South Africa)

British Missiologist Serving in South Asia

 

I think this is really a game changer in the sense of reorientating and reshaping the US church’s understanding of the people and communities around them. The title phrase on the homepage of the website ‘Know your community’ expresses this exactly and really gets to the heart of this. I think that what this offers is a way for the church to get to grips with her bewilderment and confusion in a society that has changed substantially in the past forty years or so. In other words, I think this can make a substantial contribution to developing the church’s sense of self and sense of the people and community around her that will allow her to reorient and engage well.

The multiperspectival view (lifeway, lifedesign, lifeview and lifeworld) is particularly of value in giving a very full-orbed understanding of the reality/sense of reality within which people are living. This combination of belief and actual social practice is of much practical value: it allows the church to think in very practical ways of the path forward.

Clearly Perspectiva is a major project that I think can have a major impact. Exactly what is needed: a highly detailed, fact/data-based analysis that brings much-needed clarity.