To Live In Peace

How are Christians to understand and respond to our distressed inner-city communities? Building on both the perspective of God’s new creation and the view from the neighborhood, Mark R. Gornik’s To Live in Peace shows how the life of the church, the strategies of community development, and the practices of peacemaking can make a transformational difference.

Centering the book is the story of Baltimore’s New Song Community Church, a church that stands as a witness to what can happen when the risks of the gospel are taken. Engaging with a wide range of theological and missiological perspectives, Gornik demonstrates how placing blame for the current conditions of life in the inner city on the residents themselves fails the test of critical analysis and the witness of Scripture. Yet his proposals also show ways that the church can work with the community to overcome structural obstacles to human flourishing.