Building Kingdom Communities: The Diaconate as a New Order of Mission

In a world in which resources are unjustly distributed, identities are under threat and solidarity is fragile, the toughest task facing humanity is the quest for community. Yet the contribution of the church to that task is undermined because its message and organization remain stuck in the past. Christians fail to grasp that in the gifts of the kingdom community - life, liberation, love and learning - they hold the key to what the search for community is all about. This book describes those gifts and how a servant church, through the creation of its diaconate as an order of mission, might offer a fragmented world new hope.The Methodist Church in Britain is taken as a model of what could be achieved.