The Church: An Introduction - Short Studies in Systematic Theology

What Is the Church — Really?

Ask that question in a room full of Christians and you will get a remarkable diversity of answers. Some will describe a building. Others a Sunday service. Others a denomination, a tradition, a community, a movement. Some will point to their particular expression of church and assume it is the obvious model. Others have spent years drifting between churches, unsure what they are looking for or what they have a right to expect.

Behind every one of these answers — and every one of these experiences — is a doctrine of the church, whether the person holding it knows it or not. The Church: An Introduction is Gregg Allison’s clear, accessible, and rigorously biblical attempt to put that doctrine on firmer ground.

About This Book

The Church: An Introduction is part of the Short Studies in Systematic Theology series published by Crossway — a series designed to introduce major Christian doctrines in a way that is introductory without being simplistic, accessible without being shallow. The series aims to equip readers to understand, teach, love, and apply what God has revealed in Scripture — with each volume introducing a major doctrine, developing it from Scripture, and bringing it to bear on the Christian life.

Gregg R. Allison is professor of Christian theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, secretary of the Evangelical Theological Society, a book review editor for the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, an elder at Sojourn Community Church, and a theological strategist for Harbor Network. His major academic work Sojourners and Strangers: The Doctrine of the Church is one of the most comprehensive treatments of ecclesiology available in evangelical scholarship. This introduction distils that scholarship into a form that is genuinely accessible to pastors, students, and laypeople.

Allison organises the book around a distinction that is both simple and illuminating: mere ecclesiology — the basic foundation of common practices shared among local church communities — and more ecclesiology — the ways in which churches and denominations diverge from one another. This two-level framework allows the book to celebrate the unity of the church across traditions while engaging honestly with genuine differences, without collapsing into either false uniformity or needless division.

What the Book Covers — Key Themes

The Nature and Mission of the Church Allison begins with the foundational question: what is the church? He examines the biblical images of the church — the body of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the people of God, the new creation community — and draws out what each reveals about the church’s identity and purpose in the world.

Mere Ecclesiology — What All Churches Share Despite the enormous diversity of Christian traditions, a remarkable set of core convictions and practices is shared across virtually all churches throughout history. Allison maps this common ground carefully — covering elements such as the centrality of Scripture, baptism and the Lord’s Supper as ordinances, the role of preaching, and the importance of every-member participation in the life of the community.

More Ecclesiology — Where Churches Differ The book addresses several theological areas where churches differ, such as infant baptism and believer’s baptism, the roles of men and women in ministry, and spiritual gifts. Allison handles each contested area with fairness and clarity — explaining the different positions, the biblical arguments for each, and the practical implications — equipping readers to understand why sincere, biblically serious Christians arrive at different conclusions on these questions.

Church Polity — How Churches Are Governed Questions of church governance — elder-led, congregational, episcopal, Presbyterian — are examined as genuine theological convictions rooted in different readings of Scripture, not merely as organisational preferences. Allison helps readers understand what is at stake in these differences and how to evaluate them.

The Unity of the Church Despite all the diversity, Allison returns again and again to the deep unity that binds all true churches together as the body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit. The book ends not with a denominational verdict but with a vision of the one church of Jesus Christ — diverse in expression, united in foundation.

What Readers Will Learn

• What the Bible actually teaches about the nature, purpose, and mission of the local church
• How to distinguish between the core convictions all genuine churches share and the secondary questions on which they legitimately differ
• Why questions about baptism, church governance, women in ministry, and spiritual gifts are genuinely complex — and how to engage them with both conviction and charity
• How different denominational traditions understand and practise church life — and why
• What a robustly biblical doctrine of the church looks like, grounded in Scripture and applied to contemporary practice
• How to love and serve the local church with greater theological clarity and gospel vision

Who Should Read This Book

Pastors and church leaders without formal seminary training — Allison himself has noted the series is written primarily for pastors who have not had any seminary education — who want a clear, reliable theological introduction to the doctrine of the church.

Theological students and seminary graduates who want a concise, well-organised primer on ecclesiology to ground their more detailed study of specific church polity questions.

Laypeople and church members in India who want to understand why churches do what they do, why they differ from one another, and what the Bible teaches about the church they are part of.

Church planters and leaders navigating denominational questions who need a framework for thinking about which ecclesiological commitments are essential and which are secondary.

Anyone in an inter-denominational or cross-church context — in ministry, in marriage, in mission partnership — who wants to understand others’ traditions with charity and their own with conviction.

About the Author — Dr Gregg R. Allison

Gregg R. Allison (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is professor of Christian theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is secretary of the Evangelical Theological Society, a book review editor for the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, an elder at Sojourn Community Church, and a theological strategist for Harbor Network. Allison has taught at several colleges and seminaries, including Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon, and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and is the author of numerous books, including Historical Theology; Sojourners and Strangers; and Roman Catholic Theology and Practice.

One endorser described Allison as a man who has not only given his life to the academic study of the church but has also given it in practice — a churchman who genuinely loves the church, not merely studies it. That combination of scholarly depth and pastoral commitment is evident on every page of The Church: An Introduction.

Series Information — Short Studies in Systematic Theology

The Church: An Introduction is part of the Short Studies in Systematic Theology series published by Crossway and edited by Graham A. Cole and Oren R. Martin. The series introduces major Christian doctrines — the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, creation, providence, and more — in volumes that are introductory in length and scope but rigorously grounded in Scripture.

Other titles in the series available or forthcoming include:

• The Trinity: An Introduction — Scott Swain
• The Holy Spirit: An Introduction — Fred Sanders
• Providence: An Introduction — Craig A. Carter
• Creation: An Introduction — Tyler Wittman

What Others Have Said

“It would be hard to overstate how important it is, in this cultural moment, for evangelicals to recover a robust doctrine of the church. In The Church, Gregg Allison has done the church a great service in helping us recover a robust ecclesiology that will undoubtedly serve elders, deacons, ministry leaders, and congregations. I pray this book gets the wide reading it deserves.” — J.T. English, Lead Pastor, Storyline Fellowship; author, Deep Discipleship

“Allison’s framework for examining key doctrines and practices for various expressions of the church should prove encouraging to the theologian, insightful to the pastor, and accessible to the layperson. This book is a profitable read for anyone who loves the church and cares about her future.” — Jimmy Scroggins, Lead Pastor, Family Church, West Palm Beach