The Great Divide by Mark Greene

The Great Divide
Mark Greene
LICC: London, 2010. £2.95, 30pp
ISBN 978-0-903-452-43-4

This colourful short booklet takes a look at major disease that has gripped the church: SSD.

SSD takes many forms and has many symptoms: not least praying for people to go on short-term mission abroad, but neglecting to pray for them when at work; thinking that full-time Christian ministry only takes place in church-related activities; a failure to help students enagage with their studies from a Christian perspective; I could go on ... SSD is the sacred-secular divide. The body of Christ is a unity, there can be no splits. All Christians are in full-time Christian ministry - there are no part-time Christians; we don't take off our Christianity when we go into the office, classroom or work place. Christianity should be a full-time activity, sadly, we often make it a leisure-time activity. The first two chapters examine the issue and the symptoms. Greene helpfully documents it with much anecdotal evidence, such as the businessman who said, 'The church appreciates my tithe but not the enterprise that gives rise to it', or the student who claimed: 'The CU completely ignored why we were at university'.

This SSD is a dualism is pernicious and it is prevalent. It is also 'the greatest missiological challenge facing the church' (p. 16). In the final three chapters some of the ways in which SSD can be healed are examined. Rightly, the emphasis on on taking a whole-life view of Christianity. In chapter 4 he asks the question: how shall we move ahead? and makes some helpful suggestions. The final section entitled next steps looks at some of the resources produced by LICC.

This is an accessible and much needed booklet. As Greene points out none of us are immune to SSD, but forewarned is forearmed. This booklet does a great job in forewarning.


Some resources for tackling SSD are found here.