On June 15, InterVarsity Press released Dr. Scott W. Sunquist’s new book Why Church? A Basic Introduction.

Is a church just something we create to serve our purposes or to maintain old traditions?

Or is it something more vital, more meaningful, and more powerful?

This can be hard to believe when we look at what happens in any one congregation or denomination. Certainly not all churches act like Jesus in the world, and many individual churches in the West are dying. When it’s so easy to be confused, frustrated, or simply apathetic about the church, how should we understand its purpose today?

In this appealing introduction to the nature of the local church, set in the context of Christian history and global diversity, historian and missionary Scott Sunquist shows us the church in motion. Why Church? clarifies the two primary purposes of the church—worship and witness—and unpacks what the church is (and ought to be) using five movements of worship:

• come together
• stand to praise God
• kneel to confess
• sit to listen to the Word of God
• go out into the world

Packed with stories and insights from experiences in churches around the world, this book explores cultural contextualization, the meaning of conversion, worship in both personal and communal aspects, and how mission combines telling the good news with being good news as a community.