The article was publish by Baptist News Global as an excerpt from Dr. Angie Ward‘s book, Beyond Church and Parachurch.

Before the Reformation, there was not a Catholic Church in the Roman Catholic sense we think of today. It was just the church.

There were no denominations. There was one central authority, the pope. (Unless you count the time from 1378 to 1408 when there were two popes, and the time from 1409 to 1417 when there were three popes, but those are stories for another time.)

The Protestant Reformation, inaugurated when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517, sent shock waves throughout Christendom.

Luther and his fellow reformers shaped the church — and what eventually became known as the parachurch — in ways they may not have intended or anticipated. What can we learn from what we now commonly refer to as the parachurch? I’d like to suggest five takeaways.

Read the full article on Baptist News Global.

Angie Ward serves as director of the doctor of ministry program and associate professor of leadership and ministry at Denver Seminary. She earned a Ph.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. She is the author of Uncharted Leadership: 20 Case Studies to Help Ministry Leaders Adapt to Uncertainty and I Am a Leader: When Women Discover the Joy of Their Calling. She has 35 years of leadership experience in church, nonprofit and higher education ministry.