





































Ecclesial Futures
2024 – Volume 5 – Issue 2

96
Ecclesial Futures – DOI: 10.54195/ef20159

B O O K  R E V I E W

DOI: 10.54195/ef20159

Bradbury, Paul. 2024. In the Fullness of Time: 
A Story from the Past and Future of the Church

Norwich, UK: Canterbury Press
ISBN: 978-1-78622-607-5. £14.99

Reviewed by Nigel Rooms

Some books arrive on one’s desk because one knew the author a little, appreciated 
their approach and was curious about what they had to say (and they were clearly 
interested in the future of the church). And then on reading the book one realizes 
that here is a book that truly needed to be written and offers a unique insight into 
very many questions about ecclesial futures. Such is the case as I ordered and then 
read Paul Bradbury’s new book, In the Fullness of Time. It is a short book of only 
138 pages which does not wear its obvious scholarship too heavily and is therefore a 
delight to read; in fact in places it is beautifully written.

Bradbury opens by connecting his purpose in writing to being inspired by James 
Rebanks’ English Pastoral (xi), which is a lament for what has been lost through indus-
trial farming, amongst other things, in English rural life while making proposals for 
its future restoration without retreating into a utopia. So, what we have in Brad-
bury’s book, set out in three sections of “Lamentation, Waiting and Resurrection” 
(one soon realizes these are not neat sequential categories, but rather they flow in 
and out of one another) is a reprise of the demise of the place of the (mainly) English 
rural church in its community and some gently researched “case study” responses 
to that demise from largely the South and East of England. There are eight of these 
cases in total, either Bradbury has personal experience of them and/or he explores 
their contexts and talks to their leaders. And this is not all, because Bradbury also 
weaves his own autobiographical reflections into the book as we learn how he grew 
up in a tiny rural community, came to faith, was called to ordination and then discov-
ered the “pioneer” in him that took him to new and experimental places. There is 
also creative writing and subtle metaphor, parable and poetry alongside evocative 
line drawings from an artist friend. Bradbury therefore, is a truly creative pioneer 



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Ecclesial Futures – DOI: 10.54195/ef20159

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practitioner-scholar, based as he is within Poole Missional Communities on the south 
coast of England.

There is much wisdom to be gleaned in the book especially about the “fullness of 
time”, in a church system that is anxious and searching for ever faster, easier solu-
tions to its predicament on the proverbial “burning platform”. God’s time subverts 
most of that kind of thinking and Bradbury offers evidence for his position from the 
case studies and his own experience. The book however is also extremely realistic: 
there are no magic solutions, there is hard work, serious cost and the “wins” are often 
small, if joyful – I think of the description of an adult baptism – yes just one (40). Brad-
bury the realist also takes on nostalgia which is a driver of so much of what happens 
in late-modern Britain and always brings to mind for me Zygmunt Bauman’s concept 
of Retrotopia – the backward-looking opposite of utopia. Thus, without referring 
directly to movements in the English church which seemingly desire to recreate what 
was (and there are more than one of these), Bradbury shows us what is possible both 
from within traditional parish churches and in pioneering experimentation that can 
and do live alongside each other. In these places, and this is a theme of the book; 
history and tradition are taken absolutely seriously without becoming absolutes in 
themselves. The case study priests and pioneers here are “finding a useful future 
in their past” as I sometimes put it. The examples of how this works throughout the 
book are particularly instructive.

One question that might be raised is whether the book could travel beyond the shores 
of England and Britain, since it is a deeply particular and contextual study. I would 
say a categorical yes to this since the principles that Bradbury elucidates throughout 
the book are distilled Christian wisdom that could easily travel; all good contextual 
theology can teach us many things. I suggest that one really useful way this book 
could be used would be to give it to the sceptical, unconvinced even cynical church 
member or leader who is open to wondering about what, if anything, is possible 
for the future of the Christian communities. Bradbury offers realistic and evidenced 
hope in the God of mission who has not given up on the Church.

About the Reviewer
Rev Canon Dr Nigel Rooms, Co-Editor Ecclesial Futures. Honorary Research Fellow; the 
Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education, Birmingham, UK; Depart-
ment of Christian Spirituality, Church History & Missiology, University of South Africa 
(UNISA). Contact: nigel@praxisworks.uk

mailto:nigel@praxisworks.uk

