My name is David Fitch. The above pictures can be used as promo photos. Scarry huh? Especially the top one.

I grew up in the evangelical church of N America, in Canada, Northeast United States, and the Midwest. Seen all its strengths, weathered all its problems. Left it all in disgust for a good while. But came back to my roots to work for renewal, reinvigoration and transformation for the days that lie ahead.

Over the past seventeen years, I have come to terms with my heritage - evangelicalism, the current evangelical malaise, mission, and being the Body of Christ in the new N. American cultural context. Through a many-faceted journey, God has blessed me with new conviction, an excitement for the future and a willingness to participate in whatever way He sees fit. I am encouraged especially by the missional/emerging churches springing up and the leadership that is taking place among the "younger evangelicals."

This journey (I referred to above) included a.) doing a Ph.D at Northwestern University, b.) teaching in a large city church, c.) leading a small intentional community in the city of Chicago, and planting a missional church, Life on the Vine Christian Community in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. I helped start Up\Rooted, a collaborative gathering for Chicago area church leadership engaging the post-modern context. Over the past ten years I have been a part time professor in various capacities. Currently, I now serve as one of four pastors at “the Vine” and teach as the B.R. Lindner Chair of Evangelical Theology at Northern Seminary, Lombard, IL. I head up the M.A. in Missional Church Ministry at Northern.

I am the author of articles on church , culture and theological ethics in journals as diverse as the Journal of the Academy for Evangelism in Theological Education, Discernment, Pastoral Psychology and the Journal of Christian Education. Most recently I published The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from American Business, Para-Church Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism and Other Modern Maladies (Baker Books, 2005). I am writing a new book to come out end of 2008 (hopefully- gulp)

I occasionally serve the furthering of Christ’s Kingdom by speaking/presenting on the challenges of being Christ’s Body in the new contexts of post Christendom, postmodernity and North American consumerist culture. I seek to encourage the church to faithfulness, encourage pastors to more faithfulness, develop and encourage missional church planters, and help denominations/churches navigate the new terrains of N. American post-Christendom culture(s).

Examples of typical Fitch presentations titles

• Preaching to Fund Counter-Imagination - Proclaiming the Reality of Christ so that people Can Be Called To Live Into It
• How Not to Make Justice Into Another Program at Your Local Church
  
• Why Pastors Are Lonely - The Task of Undoing the Leadership of Modernity
• Sex in the City of Endless Desire - Why We Christians Cannot Survive marriage or singleness without spiritual formation.
• The Great Giveaway - The Call to Be the Body : The Call to Missional Presense and forget everything else! (Eph 4:1-16)
• The Challenge of Missional Church Plants and A Few Subversive Suggestions.
• The End of Modernity - The Situation We Find Ourselves In - And Why this is Good News for the Church
• Noticing the Ways Consumer Christianity Is Ruining Us … and Where We Can Joyfully Go From Here

If you're interested, you can e-mail me (dfitch@seminary.edu) for other talks, discussion groups, presentations and other stuff. Blessings all. Thanks for reading.