Being a Missional pastor ain’t easy. There are inevitable compromises. No matter how hard you try, you end up spending less time on the things you really are passionate about (i.e. mission) and more time on things you value less (i.e. organization). You wonder some days if you really are pastoring missionally or whether indeed you’ve succumbed to surviving the church machine? On this 4th day of Christmas, before the Western Calendar New Year begins, here’s a look back on the last ten years of missional pastoring, wishing for more time on some things, and less on others.

Over the past several years of church planting I wish I had done the following:

1. Spend less time writing sermons, more time listening and speaking truth relationally lovingly into people’s lives. My goal, when I am preaching, is to never spend more than twelve hours a week writing sermons. Preaching the Word is important. It takes skill and practice. Yet the sermon is for speaking truth over people’s lives, not for entertainment. Sometimes the “entertainment” piece takes too much extra work. The sermon proclaims the true reality as it is under the Lordship of Christ and calls people into Him. It is my opinion the reason why sermon prep takes so much time is that often pastors place too much self-importance into it. How many hours a week do you spend on sermon prep?

2. Spend less time reading-writing on leadership and more time walking with/mentoring young leaders, speaking into their lives, having them with you when you minister, in the hospital, in the coffee house… in the homes, in the neighborhoods. I am finding less and less time to do this but am aiming to make for more. How much time do you spend mentoring leadership? It is absolutely essential to missional community.

3. Spend less time planning the worship gathering – more time in silence before God on a quiet hill overlooking the missionfield of NW Suburbs (this place is Walter Payton Hill – Arlington Hts.) Sunday morning gathering is liturgy. It has its moving parts. It is people coming together organically to be centered in God thru Jesus Christ thereby being re-centered for Mission Dei. My theory is, that even if everyone who was participating in the service somehow came up sick 5 minutes before service, everything should be able to go smoothly. This makes possible more time for mission. How much time/energy does your church spend on the worship gathering?

4. Spend more time with the children, less time programming “entertainment with pizza.” This last comment is about youth/children’s programs as commonly conceived. We actually don’t center children’s formation on entertainment. We center it around relationships. The former is a proven failed and flawed strategy for discipling our youth into a walk with Jesus. I have found when I spend time with children they teach me more (in one way) than I end up teaching them.

5. Spend less time in meetings, more time in the neighborhood. This is a constant struggle for me. To me, the organization of the church should be located in the congregation, carried on in the gifts. We need gather only for a few meetings a year for accountability financially. I recognize several folk disagree with me. How do you go abouit managing necessary meetings?

6. Spend less time in meetings figuring out details to make things work better, and more time in meetings where we ask “what is God doing?” where is He working? How can we encourage, edify, build up, flourish this ministry? Our Wednesday night meeting (every other week) with leaders vacillates on this. We have to intentionally steer away from handling details in this meeting.

7. Spend less time trying to please Christians, more time trying to minister to the hurting, lost and poor outside of Christ. This one is hard. But all in all, I think I could have done better on this one over the years. Please tell me I am not the only one who has struggled with this?

8 Spend less time answering bizarre twisted questions about outlier doctrines, and more time sharing the vision of what church, community, mission and transformational life can be together as we join together to participate in this great life God has given us. Nonetheless doctrine is essential. How do you discern where to draw the line?

9 Spend less time worrying about numbers and less time filling out forms (OK. To be honest, we don’t really do much of this anymore). Spend more time with people, just hanging out in life together.

10. Spend less time frantically trying to catch up with all the words I have to write and deliver any given week as a pastor, writer and professor, and spend more time praying, taking long walks, thinking praying, letting the Spirit speak in silence, the situation at hand, the Scripture I just read and studied. Nothing feeds my creativity and strengthens my Spirit like prayer … on a long walk. What spiritual formation practices keep you from drying up inside with God?

For all my friends on the East Coast, I’ll be spending a few days presenting, talking, listening, and hanging with church planter types at a conference in the Washington DC area put on by Ecclesia. The gathering is February 12-14. It is called Practicing the Gospel: An Ecclesia National Gathering.

One of the things I am looking forward to is hanging with Alan Hirsch – he’s down to earth, insightful, brilliant, encouraging, challenging. As for my part, I hope to explore the practices of preaching, communal formation, and spiritual disciplines as they function within a missional mindset. My thought is driven these days by a new book I’ve been writing out of my own theological work, church planting mentoring and pastoring. The driving concern of the book is how do we lead communities of character which exhibit peace, mission, justice, and holiness as a people, embodied in our character so that our witness becomes indisputable in our everyday walk. How are we as God’s people shaped by the very marks of Christ so that as a people as well as individuals we embody His character wherever we are, work, play, family, neighborhood, among the poor, walking among the rich too. I think the way we speak about Scripture, justice, church and salvation, and the way we practice preaching, community and sanctification as communities has everything to do with the way the Spirit shapes us as people. It is out of this that true irrefutable witness is born. So I hope to explore the kinds of communities we are leading in these ways in my part of this conference. I hope you come!

Check out the conference here. See what JR has to say about it here.

Blessings David Fitch

After I posted the previous post, in which I was frustrated with the morning interview, we were invited back on for a full hour in the afternoon. I was thankful for a fuller exploration of the issues that was facilitated by the hour Scot McKnight and I had to discuss REVEAL. For those who are interested, here’s a link where you can download yesterday’s afternoon radio interview with Scot McKnight and myself on discipleship and Willowcreek’s REVEAL report. Thanks to Bill Kinnon for this link. Also, Dan Brennan’s commentary on yesterday’s radio interview was excellent writing, as always. And thanks to Scot McKnight for seeking to serve Christ’s church in such an even handed way.

Let us pray God uses the REVEAL hoopla to spur on a renewal of missional discipleship in the N. American church.

OK, not that anyone needs another bog- post on Willowcreek’s REVEAL. But I’m frustrated that the interview (WMBI radio this morning) turned into an apologetic for Willow without any feedback. Julie at the station did a great job and we both agreed this is the nature of radio. Anyways, here’s some quick retorts (poorly edited) on the interview between myself and Scot McKnight on WMBI this morning. This is what I would have said if Scot had given me a chance to get a word in edge-wise (wink-wink Scot … just kidding).

1.) HERE WE GO TRYING TO SATISFY NEEDS AGAIN – THIS TIME IT IS SPIRITUAL GROWTH NEEDS. The big problem with Willowcreek and many forms of American church is that it assumes the church is an institution that exists to satisfy needs – as they exist – unredeemed. When we organize church to do this it changes the very nature of the church making it unrecognizable as the people of God called to live the reality of His excellence before the world (1 Pet 2:9). The problem with the REVEAL report is that it takes all of this one step further, making spiritual growth into a consumerist personal need to be serviced by the church. Spiritual growth cannot be met as an individual separate from community, confessing sin one to another (James 5:16), speaking truth as real people to other people we know in love (Eph 4:25), worshiping and reorienting ourselves to The Reality – God of Jesus Christ, working out our lives in regular communal fellowship in submission one to another (Phil 2:12 after the order we are to be shaped into Phil 2:1-11). These practices cannot be mass-organized. They take intentional community.

2.) THE PERSONAL DISCIPLINES ARE NOT ENOUGH. Willow’s REVEAL thinks the answer is for them to train each of their people into the individual disciplines. The so-called Navigator wheel. Personal bible study, prayer, fellowship and service to others. Yet I know, from talking to Navigator leaders high up that this approach alone has been a failure. We need communal spiritual practices as well. They are essential.As I said, these practices are more akin to a missional order and cannot be mass organized.

3.) The problem with THE MEGA-CHURCH approach is its processes BREEDS PASSIVITY. REVEAL says our problem was we made people too dependent upon us. Yet this is the nature of the large attractional show church service which all mega churches are built around and get their name. IT IS POWERFUL SPIRITUAL FORMATION. It breeds passivity from the very start. To sit anonymously, take in the show of Christianity and pick and choose what I want to use for that day. It in essence makes Christianity unrecognizable. Can REVEAL do some research on this?

4.) The REVEAL report continues to assume the church is about CUSTOMER SATISFACTION. And so SPIRITUAL GROWTH IS SEEN AS A PRODUCT (see p. 90 of the report). But this is the root of the problem for those of us who see consumerism as the problem. Christianity is not about individual benefits although there are many derivative of participating in a life ordered by God’s Mission. To turn spiritual growth into something we offer as a church is once again to repeat the same mistakes all over again.

5.) REVEAL says we asked churches outside of Willow. But THE QUESTIONS THEMSELVES ASSUME A CERTAIN VIEW OF THE CHURCH which in itself is the problem. The questions about “rating satisfaction” regarding “church benefits” (I have to believe) would be laughed out of most missional churches I know. (the quotes are from p.53 of report).

Finally, when you see the church as God’s chosen social strategy for redeeming the world, the place where he is working, the social embodiment of His new way of life displayed before the world, it is hardly appropriate to ask someone if they are satisfied with it. It is like asking someone if they are satisfied with God’s salvation in Christ. Rate your satisfaction?

There is much more to be said. But what was telling in the WMBI radio interview was the callers who called in. A slice of American Christianity – extolling the virtues of putting on a show because alot of people show up, it works (uh in what way?) therefore quit criticizing, alot of young people show up to see a movie and the show, so our kids are in church – everyone should be happy (and when they graduate high school all the statistics say they will never come back), “double dipping”- going to a church to get things.
To me this is what American churches try to play to in order to survive. And in a few short generations, we shall see we have not survived following this way. THIS IS WHAT REVEAL REVEALS.

No one is trying to demonize Willow here. This is the most influential, self published, promoted ecclessiology in the world. If I am a theologian of any worth, I and others must engage the theology and cultural assumptions of this organization and its vast publications. We do this for the furtherance of Christ and His Mission. We do this seeking more faithfulness. We submit it to the Spirit for him to work (Acts 15). To this end, I continue to encourage Greg Hawkins of Willowcreek, Scot McKnight, and others to talk. In fact let’s talk together.

Yesterday on WMBI, Willow Pastor Hawkins (one of the authors of the report) said the bloggers have not read the report. I have. He said that we should call and talk. I have written in the past. No response. Not blaming anyone. You all are busy I know. But in response, I put out an open invitation to get together. I am willing to organize a conference that is off Willow’s campus, bringing Willow, theologians and pastors together. I will charge only the cost to cover the expenses. LET’S GO! You know where to reach me. Put a comment on this blog or e-mail me via lifeonthevine.org. Blessings!

If “witness” is the mode of the church’s proclamation of the gospel, then “the kinds of people” we are as Christians becomes central to the Mission of the church. We can no longer consider our character incidental to the gospel of Christ. Once we realize the gospel must be embodied in order to be proclaimed (a.k.a. witness), we can no longer consider discipleship an option. We therefore, as pastors, must shepherd communities for the growth of Christian character as opposed to leading organizations geared for the growth of other kinds.

I’ve been ruminating about this for a few weeks because I am in the middle of a writing project that describes how “the kinds of people we are” is absolutely essential for our witness. More than anything else (I argue), it is the kind of character we exhibit in our lives in everyday life before the hurting, downtrodden and lost that God shall inhabit to spread the good news. This is more than individual character; it is the character we exhibit as a people together and in the world.

If this is true, pastors must guide their churches differently. For our focus can not be lazered upon organizing for numbers, the production of “decisions for Christ,” programs to entertain children in the hopes they will want to be Christians because its cool. Instead, we must organize with the purpose of discipleship, spiritual formation into Christ. For it will be out of this that His Mission shall flow with such integrity it cannot be stopped. And we will not have the time or concern to count numbers and/or decisions.

We therefore must order our churches to be communities of formation. Worship must be ordered more for shaping the soul into Christ and His Mission, not for emotional stimulation. We must organize communities for the practices of knowing one another, speaking truth in love, supporting one another, confession, truth and honesty, the sharing of the gifts all for the growing in the stature of Christ (Eph 4:15). This cannot be done on large scale (I consider the whole of Eph 4, 5 to be read organically as an order for a community about the size of 50 people). And it cannot be accomplished instantaneously (See Todd Hiestand’s piece here on Tim Keel). Yet the flow into true mission will be enormous over time.

A footnote in Guder’s The Continuing Conversion of the Church (p. 53) outlines the case NT scholar E. G. Selwyn makes for asserting MARTURIA (WITNESS) over KERYGMA (preaching) as the indispensable core of the NT Christian message. I was shocked to see how the number of occurrences of the use of MARTURIA in the NT outnumbers KERYGMA 6 to 1. Guder says MARTURIA “serves as an overarching term drawing together proclamation (KERYGMA), community (KOINONIA) and service (DIAKONIA).”(p. 53) Guder argues this defines the NT Spirit-enabled witness for which the church is called and sent.

If all of this is true, we in the ministry have the basis upon which to change the way we talk about, teach and guide what has been called evangelism in our churches. We must shift from evangelism to witness, from packaged truths to incarnational witness, from cognitive techniques to interpersonal engagement, from the attractional church of individual consumers, to missional communities of discipleship and witness.

In my upcoming book project, These Kinds of People: Evangelical Fundamentalism and the Moral Life – What Have We Become? Where Do we Go From Here? I describe how the current image of evangelicals in N America is brutal. I describe how it has destroyed our witness. I ask how this could have happened. I describe how our doctrine and practice could have predicted this. I describe how the way we look at the Bible, the way we understand church and culture, and the way we define salvation all have contributed to producing a people whose corporate character stands largely impotent to impact our culture. To me this is why witness is important. Evangelism, as construed in the West, allowed for separating character from the message, for separating what we say from who we are. For it focused on a detached message that could be packaged, argued for and presented on HD Plasma Screens in large stadiums. In the process we lost discipleship. And now I fear we’ve lost our witness.Do you think the way we articulated evangelism in the American church has allowed for the diminishment of discipleship?______________________I’ll be on the radio (WMBI) with Scott McKnight talking about the REVEAL report Thursday 7:30 a.m. CT . If you’re interested check out what Scot says here, and what Bill says here.

I believe the shift from evangelism to witness is one of the most important moves for pastors to make in the new missional context of post Christendom N America. It is absolutely essential to leading a church into this millennium. The church I grew up with told us we need to evangelize the world. Go ouit there and communicate verbally the message of the gospel to your friends. Today, the missional church is speaking a different language. “Incarnational” is one of the new descriptors of how we are to engage the world. I believe the word “witness” is just as important.

Evangelism is the proclamation of the gospel. It has been the mode of engaging the world in modernity (Sorry for making modernity into the culprit again). In the Magesterial Reformation, evangelism, the KERYGMA, almost always referred to preaching the gospel, proclaiming the gospel. And this was done primarily in the church. It is communication through words, through a message delivered. In post Enlightenment days, this morphed into learning how to deliver the message, extracted from any context, verbally and persuasively to unbelievers. There was an emphasis on apologetics, arguments for the gospel, and indeed better communication techniques. The task of engaging the world with the gospel was convincing individuals of our message. Thus, the better more excellent the presentatuion of the cognitve message, the better. We can now set up whole stadiums and production companies to improve on communicating and packaging the message.

Witness is an all engaging term. It certainly includes proclamation. But proclamation is inseparable from the witness of real life. This is why the greek word for witness, MARTYRION, sounds a lot like the word “martyr” in english. For the true witness bears forth the proclamation of the gospel by laying her life down for it. True witness however is more than an individual willing to die for the gospel. For even this makes no sense apart from a community bearing forth witness to a way of life birthed out of the reign of Christ. This takes community. True mission, true witness takes community. This is why I am hesitant to go along with friends who suggest “missiology precedes ecclesiology.” Indeed I’d prefer “missiology is ecclesiology.”

We can see the difference between evangelism and witness in the way we engage the world. Evangelism tries too hard. Witness speaks for itself out of who we are. Evangelism is coercive. Witness sits down, is present, listens and waits for God to act out of my own testimony. Evangelism has a preset strategic speech, witness walks alongside, lives life with the lost and hurting, and responds to what we see. Evangelism is prepared to say to anyone, if you don’t do this “you will go to hell!” Witness is testifying to what we have seen, heard and experienced. We are witnesses, not the prosecuting attorney nor the judge. Evangelism says its all up to you. If you don’t do a.b. and c. “you will go to hell.” Witness sees the desperation in just as real terms, but realizes salvation is the Holy Spirit’s work, all we can do is cooperate. Evangelism argues the gospel. Witness ministers the gospel. Evangelism can be done without witness. Witness cannot be done without evangelism (yes that’s what I meant to say).

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Two chapters from two different (yet complimentary) perspectives that you might want to read.
Darrell Guder, The Continuing Conversion of the Church ch. 3
Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe ch. 8

More on witness versus evangelism from the Scriptures, and why “who we are,” our character is of utmost importance to the Mission of the church in these times. Indeed I believe pastors must lead their churches into becoming “communities of character” if we are to have any chance to impact society and the millions for the gospel. … This will all be in my next post on Witness versus Evangelism.

What do you think. Is the distinction between evangelism and witness overdrawn?