I believe seeding missional communities is evangelism. Rather than building bigger buildings and progamming larger organizations to manage the influx of already Christianized people wanting goods and services, I believe the missional call is to nuture the birth of new communities moving into neighborhhoods relating on the ground level with people in everyday life in order to witness the gospel of Christ and His Kingdom. I like to call these communities “missional orders” (with a bunch of other people)

Church planting is changing in the many post-Christendom contexts that no longer respond to the franchise methods of 20-30 years ago. It has had to change. It cannot be conducted in franchise fashion where we assume if we set up a site, offer certain Christian goods and services in improved and more relevant fashion, people will come. We cannot assume church planting according to a formulae or a denominational template. It is contextualization of the gospel for each location.

Over a year ago I wrote a piece entitled “Fifty Years of Church Planting: the Story as I See It” describing what I see as the shift in church planting from the point of view of Canada and parts of Northern USA (places I consider post-Christendom). It became the first chapter in a book by Allelon on church planting in Canada entitled Fresh & ReFresh. Len Hjamarlson and Brent Toderash edited and contributed to the book. I outlined in this piece what I see are the issues for church planting going forward.  You can read it here at the book’s website. Thanks to Len and Brent for all their hard work on the book. Let me know what you think!

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And a final heads up for the missional learning commons coming up in Ft Wayne on Jan 8,9. Join us if you can. It’s low key, it’s for mutual edification and it’s FREE! A non/conference gathering of “missional co-conspirators.” Check out info on the missional commons website. We gathering a good crowd, so join us if you can. We need to know however If you’re going to show so let us know by notifying us as “attending” via the Facebook Page or e-mail me at fitchest@gmail.com. If you’ve already let us know by either method no further notification is needed. See you in Ft Wayne!!

Christmas comes, life gets busy, and there’s so much to be thankful for. My family, my church family, my Seminary, and the cazillion people I have had the pleasure to make friends. This blog has been a blessing – a place for me to articulate and dialogue about practical issues of ministry and theology. Thanks to all its readers. You contribute to my life and ministry. In looking back, as some bloggers do at the end of the year, I offer what I feel were the highlights of this past years posts. For new readers, maybe this will pull you in to the particular avenues of missional thought and practice this blog is a part of. For others, maybe it will sum up the key learnings I’ve been going through this past year. Or maybe this is just a bit awkward way to say thank-you.

Here’s what I view as the Top Ten highlight posts of the year.

1.) Neo-Reformed Versus Neo-Anabaptist Versus Pragmatic Missional: Decifering the Streams of the Missional Movement and Why I think the Missional NeoAnabaptist stream is most keenly positioned to minister in America’s New Post Christendom.

2.) Missiology precedes Ecclesiology or Missiology is Ecclesiology. I affirm the latter. I think the only way my beloved friend Alan Hirsch’s formula (missiology precedes ecclesiology and Christology precedes missiology) works is if you’re a mystic – i.e. you believe Jesus Christ comes to you directly through experience and personal cognition of the Bible. As opposed to this, I contend Jesus comes via his incarnation in the church through the sacraments (Catholic), the preaching of the Word (Reformed) and the community of the gifts (Anabaptist) all of which require the social space of the church out into the world. Read more in this post as to what that all might mean.

3.) Church Planting Assumptions of the Neo-Reformed. I think Reformed theology has its problems (I confess my sin!). And I think this manifests itself in attractional proclivities when it comes to church planting. To undertsand more of what I am getting at and see some interchange between me and Tim Keller, take a look at this post.

4.) How To Instill Missional Habits In Your Congregation: Just some suggestions from a post which is still gets a lot of hits on a daily basis.

5.) My Reservations With The Gospel Coalition: As if anyone needed more evidence that I think the Reformed impulse is ill timed to meet the post Christendom challenge of N American mission, here’s my observations and concerns about the Neo-Reformed powerhouse organization “The Gospel Coalition.” There are some of the smartest missional leaders I know in ths group. Thanks for pushing us Anabaptists. But can we have more dialogue somehow? Ay suggestions?

6.) The Seven Indispensible Virtues Of a Missional Leader: This post was well received even though it only got 13 or so comments.

7.) Miss California’s Guffaw About Gays and Lesbians and What We can Learn about Our Missional Witness: This post obviously got alot of attention – and it’s a little snippet of my book project coming out next year The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission.  I think this episode reveals much about the lack of an embodied witness to sexual redmeption in evangelicalism and what that does to the way we relate to gays and lesbians.

8.) From Bridge to Onramp: Here is a proposal for the rethinking of our approach to evangelism – from presenting people with a bridge to a transaction (a sterotype of the Bridge Illustration) to actually being (embodying) an onramp for people to enter God’s work of salavtion to amke all things right.

9.) If I just Preach a good sermon – People will Come: Another post in my ongoing attempts to rethink preaching for communal formation into Mission.

10.) Bi-vocational or go on staff at a mega church. Suddenly bi-vocationla doesn’t look so bad. This post tries to describe how bi-vocational ministry works in missional church and how it is a viable alternative to all young pastor candidates who can’t stomach going on staff at a large mega church. It got some conversation going.

Blessings on your Christmas celebrations, remembering and living into the incarnation, “God with us” – The incarnation of God begun in the person of Chirst and extended through His Spirit in the church until He comes. Thanks for all your comments, and e-mails and fellowship this past year. Blessings DF

The lack of diversity in the Missional Church (and for that matter the Emerging Church) is a main topic at this year’s Missional Learning Commons coming up here the first week of January in Ft. Wayne. On the Friday night, we’ll be discussing Soong Chan Rah’s book The Next Evangelicalism: a book that deals expressly with the problem of diversity in evangelicalism. The book has received a good bit of attention. I think it voices the consensus approach to the problem most often articulated among these same groups – evangelicals and emerging Christians. It’s worth a read for that reason alone.

Rah starts out the book with some compelling stories and statistics describing the changing global demographics of Christianity. The statistics are undeniable and virtually accepted since Phil Jenkins published his now famous book The Next Christendom. World Christianity has migrated in location and demographics from a largely white Western European-N American context to a multi-diverse Asia, Africa Latin American centered. Euro-NA is now 39% of world Christianity by population while the rest is 60%. (p. 13). The same dynamics are operating within the boundaries of N America (and for that matter Europe). Putting it bluntly, the white evangelical suburban church is shrinking massively, while ethic immigrant churches are exploding. These statistics, these realities, we are all aware of. They are compellingly presented by Prof. Rah. There should be no surprise here to any concerned church leader who has read anything in the last ten years.

Rah’s ‘beef’ however, and I am obviously summarizing to an excessive degree, is that the leadership and power structures of N. American evangelicalism remain largely white male. He lists the institutions, colleges, publishers, denominations, and protests how all of these institutions can be so white male? These leadership structures appear oblivious to the ongoing shifts that he rightfully argues are so obvious. Rah labels this the “white captivity” of the evangelical church.

From this point in the book, Rah goes on to outline how “WesternWhite Cultural Captivity” has bred a culture of individualism (ch. 1), consumerism and materialism (ch. 2), racism (ch. 3). He takes apart church growth principles (homogeneous unit principle), the emerging church and the imperialist assumption of Western global missions. Here some of Rah’s best work occurs in ch. 3 on racism and ch. 4 dissecting the mega church –church growth movements and the inherent racism and Western Enlightenment assumptions that undergird these movements. Racism is ensconced in the culture of the West and by virtue of the Western cultural captivity of evangelicalism, it is deeply ensconced in evangelicalism.

Having said all of this about Rah’s book, I seriously question whether we have answers here. In this regard I found the book disappointing. Rah proposes what he calls “proactive steps” (p. 201) like confessing of corporate sins, submitting of white leadership to spiritual authority of non-whites, and “unleashing the gospel.” There is nothing here that anyone I know in the white powers structures of evangelicalism would disagree with. Indeed, many (not all) of these leaders have tried to implement some of these practices for years. These ways forward are good and always bear repeating! Frankly, however, I think the problem goes much much deeper. I think Rah’s analysis, good in many parts, passes over the deeper cultural issues that lie at the basis of this Western cultural captivity. In fact, dare I suggest? Rah’s analysis itself is so deeply entwined with the White cultural captivity that it can offer little to deconstruct it and get us somewhere on this deeply troubling issue of racism, power, and the White cultural captivity of the N American church.

This is particularly obvious in the way Rah deals with the Emergent church in ch. 5. Frankly I find his analysis totally baffling. I have no desire to defend the Emergent church on this score and I want to include the Missional church in this indictment (I see the two as different but related). I affirm the obvious – THE MISSIONAL AND EMERGENT CHURCHES HAS BEEN AND CONTINUES TO BE PERSISTENTLY WHITE. I also agree that many of its gatekeepers could be blamed for the way they have managed leadership of the publishing and the more public faces of the movement. Yet, for the most part, I have always seen them as pursuing diversity more than the standard evangelical leadership. I think the questions go deeper.

It seems to me that the very things Rah says we must leave behind, individualism, materialism, consumerism, mega church business growth principles, ARE THE VERY THINGS EMERGENT/EMERGING CHURCH, AND ESPECIALLY MISSIONAL CHURCH PEOPLE LIKE MYSELF HAVE BEEN LEADING THE CHARGE AGAINST? But in many if not most cases, within the various ethnic groups I meet, and the many conversations I’ve had now over many years with black urban, Hispanic, and Asian churches (including Korean) – this often falls on deaf ears!! Many Asian, Hispanic churches are composed of immigrants who came to N.America for the express purpose to have the opportunities to achieve individual freedom and material success. I cannot say I blame them not listenimg! This means however that the very idea that we must somehow reject or even repent from materialism, individualism etc. is simply not on the radar in the same way. Yet it is this very Enlightenment rationality (individualist freedom, unlimited economic opportunity) which stands behind and provides the coding for racism and white power structures (I can’t go into deeper length on this now, sorry!). Many black urban churches I know cannot warm to the idea that after years of oppression and denial of economic opportunity by the white power structures, they should now be asked to not pursue this kind of success? Again, I cannot say I blame them. Rah himself acknowledges this very thing about his own immigrant church. On page 60 of his book, Rah talks about his own Korean immigrant church’s inability to provide a spiritual and theological corrective to the materialist narrative of the American culture. Rah’s summary (pg 60-61) of how American prosperity, individualism and the American dream become conflated with an evangelical Christianity among immigrant communities is telling. Yet it is to a large degree this same narrative of conflation that Missional and Emerging churches are critiquing.

This conflated message is not just located in Rah’s own immigrant community’s local community. Indeed most sociologists (see Peter Berger’s article here) would agree that the great majority of the spreading church in Asia, Latin America and Africa is driven by some version of prosperity gospel and charismatic experiential Christianity. It is a version of Christianity that I would argue is indisputably tied to the Western values of individualism, consumerism and materialism. And I would suggest that the inherent pride and “us against them” mentality that this ideology breeds, will soon be found in our various ethnic churches in N America. It is part of the same forces that breeds racism in our time. Do we need to ask, does Rah need to ask?  in what sense is the Western Cultural Captivity capturing the various ethnic groups, baptizing them into the same racism we white affluent evangelicals have become so shaped by? If this is true, can Rah or anyone help us in a way forward?

I say none of this to demean any ethnic or minority groups or to pardon white evangelicals from the host of our racial sins. My point is rather that all of these solutions that Rah has proposed, have been tried for years, getting us nowhere. And that the missional church/emerging church, is one of the few places WHERE WHITE EVANGELCIALS OR EX-EVANGELICALS ARE CRITIQUING WITH ALL OUR MIGHT THE VERY THINGS RAH POINTS HIS FINGER AT!! We have been engaging the issues of individualism, materialism, consumerism, the way we sell out to American corporatism and give up the way of life we have in Christ. Unfortunately, for many reasons which I totally understand, this message that resonates so well with white sons and daughters of an affluent white evangelicalism (because they have seen it and it has been found wanting), does not translate as well to many ethnicities that have never participated in the economic affluence of the white West. They say “we have been oppressed for years” (in the case of African Americans), or “we came here for economic opportunity” (Asian or Hispanic Immigrants) and now you tell us this? I understand this. And I think the largely white Missional and Emerging church folk need to listen and learn from this. I already have learned much from this. There is some flat out miss-timing, even injustice, in asking those we have exploited to now reject some of the things we European Americans have gorged ourselves on for the last century as Americans.

I’m not saying this to chew out Soong-Chan. I seriously ask Rah, what should we do, how should we go forward. Yes it’s all true, we humbly confess .. and we have more to do … But there are some deeper cultural issues here. We need more than what has become the standard account on this issue.

For my money, J Kameron Carter’s (Professor of Theology and Black Studies at Duke Divinity School) Race: A Theological Account is the best book on the issue of race and the development of Western White Christianity. To grotesquely oversimplify, Kameron helps us see (through Foucault and others) how “race” was constituted by the West once the Roman church separated itself from the Jews (and the nation of Israel) in the first three centuries. In other words, once the church’s identity was no longer seen as an extension of the ONE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL, chosen for Mission to the world, and became in essence separated from the church of Jerusalem, race became a constituting factor in the church and it was an invention of the Western church to create all sorts of fleshly power relationships. If we would escape the cycle of race, we must escape the Western culture that shapes us by this concept of race. Rah is right about this. It is encoded in our language, our culture and the ways we relate in the Western church. It is part of democracy and part of capitalism. This is how deep Rah’s White Cultural Captivity goes. The question is, to what extent have the various ethnic churches now coalescing in America and indeed around the world, by their buying into capitalism and the great United States, become grafted into this same racist account of the world? And how do we all get out of it. We must deconstruct race as a constituting encoding of our very language and the way we think. Has Rah accomplished this in his book? Or moved us deeper into the ways race defines us? I seriously don’t know.

To my knowledge, the only ethnic group in N America able to call the church into diversity and out of white cultural captivity with a critical distance to prosperity-driven-capitalism-endorsing-Christianity, ARE THE NATIVE AMERICAN CHRISTIAN indigenous groups and their leaders that Rah talks about in his book (see here for instance). I know some of the leaders as friends, and frankly they have a reserve for buying into the American economic system (for obvious reasons) and yet have a love for Jesus Christ. For my money, these are the ones we should be looking to for leadership on this issue … but will we all listen?

OK  I’m ready for backlash .. comments?

During this time of advent, I pray for peace, reconciliation and the unity of all nations under His one single Lordship. Amen.
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Are you interested in this topic and Rah’s book? Join us for the Missional Learning Commons in Ft Wayne. It’s low key, it’s for mutual edification and it’s FREE! A non/conference gathering of “missional co-conspirators.” Check out info on the missional commons website. If you’re going to show up let us know via the Facebook Page, or e-mail me at fitchest@gmail.com. No other registration needed

I admire, respect and have learned much from Tim Keller and his ministry in Manhattan. I always learn from engaging his writings, he being a primary representative of the neo-Reformed world, and one intensely involved in on the ground ministry. Engaging his writings gives me an opportunity to locate distinctives of the neo Anabaptist Missional impulse versus the Neo-Reformed Missional. And there should be room for both in the Kingdom of God in our time. Recently Dr. Keller wrote a post recommending that young pastors and seminarians consider being a “Country Parson” as a suitable training ground for future ministry. Here a young pastor can learn the ways of leading a church, governing an elder board, handle fund raising, do counseling, shepherding, teaching and preaching, handle conflict etc. A lot of this post makes sense.

Like Tim, I also meet a lot of men and women graduating from seminary seeking a first time position in ministry. In contrast to Tim however, the young pastors/seminarians I meet are not anxious to take a position on the staff of a large church. Nether are they rejecting the small country church because they have aspirations to work in a large church. They reject the large church setting because they are reluctant to become part of “the machine” which works tirelessly to develop and sustain programming to both achieve certain goals within the existing congregation and grow it ever larger and larger. Many are tired of the consumerist busy lifestyles of cities and suburbs and seek a “Wendell Berry type” setting in farm country.

So with Dr Keller, I also recommend the small church as a place of ministry for young pastors and seminarians. In difference from Dr Keller however, I recommend the small urban and/or suburban church (as opposed to the country small church). Most often, these urban/suburban churches are in a death spiral amidst the vestiges of post Christendom urban/suburban centers. The small country churches are in many cases hanging on and in some cases thriving in a still largely Christian friendly rural culture. I suggest these small dying urban/suburban congregations could be the place for renewal in our times. I suggest that we go there not only to practice leadership but also to till the soil of what is left of old days of Christendom. These small community churches, often in middle-lower income places, have been deserted by middle-upper middle-income evangelicals who have migrated to the local mega church. These are the places where the poor and hurting are most visible. These are the places that are (more) affordable for younger pastor/leaders. I suggest that these places have great potential for renewal because they are desperate. Here we can enter tough situations, congregations with long instilled Christendom habits. Here it will take many years and patience to nurture the renewal of Christian mission.

There are literally thousands of these churches in death mode in this country. My own denomination released some stunning statistics to us a couple weeks ago. Only the top 20% of all churches are growing (I’m rounding off these numbers). Most of these are mega church type churches-or churches in process of becoming a mega church (and excited about it). The remaining 80% is shrinking so fast they shall largely disappear within 5-15 years. The vast majority of the growth of the 20% is transfer growth from the other 80%. Among this large majority of churches that are dying, are small aging congregations who are slowly losing hope, a sense of mission in the urban and suburban settings of N America. Their people are living deep within the Christendom assumptions of the West. They still ask question that address “how can we attract more people into our church services?” They largely see outreach as church building centered. Most know few if any non-Christians in the regular rhythm of their lives. Most of the remaining aging attendees have moved ten to twenty miles away from the church location while they still hang on to. Yet they continually ask “how can we get more young people into our church?” “How can we connect to the culture?”

Like Tim’s “country church”, these churches are often spurned by the young pastor/seminarians, “mega church pastor” wannabe. Many of these old buildings sit on a prime site in a declining part of a little downtown. They have become memorials to a Christendom gone by. Ironically, because of different cultural forces, the country church has remained somewhat immune from these secular cultural forces. The suburban and urban small declining churches however, and there are thousands of them, have not, and they are closing by the hundreds every year. The time commitment here will be many many years as the aging people remaining are (often) deeply set in their ways. Bridges will have to be built. Many years of teaching and shaping missional imagination will be necessary because it take years to build the ethos of a missional community that is vibrant and engaging in the neighborhood context.

Of course, I contend that this new missionary situation demands a totally different approach to leadership than the one Tim describes in his post. As opposed to the hierarchical senior pastor approach more comfortable in the Neo-Reformed world, this kind of task will take a community of pastor/leaders who share responsibilities, who carry on theological integrity of the gospel, and who live bi-vocationally so as to spend time and money in the neighborhood context (see this post here). I recommend these small urban/suburban dying congregations as places for “new” ministry because they most often realize they have reached the end of their rope, haven’t the financial resources to sustain a full time pastoral staff and are open to thinking about staffing differently. For Neo-Anabaptist Missionals, these situations are not the places to learn the “solo-pastor” role so much as places to nurture under God’s grace a community of leadership for the new missionary situation we are confronted with.

In short, I am inspired by Dr Keller’s passion for training pastors and I see the small Country church as a viable option for pastors in the Neo-Reformed mold of ministry. For Neo Anabaptist Missional training however I see equally the dying urban/suburban smaller church as a main option. I’ve seen amazing things among these formerly dying places (see for instance Englewood Christian Community which was a 60′s mega church in urban Indianapolis transformed into a missional center). The situations are plentiful yet take unusual social and leadership skills. God bless both the Neo-Reformed and Neo Missional movements for their unique perspective on the place of the small church in the renewal of God’s Kingdom in N. America.

Has anyone else seen transformation among the dying urban/suburban congregations? We need some stories to inspire imagination here!

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Interested in meeting some people involved in these kind of church situations? Join us at  the Missional Learning Commons. A non/conference gathering of “missional co-conspirators.” Check out info on the missional commons website. If you’re going to show up let us know via the Facebook Page, or e-mail me at fitchest@gmail.com. No other registration needed

A couple Sunday mornings ago, at the Community Bible study hour at our church, Tim told a story about a secular Jewish woman taking classes at the local Christian liberal arts college in order to get her teaching certification. Over coffee she tells Tim how she is struggling terribly – not with the classwork – but with the ever ubiquitous message at the Christian school – that all people are sinners, depraved, and deserving of God’s wrath. She said “I can’t believe everyone is born a dirty rotten sinner.” To me, this woman is the paradygmatic post Christendom person and presents a challenge to traditional ways evangelicals have taught evangelism. Tim’s question was “what do we say to this woman?”

Traditionally, the first move in evangelism is to convince the non-Christian that he or she is a sinner in need of God (or that he or she is deserving of God’s judgment and going to hell without Christ). “You must admit you are a sinner in need of God!” We evangelicals inherit this ‘starting point’ from our Reformed theology (which for many reasons starts with the depravity of humanity). This starting point was effective in Christendom where so many were determined by the ever-present Western guilt derived from the Roman Catholic ethos of the European medieval time period. This guilt however is waning in the new cultures of post Christendom. As a result, some of our evangelistic techniques must go to greater and greater lengths to prove to the non Christian that they are indeed sinners. Kirk Cameron’s 10 commandments technique is one of the latest examples of this where he goes through the ten commandments with people he meets on the street trying to prove to them intellectually that they are a sinner. These kind of approaches assume a whole host of things that have been true about our own conversions, yet make no sense to people in the new worlds of post Christendom. We therefore end up coming off as incessantly judgmental, and make no point of contact for witnessing the good news. The result is often now this person will try to run and hide whenever she sees an evangelical Christian within 50 feet.

I have no desire to avoid the issue of sin in engaging others with the gospel. Yet I suggest that in these new post Christendom contexts, we must teach believers three things about the doctrine of sin in order that those we encounter with the gospel might be able to hear the gospel as “good news” (not an agenda of some judgemental person).

1.)    Sin is a complex doctine. Surely “the depravity of man (sic),” the sinfulness of humanity, is an essential truth of the gospel that should not be discarded because of its cultural irrelevancy. Yet sin in the Bible is not only about transgression – (i.e. breaking the law), but also about the missing the mark. Sin is not just about guilt but about the powers that enslave us. We therefore have to approach each person with the knowledge that sin will manifest itself in different ways. Our job is to listen and probe for the manifestations of lostness, emptiness, enslavement, and yes guilt, and be available to reflect with the person … always waiting patiently for the Spirit to reveal any sin, brokenness, hurt and/or enslavement that might be going on..
2.)    Sin is a language we learn within a community. Sin is not a universal term that everyone automatically understands. It is not even a term every Christian automatically understands. The discovery of sin is a communal enterprise. I often say that I have many sins in my life I am not aware of. I need to be in conversation with people who know me who can enable the revealing of my sins by the Holy Spirit. Sin is understood and exposed in our lives through the witness of the community around us (and we must be humble, vulnerable and open to receive words that in turn can lead to confession and growth in Christ). This vulnerability should define us as Christians and should make it safe for those outside Christ to discover the source of their own brokenness.

We should therefore not expect people outside Christ to know what we are talking about when we say the word “sin.” As Hauerwas says, “We must be trained to see ourselves as sinners, for it is not self-evident. Indeed, our sin is so fundamental that we must be taught to recognize it … we only learn what our sin is as we discover our true identity through locating the self in God’s life as revealed to us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.” From Peaceable Kingdom 30-31.

3.)    As witnesses we are therapists of sin, always listening to “the other” modeling the vulnerability that has made it possible for us to see our own sin. We listen, probe, ask questions. It is the Holy Spirit that convicts of sin. It is not our job to convince someone. Yet like a therapist we have a language for all that is going on in the social spiritual moral physical world as it is under God the creator and Lord of the universe. But the therapist rarely goes out and tries to convince all people they are sick. “They must be ready” we often hear. Likewise we who live in a post Christendom world, are not here to go out universally and try to convince people they are sick. We live life in and among the sick, the poor, the broken, the lost and make ourselves available and vulnerable to offer both the diagnosis out of our own lives and the gospel as good news.

All of the above challenges the use of sin as an anvil in the work of evangelism. Yet it argues that sin is an essential doctrine of the church. We make sense of it however in the practices of confession, repentance, and restitution in the community. In Hauerwas’ terms, as Christians “we must learn to become good sinners” in order to model it before the world and invite those outside Christ into this victory, healing and pardon. Is this too soft of a view of sin? I don’t think so? Is this too communal? contextual?

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We’ll be discussing issues like this (post-Christendom evangelism) and more at the Missional Learning Commons. A non/conference gathering of “missional co-conspirators.” So you’re welcome to join us!! Check out info on the missional commons website. If you’re going to show up let us know via the Facebook Page, or e-mail me at fitchest@gmail.com.