Reclaiming the Mission » 2010

davidfitch on December 27 2010

My 5 years of Blogging: 10 Highlights

In terms of vocation outside of my family, I consider myself a pastor first, teacher – theologian second. This is the way it happened for me. More and more this is the route I recommend to anyone who (thinks they) wishes to become a teacher/theologian. As the ranks of the paid professional theologian grows scarce, it seems obvious no one should assume he/she can go get a Ph D and then get a job teaching theology. That seems laughable to me now. Instead, pursue ministry, live in the culture. Out of this context let the questions emerge and drive your study. If God affords, pursue a Ph D. Then a job opportunity in (so-called) academia comes? Discern it (it’s not always a good thing!) and take it as God leads.

Since its beginning 5 years ago, this blog has been a great place for me to talk about issues emerging from ministry. I haven’t done much academic theology here (but I’m thinking about doing one post a month that would be more academically driven?). As I look back at the last five years, I see some patterns emerge that will show up in my book coming out in a month as well as new book projects I am scheduled to write this coming year. This blog has been a discipline for me and a blessing. For those of you new to it, here’s a look back at 10 posts (in bold underlined), highlights of the past 5 years, with some commentary. All praise be to God for any good that has come from these past five years.

1.) The Myth of Expository Preaching (2006). Back in June and July of 2006 I wrote a few posts ( the other two are here and here) on the problems inherent in expository preaching. It was picked up in the blogosphere (including here). It was all based on ch. 5 of The Great Giveaway. This has proved fruitful conversation in many contexts as I think I’ve presented on this issue at least 6 times in conferences/seminars since then. In February I will again be leading a seminar on preaching as spiritual formation at the Ecclesia national gathering

2.) A Warning List For Those Who Would Join a Missional Church Gathering (2006). This became a pamphlet at our church. It reveals much about the critique of church in America that has been persistent in my work over the past 5 years. We have had to bring this one back from time to time at Life on the Vine to remind us of what we’re doing.

3.) When is a Story Not a Story? Willowcreek and Acrobats on Christmas Eve (2007) My critique on the excessive attractionalizing of Christmas at the mega churches. Since then Bill Kinnon has updated this critique here.

4.) Everything Must Change or Everything has Changed?(2008) (Part 2 here) Back in 2008 I reviewed Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change. I’m a fan of Brian. In this post back in 2008 I started to articulate where I differ with him. I talk about his view of the Kingdom. I worry he is de-eschatologizing it (a fear I expounded on here). The same ambivalences are evident in this post (see more stuff with Andrew Jones here) Though I find much to applaud in Brian McLaren’s writing, I think there are also problems. For instance in his New Kind of Christianity I think there are about 5 sections (a few paragraphs long) that are simply baffling coming from a Christian pastor. I’m thinking about blogging on these 5 sections in 2011 if there’s still interest (and Brian would respond ).

5.) Not Voting as an Act of Christian Discernment (2008) was one of my first “posts” challenging the sacred cow of evangelicals and protestant mainliners alike: voting is a sacred act of Christian devotion. Heading into the 2008 Obama election, this got me into some trouble here where Anthony Smith called me out, and then here again when Brian McLaren agreed with Anthony. I answered both Brian McLaren’s and Anthony Smith’s objection here but never heard back. I think now it has become more apparent that the Obama administration has sadly become “more of the same.” I think looking back “not voting” should be looked at more seriously as the means for Christians to work for social justice in America.

6.)Three Questions for Attractional Pastors Who Question the Fruit of Missional (2008). Ever since I wrote The Great Giveaway it seems I’ve been in the middle of this debate. Again, this critique of American church has been prevalent in my work over the last 5 years. I remember being at Trinity Seminary debating Ed Stetzer on” Can Mega Be Missional?” which was the title of another post in a syncroblog. I think this is the only time I ever won a debate with Ed (not in word count however – wink, wink, Ed). This post linked here is my best post on this topic because various representative figures who came onto the post to debate with me including Dan Kimball, Tim Keller, Andy Rowell and Alan Hirsch. Check it out!

7.) Teaching Missional Living (2008, 2009). If we are not going to do church in the modern individualist consumer driven ways of America, how then do we go forward? The following three posts I offered back in 2008, 2009 in response to the continual quest for “how do we live this Missional church stuff?” They were well received. I have used them as starting points in my own practical teaching ever since. a.) Instilling Missional Habits in a Congregation, b.) From Bridge to Onramp -Teaching Missional Evangelism, and c.) an example of exegeting your local community (in this case the suburbs) .

8. The “Gospel Coalition” and Post Christendom(2009). A major concern that has emerged for me on this blog over the last few years has been the migration of the “young and restless” to the New Calvinism in our day. In the aftermath of Emergent, it seems that the disenchanted have found something solid in the Neo-Reformed movement spawned by John Piper, Marc Driscoll and Don Carson. I see this version of Reformed theology as prone towards retrenchment and defensive Christianity. Instead I see great possibilities in a neo-Anabaptist missional position for the situating of the church for mission in N. America. I have only begun to express my reservations with the New-Reformed theological position and I hope to expand on it this year on the blog.

9. How Flat Leadership Works For Mission(2010). I’ve been an advocate for a renewed way of leadership for mission drawing on the Anabaptist leanings towards a communal based gift based leadership based in the practice of mutual submission to Christ. I see it as the way mission is shaped in community by God for the world. I reject the many who suggest this means no leadership. This kind of leader however looks different than what we have become so accustomed to in the technique driven world of modern business. Looking back on the list of posts in this category, my upcoming book on leadership has mostly already been written here. Nonetheless, I shall continue to write extensively on how this looks and works itself out theologically/practically in the life of mission.

10. The Gay/Lesbian Issue: The Idea of a Welcoming and Mutually Transforming Community(2010). I believe the gay/lesbian issue in the West is a test case for the missional church. I am profoundly dissatisfied with the approaches generated from the Emergent thinkers as well as the New Reformed. I don’t believe “sexual redemption” is a real posssibility within the categories laid down by some Emergent thinkers. I don’t see how witness and gospel engagement in the gay/lsbian worlds is possible under the terms laid down by some of the New Reformed thinkers. Instead I have sought to forge an incarnational way of witness among the LGBTQ peoples among us for the sexual redemption God is bringing to the world in Christ. I have only begun to write on these areas. Thanks to the many who are already thinking through this area and the many commentators who helped sharpen and extend the thinking here.

Thanks to all you for participating in this blog. Looking forward to the next five years!

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davidfitch on December 17 2010

On Popular Demand – The Subversive Manger Scene Again – This Time A Better Picture

There was alot of demand for a better picture of the “subversive manger scene” from comments and e-mails generated from this post a few weeks ago. Thanks to Scott Erdenberg, I now have this picture of the same scene when it was displayed in front of our Life on the Vine‘s meeting place four years ago. Feel free to use it. If you use it, give all the credit to Brian Christensen, an artist at Life on the Vine who thought this up and constructed it. Blessings on your Christmas season as we enter into the fullness of this time – as we center our lives in “Christ with us” – and all that God calls us into in terms of carrying the presence of Christ himself into the world by the Spirit. Let us bring His peace into wherever we live and work this Christmas!

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davidfitch on December 14 2010

Is “Leadership” Biblical? A Few Reasons to Say “No.”

There’s been much ranting and raving on the inadequacies of leadership in the church. See Darryl here, Bill Kinnon here, and the man who started it all, Scot McKnight here. I must admit I recoil whenever I hear people say “Leadership is Biblical.” For alot of reasons, I find it eronious to say “leadership is Biblical.” When I say “leadership” I am talking about the way the term has become adopted into the vernacular of evangelical leadership conferences and books (most recently exhibited in this article). Last night at our “leadership meeting” (wink wink) I went off on a rant on this very topic (I have since had to repent of said rant – to me repentance is the best way of leading I know). I posted something on facebook and a lot of brothers and sisters set me straight. So, after learning much on facebook (see it’s good for something), I feel like I need to put out there why I think leadership in this mode “is not Biblical,” why we might need to find a new word when we are talking about what leaders do in a church, why if we are ever going to truly “lead” a gathering community into the Kingdom it simply requires a skill quite a bit different than what many in the church have come to describe as “leadership.” Here’s five comments on why “Leadership is not Biblical?”

1.) THE WORD “LEADER” ITSELF IS GENERALLY AVOIDED IN THE NT within the context of the church (with the notable exception of Hebrews 13:17,24). Likewise, the NT writers generally avoid using secular or Old Testament (LXX) titles for authoritative office (See Hans Kung, The Church, 496-497; E Schweizer, Church Order In the New Testament, 174-176; E Kasemann, “Ministry and Community in the New Testament,” in Essays on New Testament Themes, 63-64). The NT instead uses the term diakonia (servant, service) to label people in leadership far more times than any other term in the NT (for example, Rom 11:13;16:1;1 Cor 3:5; 2 Cor 3:6;6:4; 11:23; Eph3:7;6:21; Col 1:7,23; 4:7,12; 1Th 3:2; 1 Tim1:12; 2 Tim 4:5,11). The NT writers therefore used a word to describe leadership in the church which contrasted violently to the current secular notions of office. Hans Kung outlines how the NT writers saw that any words which suggest a relationship of rulers and the ruled were unusable in the new community context (The Church 498-502). The NT on this reading appears to carefully avoid the models of authority available in surrounding society for defining leadership in the church. All this suggests that using the word “leader” as has been defined by the business culture of the N America is highly dubious for the church and, dare I say, “unbiblical.”

2.) WHENEVER THE WORD “LEADER” IS USED IN THE NT – IT IS SUBVERTED BY THE CHURCH so that “leadership” takes on the element of leading by character not coercion, by submission not hierarchy in reverence for the Lordship of Christ. See for example Heb 13:7 “Remember your leaders …consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” Wisdom, age, maturity, as well as gentleness and self control “not lording over someone are the signs that someone is leading. This pattern, I would argue is present throughout the whole NT in the way the term “elder” and “overseer” are interchangeable (see for example Titus 1:7) revealing that for the early communities, age, wisdom and maturity were the recognizable traits of “leadership” in the community (elder means older mature person). Even the way “leader” is supposedly translated in Romans 12:8, it is placed within a total communal relationship of the gifts where each person exerts the authority of his/her gift in submission to the others. I would argue then that LEADERSHIP IS NEVER SOMEHOW A POSITION OF AUTHORITY/SKILL PLACED SOMEHOW UNILATAERALLY ABOVE THE CONGREGATION but always in submission to the body. Once again, the word “leadership” as used in the common parlance of business appears to be unbiblical.

3.) JESUS HIMSELF SUBVERTED THE TERM “LEADERSHIP.” The NT was so careful with its use of the words for leadership because the NT church carried the consciousness of Christ’s words, “If any one wants to be first, he shall be last of all, and servant of all” (Mark 9:35). “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. Because the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many”(Mark 10:42-45 par Luke 22:25-27). The NT church bears the image of Christ modeling servanthood when he washed his disciples feet (John 13: 13-17). They remember his words from Matt 23: 9-11 “But you are not to be called Rabbi, for you have one teacher and you are all students, And call no one your father on earth, for you have one father, the one in heaven, and do not be called leaders, for One is your leader, the Christ. But the greatest among you shall be your servant; and whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted”(NAS). Jesus commands his disciples to refuse any titles of the secular authorities including religious (Rabbi), family (father) or group style leadership (leader). Though we may argue how to implement Jesus commands on authority and leadership within the church, we must surely conclude that Jesus instructs the church to resist modeling its own leadership in any way on secular notions of leadership existing outside of the church.

4.) CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP IS DEFINED BY THE POSTURE OF SUBMISSION- TO THE WORLD THIS IS NOT LEADERSHIP All of this does not discount the need for leadership just a different kind of leadership! This is why I had to repent of my rant last night. I believe we need leaders who lead from below allowing God in Christ through the Spirit to exalt Himself in the midst, leaders who always act out of the authority of his/her gifts as received from Christ (Eph 4:7), who exercise authority as received only in dependence upon Christ. This is the leadership of Christ. We still need this kind of leadership. In fact, we need theological leadership sufficient to guide doctrine and practice in the church (we need ordination which is recognition by the community for this gift). Yet all of these gifted ones “lead” out of submission to God in Christ by the Spirit always offering what God is giving to the body IN SUBMISSION TO ONE ANOTHER. Dare I say, any other kind of leadership is unbiblical?

5.) THE BUSINESS MODELS OF LEADERSHIP WILL HANDICAP US FROM LEADING INTO MISSION. Because business style leadership works top down and often works in only already established authority structures, because business styles of leadership work to passivize the congregation negating participation, because business styles of leadership work well with people who already are acclimated to church and its Christendom structures of leadership, my general prejudice is that the kind of leadership most often taught in our evangelical churches/institutions is poorly suited to lead our churches into post Christendom engagement, i.e. into Mission. I don’t know how biblical this reason is (it may be sociologial?), but it’s another reason to be cautious about traditional “leadership” language,

No doubt this post will raise more questions than it answers. There are thousands of pages to be written on how the submissive (radically subordinate) leader is actually the revolutionary leader. But for now, I’m ready and willing to hear objections and ways this has played out in your own lives.

_______

UPDATE: Bob Hyatt has responded to this post right here. Go over there and set him straight! – humbly and in submission to the Lordship of Christ

Filed under Missional Leadership,Uncategorized 41 Comments

davidfitch on December 7 2010

A Manger Scene with a Different Message

Here’s a provocative manger scene (picture’s not that great – sorry). It’s by an artist at our church named Brian Christensen. Don’t know if you can make it out but but all of the characters of the manger scene – Mary, Joseph, Shepherds, Wise Men – are over to the right watching the television. On the left is the baby Jesus all by himself. When we put this display up in front of our church property (it’s displayed in front of a friend’s house in this picture) we got some irate letters and phone calls. Comments?

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davidfitch on December 2 2010

One of the Best Things Our Sunday Morning Gathering Can Do Is Bore “The Hell” Out of You

Recently, I was meeting in the corner booth (of the local McDonald’s) with the men in my triad (spiritual formation group) and we were talking about our Sunday morning gathering. I said “one of the best things our gathering can do for people is bore the hell out of em.” Sorry if this seems counter intuitive but I nonetheless believe it is true – literally true. Let me explain.

We had just finished discussing the intense pressures of managing all the details it takes to make it through a typical week in our American suburban lives. Some of us discussed how we can’t sleep because we keep remembering things we need to take care of in the middle of the night. We discussed the many mundane little things we have to do just to live normal everyday life – including sending in receipts for expenses, sending in receipts for healthcare flex accounts, filling in never ending forms for a mortagage re-fi, take children to the doctor, sign them up for sports/music programs, and so far we haven’t even got to what we need to do to fulfil responsibilities for our jobs. We’re not complaining so much as reflecting and evaluating. For many of us, this the state of our tormented lives.

Then what about church? Well, it seems church demands some additional things of us well? yes? Or is church the means by which we make God fit in to this crazy pace? For many, I fear, church has become a Christian necessity we perform on Sunday. Sometimes we pastors try to make it more appealing by selling it as a goods and services of the religious kind that might help each person better sustain what has become the rushed existence of our suburban lives. As a side note, sometimes, even more “stupidly,” we try to make church a place to take care of our kids, attract them to Christianity. We actually choose a church because of its appeal to our kids in the midst of this hectic American life because we do not have the time to patiently connect with and present with our kids. Church becomes an accoutrement that enables our families to survive the empty pace of Americana life.

In response to all this, what we may need is the opposite. We need a place where we gather to be trained out of these cultural insanities to encounter the living God.

It is stunning to me how many many people I encounter in a month who cannot even acquire even a modicum of mind space cleared of societal clutter to meet God. We live in a society where God is being organized out of our life experience (and this is most certainly true of our young people). If we don’t have the means to discipline our lives from societal noise, real living with God, listening and responding to his voice is lost from our horizon. God becomes an item to believe, an obligation to take care alongside the many others. And then, and I am dead serious here, other demons take over our lives. Our loneliness/our emptiness becomes filled by multivarious forms of fake pornogaphic substitutes. Demons take over. I see it everywhere.

In the midst of this, sometimes the best place (the only place) I can point people to is the gathering on Sunday morning. Go to the gathering. Not to get pumped up and inspired. Not to take some notes on the three things you can do to improve your Christian life. NO! Go to the gathering to shut down from all the noise – to submit yourself to Christ – the practice of confession – the listening to the Word – the submission to the receiving of the gift for life at the Table – to then once you have seen God again, praise Him as the one true source of your life in Jesus Christ. Go to the gathering to connect to the world that is all around you but somehow you have completely become lost to. Here is where the demons can be revealed and expelled. It is with all this in mind that I suggested that maybe the worst possible sign that our Sunday morning has got off track is to see that our youth are mesmerized (in the wrong way) and actually love listening to an entertaining sermon. For there is some learning here that we must lead out children into if they are not to fall victum to the “demons.” This is when I dared to say that sometimes “one of the best things our gathering can do for people is “bore the hell out of em.”

The challenge at Advent is not to have a show that will entertain everyone into romanticizing Jesus (although celebration is very important – we’re partying at Life on the Vine this weekend). Instead, the challenge at Advent is to learn how to wait for Him. Learn patience and wait. Prepare the place where He can come into our lives. It is in this Spirit that I say, one of the best things our Sunday gatherings can do for us this season is to “bore the hell out of us.” What say you?

Filed under Post-Attractional,Worship and Mission 18 Comments