Reclaiming the Mission » 2011

davidfitch on September 27 2011

Tim Keller’s “Gospel Ecosystem”: 3 Dangers In a Noble Idea

In the last year or so, Tim Keller has put forth a bold theory of engaging the city which he calls the Gospel Ecosystem (you can read about it here, here and here). I applaud his effort!! Basically he calls for several elements to work in concert with one another to eventually reach/change an entire city. This is a model of church engaging culture worth paying attention to. These elements include:

1.) A kingdom-centered, city-wide prayer movement that is clearly not the turf of any particular church or network.
2.) Specialty evangelistic ministries, especially university campus and youth ministries.
3.) Justice & mercy initiatives, e.g. Christian involvement in local government, development of specialized nonprofits.
4.) Faith & work initiatives, particularly Gospel-centered fellowships for people with similar vocations, e.g. a regular fellowship of Christian artists.
5.) Educational and family-support organizations.
6.) Leadership development systems.
7.) Influential leaders from varied disciplines collaborating for city transformation, e.g. industry, media, government, church, education.

I’m a fan of Tim Keller. He has a heart and vision for reaching cities. I like that he is provoking a church based strategy for engaging the whole city. I like that he is pushing churches and para-church organizations to work together for the justice of the city. I like the bigness of the vision. I like his “tipping point” idea (learned from Charles Colson) that once we achieve a 10% presence, the entire culture becomes affected on a broad scale towards the gospel. I just think (and here’s the rub) that the way we get to that 10% is from the ground-up as opposed to (what might come off as) a totalist strategy implemented from above.

So I have my qualms (this is a permanent state of discomfort for Ana-baptists in order to maintain their status as Anabaptists). There are some dangers here. I pose them as questions to Tim Keller and the neo-Reformed fans of the Gospel Ecosystem. I mean this post to provoke conversation to further the cause, not as an indictment.

1.) A REDUCED GOSPEL: Is there an agreement on what the gospel is in this ecosystem? This of course is a gospel ecosystem. But is there a singular understanding of the gospel in this Gospel Ecosystem that is focused around the justification of the individual believer in Christ? Not that I don’t believe in this part of God’s salvation, but I don’t believe one can enforce a single understanding of God’s salvation in the world across an entire spectrum as large as a metroplitan city. Yet the fact that Keller calls for the use of specialty evangelistic ministries in no. 2.) and seems to separate this evangelism from justice ministry in no. 3) suggests Keller’s Gospel Ecosystem might be susceptible to a reduction/focus on this one part of the gospel (justification by faith). This could become the singular focus of church plants whereby we miss numerous other entrance points in each local context for the gospel. A reduced gospel proclamation installed theologically across the board limits the power of the gospel in Christ to transform whole structures. Over against this approach, I strongly suggest that the gospel proclamation take shape on the ground out of each specific context. Here we proclaim the victory of God over oppression, the forgiveness of sin and reconciliation with God and the many other aspects of God’s reign in Christ as makes sense (and is compelled by) each local context. I don’t see Keller reducing the gospel, yet I intuit that Keller’s Gospel Ecosystem could be used in this way. Am I intuiting wrong? Is there the danger that this system could promote a bunch of individuals being saved from hell only to go on living comfortably within the existing unjust systems?

2.)AN IMPERIALIST IMPULSE?: Is there an imperialist impulse here that could derail the whole project? This vision of the Gospel Ecosystem is a grand vision. It imagines Christians infesting every area of life in the city. The goal of item no. 7.) is to put key influential leaders in every institution of cultural power including the arts, media, business, government, education. My problem with this is it reads like a “blueprint to takeover the city.” It approaches the city from a position above the city, as one in power. But this is not the way of Jesus. Indeed Jesus is Lord, we are not. So we enter humbly, asking what is God doing. Locally we inhabit each space. There will be times to join in seeing God at work in gov’t. There will be times to withdraw and subvert because “the powers” have taken over. We discern these things humbly as a local infestation of the Kingdom. We allow the politics of Kingdom righteousness to be made manifest and birth the Kingdom in contagion into the city. Now I know from reading Keller’s Lausanne speech on Gospel Ecosystems, that he knows the theology of “Resident Aliens” (1 Pet 2) well. But is there not a potential for some unhealthy triumphalism here in the Gospel Ecosystem? Are there the seeds of another Jerry Falwell movement here of another kind? Just asking?

A byproduct of this approach is that it subconsciously assumes these systems are in themselves good. They just need to be reformed by good Christians. That by changing leadership these structures can be directed to their God ordained purposes. In fact these structures may have to be done away with entirely. Maybe the large City gov’t system does not need to be redeemed. Maybe it needs to be dismantled entirely. It is so corrupt, taken over by the evil powers, that it must come down. It may be heresy to say, but maybe the public schools just need to end. A new system of local schooling, church schooling, home schooling would be God’s answer to the city. On the other hand, maybe pubic education can be redeemed!! Of course, these calls are not our calls. Jesus is Lord of all. But putting people in positions of power tends to assume the existing structures are from God and we just need to transform them. This is the “tell” that the Gospel Ecosystem is Reformed in impulse (Kuyperian). Such a Kuyperianism can be blind to when the structures in power have in fact become given over to the powers. We then might have to subvert them instead of participating in them.

3.) INDIVIDUALISM: Is there an individualism here that does not recognize “the principalities and powers”? There seems to be an assumption in Keller’s Ecosystem (from no. 7.) that if we send individuals into the various spheres of power, e.g. arts, industry, media, government, church, education, that they shall become influencers instead of being influenced. But this is anathema to an Ana-baptist like moi. For we know that power corrupts. That indeed some systems (NOT ALL!!) are too far gone. That sometimes (NOT ALL THE TIME!) participation in them at all is participation in its sin and the corruption thereby. How shall individuals not be absorbed into the systems that have become the very enfleshment of the unjust powers. Some of us are literally asking this about some of the structures of U.S. society. For sure this is an extreme, but it is becoming less and less of an aberration. Many of our systems (including church systems) corrupt us with money/salary and make any resistance from inside almost impossible. Is there a healthy awareness of this dynamic in the Gospel Ecosystem? Or will we see more Christians ala George Bush enter the system only to look more like the system 8 years later?

IN SUMMARY, I urge caution in a church’s strategy for the city. Let the words “seek the welfare of the city” (said from Exile Jer 29:7) drive us to cultivate the Kingdom humbly in each neighborhood – a local expression of the gospel on-the-ground in people’s everyday lives or work, family, government, education. These expressions, by their presence, shall then be able to call into question the unjust powers, as well as cooperate with the structures and bring life to them when they are of God and His Mission. Let us pay attention to Bryan Stone’s exhortation that ?”the evangelism of Jesus … is unintelligible apart from the announcement of a new government to which we are called to convert, embodied in such concrete practices as the rejection of violence, justice for the poor, love to enemies, economic sharing and the relativizing of national and family allegiances”(p.149) By infesting society on the ground in this fashion, God will surely bring in His Kingdom to the city.

I am sure Tim Keller’s speech at Lausanne could be seen as just this kind of strategy. Yet there lies within it, some seeds for undermining the Kingdom. So I offer these questions with the hope of furthering the work of Tim Keller, and the idea of the Gospel Ecosystem.

BTW: I think the Gospel Ecosystem should be in conversation with CCDA. I like the way CCDA a.) centers their efforts in a wholistic gospel of Jesus Christ, a.) emphasize entering humbly within a locale, and c.) seek God’s justice in and through Christ as a communal development under the Lordship of Christ.

What say you? Over paranoid ana-baptist? Am I misreading the Gospel Ecosystem?

Filed under Neo-Anabaptist,Neo-Reformed,Post-Christendom,Uncategorized 16 Comments

davidfitch on September 20 2011

“Our Children Don’t Get Anything Out of the Service”: Worship as Training for Life

I have a six year old. Truth be told, if we would let him, he would sit in front of the television for hours consuming hours of programming about sharks. But we (Rae and I) don’t allow it. “One hour a day!” we say. Why? Because, if we do let him watch that much TV, the child’s brain will turn to mush. He will never learn how to engage the social world. He will be become passive. He will probably gain a lot of weight. He will learn to live life from the vantage point of the remote control.

Most parents know this instinctively. Entertaining television programming about sharks can certainly teach a child a lot of stuff about the sea world. But it can only go so far in terms of real life. The child must learn to read, learn to listen/pay attention to a real human voice, learn to stay focused without screen change every .4 seconds. I’m sure my son has A.D.D. or A. D. H. D. It is the brain patterns most easily developed within our media driven culture. But I must nurture my child into real social existence. Or else he too shall become a statistic. He too will ever lack motivation for anything else but the next immediate titillation. This is why for me, when my son says “but daddy, I just don’t get anything out of the worship service,” I am not the least bit surprised. It is a teaching moment – not the occasion to run to the next mega church Disney service.

These are the reasons I get sad when I hear a parent tell me “my children don’t get anything out of the service, we need to look a another church” There are good reasons to seek another gathering of people. Mission is one of them, not a childs’ attention span. Don’t get me wrong eh? If the church as a whole is flat-out unengaging. If the church does not attempt to incorporate children into worship. If the church lacks hospitality for children, if the church itself is just another TV show passively consumed, then yes we have a problem here. Parents should should ask why and ask how we the pastors are leading the situation.

It would serve us well to look at the cultural paradyms behind the statement “my children don’t get anything out of the service.”

We should be asking, “What counts as education?” American society says “learning outcomes.” The accumulation of information/skills and the ability to use that information/skills. The church says education is more than this, it is the acquiring of a way of life, skills to live life with God. “How does one learn a way of life?” American Society says through a set of cognitive progressions (stages of growth per brain development). The church says, yes there are cognitive progressions, but it is also a deeper understanding/perception of moral and spiritual realities of life that comes through immersion into a community. The U.S. education system and culture industries basically buy into and promote the ways of (what I have called) American Society and it is everywhere. It is the way of most university educated people and the average person on the street. Does the church (and our children) even stand a chance?

There’s enough literature out there now on what we have learned about churches and child development and the educational ways of (what I have called) the American Society. Kenda Creasy Dean is now famous for showing how the churches of the US are shaping children into a moral deist therapeutic faith. American children, in other words, grow up to think of God as a personal moral therapist available on call when needed to solve a problem and make life happy. I’ve seen this happen in teenagers lives for years.

So, at this point, what I do when parents say to me ““Our Children Don’t Get Anything Out of the Service” is a gentile nudge around three statements. I ask these parents, please remember three things:

1.) There’s an encounter with the living God here at our worship service. Your son/daughter need to be coached into that reality. They need to be prepared for the reality that we gather into His presence so that we might in turn know His presence in every area of our everyday lives. Let us join together then, we the church and the parents, to help our children become people sensitive to the encounter with the Almighty Forgiving and Saving/Renewing God in our lives and in our daily walk.

2.) But Discerning God is Rarely Immediately Obvious. God is hidden. So your son and/or daughter and our church need to learn and be sensitized to discerning the presence of God. If we put God into sound bites or hyped up worship experiences, then your child will learn instinctually that church is the only place he or she can find God. And this simply isn’t true. In our world, especially given the dominant educational and media frameworks, God has been framed out of our sightlines. God has become a privatized internal experience. Part of being in worship together is the place for all of us, including our children, to learn how to discern God. It takes subtle encouragement, asking questions, nurturing in the right direction, not pushing too hard. We the church and the parent must come together to help our children or else they will become moral therapeutic deists (I love that nomenclature J).

3.) Children Ultimately Will Follow/Imitate Their Parents and Adults They Can Respect – therefore one’s children and how they are progressing can function as an excellent diagnostic for our own level of engagement with God. I must be careful to not overstate this because children all develop differently. But let’s face it, eh? If we are forcing our children to do something we are ourselves are disconnected from, it ain’t going to happen. If we send our children to a more “passive” entertaining form of worship service, they will ultimately learn to become observers of the Christian faith not livers of the way of Jesus and His Kingdom. If they see our life with God as something we do when it offers us something pragmatically advantageous to the American life, it will become something to be used when helpful, put on a shelf when not, they too will do this. Any differential between what we do and how we live as a family could prejudice them for a lifetime against Christianity as a false form of ideological existence.

I have heard this phrase “Our Children Don’t Get Anything Out of the Service” several times a year for all the years I’ve been in the ministry. Each time we her it, I think we pastors should encourage parents to get it out among other parents, pastors and talk about it. Put it out there and carefully let us together nurture a culture of Christ for children. We really need to see this as everybody’s blessing. How do you handle this in your own home? Pastors what do you do with this complaint inevitably comes to your church? We need help if we are to get through the crisis of our children walking away from Jesus in our times.

Tags: Children in Mission

Filed under Children in Mission,consumerism 15 Comments

davidfitch on September 14 2011

The Compelling Question of Discipleship: This Year’s Missional Learning Commons

This week, I am at a faculty retreat for my seminary (er I should say the seminary where I serve). So I’ve been thrown off my normal blogging rhythms this week. It seems like there has been so much to blog about but so little time to do it. Nonetheless, I’ll be back at it next week!!

In the place of a normal blog post, let me just get out there that we have the annual Missional Learning Commons coming to town Oct 28-29 in the Chicago area. This year our focus will be discipleship. To help us with the Commons, we’ll have Mike Breen hanging with us for the day. Mike’s book Building a Discpleship Culture has been an influence at the Vine, where I co-pastor, as we’ve been working through this issue for over a year. I have learned much from him. We’re having a day on discipleship at Northern Seminary with missional practicioner Mike Breen on Oct 28th. Mike has consented to extend his stay in order to be with us at the Missional Learning Commons. I’m grateful for his willingness to do that. I actually have alot to discuss (and even debate!!) with him on in terms of the practice of discipleship, mission and the Kingdom.

I think many of us feel that traditional means and ways of thinking about discipleship in N American church are grossly inadequate for the church in Mission. We must think through what it means to initiate and mentor new believers in the kingdom of God and the dynamic relationship of me personally with a God at work in the world. This is what we will be getting at this year at the Commons.

The aim of the Missional Learning Commons has always been to provide a collaborative learning environment for missional churches to share stories, discuss ideas, and encourage one another for the sake of incarnating the Gospel in their contexts. It will be the same this time as well. It might look to some of us “grassroots” organizers that the Missional Learning Commons is looking more like a traditional conference. I don’t think so. At least that’s not what we’re aiming for. So I invite all missional practicioners of any kind to join in. I’ll be there the whole time. I’m hoping my wife and son can come to. I want to BE WITH like minded people on Mission … that’s what I like about this weekend every year!! (It always happens on the weekend before Halloween BTW).

This year, the focus is discipleship. Here are some of the questions that will be shaping our time together:

What does discipleship actually look like in our lives?
Does the gospel we preach naturally and organically lead people into discipleship, or does it feel like an extra-curricular activity?
How should the call to make disciples shape and guide our church practices: what we do, and how we do it?
What is the significance of discipleship as the core component of the formation of Christian leaders?

We will hear from and have discussions built around on-the-ground practitioners. Mike Breen and the team from 3DM will be hanging out with us to share some of what they have learned and help facilitate our conversations by asking some provoking questions. It will not be a conference where they speak as plenary speakers. If you want that you’ll have to come to the thing they’re doing at Northern the day before./

The MLC this year is sponsored by the Ecclesia Network and the Baptist General Association of Virginia who helped us generously with providing some funds for child care etc.

If you have ANY QUESTIONS, SUSPICIONS, or ANY THING ELSE you need/want to put forward for the organizers, please use the comments on this post to do so. We’ll try to respond!! You can register here to come to the Commons. It costs practically nothing (10 bucks) I pray God’s blessings on this year’s Missional Learning Commons!

Filed under Missional learning commons 2 Comments

davidfitch on September 6 2011

Church Planter as Mythic Hero: 5 Reasons Not To Go This Route

There is a standard storyline in American evangelical church that goes like this: Young man is a natural leader (these leaders are always male – in particular “alpha male”). Young man gets saved and has powerful conversion experience. Young man has a “vision” to start a church to change the world. Young man in mesmerizing fashion begins to challenge his friends and acquaintances into coming along with him to plant this church “wherever God might call” (read “launch team” here). Young man visits some prime spots and says “we looked around this place and found no vibrant alive church here” (this irritates all the other small churches to no end). Young man puts out a video and raises money. They purchase a state of the art sound/video system. Young man is attractive, a weight lifter and therefore attracts all the younger people from the launch team’s various churches to come to this new one. Then the launch team does something positively out of the ordinary/ even outrageous that draws attention to the church launch. Media takes notice. Enough people disgruntled/disengaged from other churches show up. A crowd (especially a young crowd) draws a crowd (most people don’t go to a church for the service – they are seeking connection). A mega church is born. Young man is lifted up as the exemplar holy man leader. People all talk about him with reverence (even though few people actually know him). From here the staff works tirelessly producing programing to keep the activity going. The pastor has to produce enough catchy sermon series (which is why he often hires marketing type people on his staff) to keep the illusion ongoing that something positive is happening in people’s lives. A slick video production crew has to find the best stories (out of thousands of people we only need one) and produce it so that the hundreds of people gathering can vicariously participate (hyper-reality is the best way to experience Christianity without having to change your life). Often this young man will build staffs of other people around him who idolize him. Dissent is rarely encouraged. Mantras are generated that create an “ideological” consensus, a buzz: “One Church, One Mission, One Goal” or something like that.

From here the aura of our mythic hero is enhanced through books, websites, DVD’s, going on speaking tours. And somewhere along the line, we produce this story and make it so appealing that every American young seminarian thinks he has to be one of America’s top 100 fastest growing churches, or he is a failure.

If you are a church planter I’d like to offer 5 reasons not to do this.

1.) This way of “church” too easily becomes about the mythic hero and not about who Jesus is and what God is doing in and through the work of Jesus Christ in the world for the salvation of the world (and so when he leaves, dies, or has a moral failure – the church collapses – proving it was not really a viable church in the first place)

2.) The mythic hero becomes elevated upon a pedestal. His life now too easily becomes an image to be managed as opposed to a real life lived among a people. This will make the mythic hero’s life into a living hell (eventually).

3.) This route of church planting has been tried. There are many mega churches around as a result. Many of these mythic heroes are in their fifties now. This approach worked well in the 70’s and 80’s as the country was full of disenchanted Catholics, Lutherans, and Bible church boomers. It makes little to no sense as the “market” for disenchanted pre-churched people is shrinking in the North East, North West, Other Urban Centers and Canada. It still works however in the southern United States and to some degree in Alberta Canada. So, if you choose to go this way, know your chances of success are shrinking. And you are now being put into the position of “competing for that market.” In my mind, there is nothing worse than being caught up in competition with other churches for attenders. It’s disingenuous and bad (very bad) for your character.

4.) The mythic hero will become a workaholic. His whole identity will become the success of this “enterprise.” His life and ministry will not incorporate everyday relationships as part of a normal healthy life (because of reason no. 2). As a result, he will become a candidate for massive burnout, abusive behavior and/or moral failure before he is fifty.

5.) Because the mythic hero has no relationships (because people everywhere call him “pastor” with the aura of the man lifted up on pedestal), the mythic hero must suppress any doubts he has about life, ministry, God or even himself. He has no relationships to work out everyday life, stress, and sin. Because of this coccon, the mythic hero becomes incapable of receiving criticism apart from a well scripted defense and deflection. This is also is a recipe for a nervous breakdown.

Now don’t get me wrong. There are many sincere believers and Kingdom-seeking “young men” who are involved in church-plants that look like this. I just think we need to be careful – real careful. There are plenty of church planter videos out there (just google for them) that script this mythology. They need to be chastened. It is very tempting to look at these Hollywood crafted videos and get sucked in. I say “don’t do it.” Look to the simple ways God works to change lives and to know this: the revolution, the real revolution, the revolution that will move beyond a cultural evangelicalism, the revolution of the Spirit, where lives, towns and villages are changed, this revolution will not be televised. It will happen low, on the ground, beneath the lights, in the daily cultivation of life in the Kingdom. And occasionally, a mega church might result (as something we never could have predicted ).

If anyone has any other reasons not to go this route (no cynicism please) please comment eh? Has anyone seen these examples of video-ography? Your thoughts?

Filed under Church Planting 61 Comments

davidfitch on September 2 2011

A Deeper Salvation is Gaining Traction in Mainline Evangelicalism: Scot McKnight’s New Book

Much has been written about the reduction of the gospel in the last ten years (by myself and others). It is inadequate to understand our salvation in Christ as ONLY OR PRIMARILY “a decision” by which we acknowledge our sin, put our trust in Christ, and receive pardon for sin/ eternal life. This is an element of our salvation. But the salvation we enter into in Christ is so much more. It seems this idea is close to going mainstream in American evangelicalism. Here, in this promo video, Scot McKnight makes the case for widening and deepening the way we preach, explain, present, initiate people into God’s salvation in Christ. I’m looking forward to his book (I also like the shaved head look. Scot has got the right shaped head for the Jordan look. Agreed?).