Comments on: Church Planting in Post Christendom – Is There Such a Thing? Fuller’s D.Min Course

By: Fitch Asking the Right Questions « Triangular Christianity

Fitch Asking the Right Questions « Triangular Christianity — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:22:14 +0000

[...] attractional church, and missional church. If you are interested in any of these, read his posts here and here (which includes some great interaction with Tim Keller). By the way, Fitch is teaching a [...]

By: Wayne Park

Wayne Park — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:40:40 +0000

sounds like a great class;

as a failed church planter I’ve thought hard about these same questions. Bluntly, I don’t think people (unbelievers) will come no matter how “missional” we claim to be. I do think however when it comes to church planting we do need some critical mass of Christians to start out with to get the boat moving out of port.

I think video venues of mega-churches could be great provided that these have the vision of releasing these into indedpendant congregations. The video thing is only to ween the congregation gradually, but then the church incarnates into the neighborhood with the “site” pastor becoming the lead.

That’s how our current fix worked out and we seem to have a great core group of about 100 who are local, broken, simple and love the local church incarnating in a hurting neighborhood.

By: Michael DeFazio

Michael DeFazio — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 18:02:57 +0000

That’s great! I’m a recent alum of Fuller and I still live less than an hour away, so I may try to attend. I don’t see it on the schedule though. What are the dates? And if I have an MA from there but am not currently enrolled, do you know if I would be able to sit in?

By: JR Woodward

JR Woodward — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 06:30:23 +0000

David,

This sounds like a great class! I may need to see if I can go to it. By the way, I like your new blog design.

By: len

len — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 06:02:54 +0000

So the big box stores drive the mom and pop shops out of business.. But some of the largest losses are only now appearing on the radar..

* the loss of risk taking, innovative and missional imagination in favor of crowd pleasers and personalities
* the loss of wisdom and knowledge in doing church contextually and as covenant community rather than a business
* loss of spiritual elders who approached all of life as formation and who understood the cost of discipleship
* loss of the ability to imagine church as an alternative culture with its own forming practices

In short, when it became “mega” and we learned to clone it, did it remain “church”?