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.
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Hi David
This past weekend, via Allelon, I listened to Eugene Peterson thrice over, speaking on ‘doing the right thing in the wrong way’. The link is at the bottom of this post – will take on hour to listen to, and is well worth it. Wonderfully delivered, it is a message of the danger of worldly ways corrupting how we live out our Christianity, and the need to ‘pull some steers out of the stampede of spirituality’, and to settle them down from the adrenalin rush into a spirituality that though urgent in intent, is patient in outlook, and so lived in a understanding of long term spiritual formation. Based on “I am the way, the truth and the life”, he points out that if we seek only Jesus truth, and are devoid of the Jesus way, that we will fall short of living the Jesus life. The teaching affirms all the key points you speak to.
Here is the page: scroll down to Stories – Eugene Peterson – Why Spiritual Formation Is Not An Option
http://www.allelon.org/listen_watch/audio.cfm
Thank you for this post. You’ve talked about some ideas here that I’ve been mulling in my own mind for the past few months. The 2 specific ideas I especially appreciate here are that our witness is in our everyday lives and the need for small group experiences.
Your point that our witness is about how we live in our everyday lives can not be stated strongly enough. It is indeed in our lives that God is made real to whoever is around us. You go from there to make an interesting point that it is more than individual character, it’s the character that we as Christians exhibit together in the world. I’ve got to admit you’re right and it’s kind of scary. We really are all in this together.
Which brings me to the other point you make about the need for smaller groups of people within the church. I think you’re right that developing real character that is forged in deep relationship with Jesus and His followers just can’t happen during a once a week mega service. Those may be good for some things but we need that one to one interaction with God and His Word together with other believers that is only possible in a small setting of some kind.
These 2 truths do lead, as you say “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.”
Totally agree. For at least two generations, evangelicalism has labored under the notion that correct belief was the standard by which Christians were to be measure. The reality is that character trumps thought. I look forward to reading you book.
Brilliant post David. As I read it I noted the Hauerwasian idea of “communities of character,” and was reminded of one of his contemporaries, the little known, late, Dr. James McClendon. Dr. McClendon’s works were central to my masters thesis, especially his understanding of “convictions.”
It was from him that I learned that beliefs and actions mutually inform one another and are therefore mutually formative. They combine to form our convictions. This, I believe, is a fantastic recovery from the dualistic thinking of modernity. This dualistic thinking, regarding evangelism, not only allowed for the diminishment of discipleship, but distorted our understanding and practice of it in the first place.
I’ll say it this way, it wasn’t just our misunderstanding of evangelism that caused problems, but the way we practiced evangelism was equally problematic as it further shaped our Christian identity and our convictions about what it meant to be “saved.”
Your idea of understanding churches as “communities of formation,” is spot on in my opinion. More problematic, I’d say, is helping existing congregations see and feel their need to deconstruct (to use a philosophical term), or repent (to use a theological one) from the assumptions, understandings, and practices they have inherited from the Enlightenment and Christendom.
I am ripe for an education in how to help this happen!
Didn’t mean to make that anonymous, sorry.
Evangelicals are good at programs and ministries. I will not be surprised if we find that in five to ten years evangelicals have moved from highly skilled technical programs of personal decision evangelism to equally highly skilled technical programs of character formation. I would much rather see communities that have learned to focus in humility on Christ around the Eucharistic table, and from such a position seek to gather others with them to share in their common meal, than see programs or techniques used to develop and build character. Christian character is rooted in humility before the cross, and in the gift of God’s grace that comes to us, most often it seems, in the friendships that form around that table. If evangelicals replace “witness” with “evangelism” while still worshiping at the foot of technique, we will have gained nothing.
Here’s my “program” for the church to regain its witness in America and the West: a few decades of humble friendship centered around the bread and the cup.
Thanks David for the wonderful posts.
Great comment Sam. I think it’s because of the point that you are making that both David and I (http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/2007/11/what-willowcreeks-reveal-reveals-on.html –http://lifeasmission.com/blog/archives/460have raised flags about the response of Willowcreek to the REVEAL study that they have done. The feeling that they are thinking merely in terms of replacing one set of techniques for other ones.
Your suggestion of a sustained practice of gathering humbly around the table is, I think, a brilliant one. I don’t think it’s enough however and I am wondering what you’d say to the following…
If we are in need of communities of formation as David suggests, then yes, a humble gathering around the Lord’s table ought to be a central practice for the body. But there are certainly other practices which perhaps ought to mark the lives of our congregations – practices like confessing our sins to one another, serving alongside each other, praying with and for each other, wrestling with and seeking to embody the narrative of Scripture. These practices (and perhaps others) I think, flow out of what it means to be the people of God for the sake of the world.
Is this in keeping with the heart of your comment? Does it add too much?
Thanks for your thoughts.
JRROZKO, I think you are right that there are more practices that mark our lives and shape our witness, but my concern is that moving from current evangelicalism to a church shaped by faithful practices without first exorcising the demons of program and technique will leave us with just the same beast but with a different name.
Of course baptism is our entrance into the church which is itself a practice that starts us out on a footing of humility (infant baptism tends to rob us of this necessary effect, but that’s a different matter). Our new identity is received as we are received into the community. The Eucharist presents us with a broken body that
makes our sins evident each time we gather around the table, and confession, prayer, worship similarly ought to submit us to a God whose grace comes as a gift. What I am trying to get at is that faithful church practices are ones that are made faithful by the grace they embody (sacraments?) and the humility they require of us as we learn to receive the gracious gifts of God.
Evangelicals need to throw away their leadership magazines and their technique manuals; they need to dethrone their blasphemous “worship” pop-stars, and return–for a few decades–to the table. If we are concerned with having an impact on our culture I know of no other, better way than through simple humble gatherings around the table.
Very good thoughts on this, David. My only concern is that when the word “witness” is used, lots of protestants will hear the default meaning of “to do evangelism (sometimes with use of certain techniques)”. I get the sense you are trying to avoid that by using it in its noun form. I don’t know for sure, but it might be worthwhile being more explicit about this difference. Perhaps that will come up as you keep writing about it.
For me, it brings back all the times when I used to hear the word “witness” in the ev. church setting, and how much it used to strike terror into my heart, because I knew I wasn’t capable of swaying people to “accept the Lord” (arguing them into it, but *nicely*), and it was simply a source of guilt and failure for me.
Dana Ames
JR and Sam … I resonate with your thouhts .. as with sam, we are ever fighting the urge to program, to organize something into a system … nonethless the practices are essential .. sitting around the Eucharist humbly … is truly a formative time … at Life on the Vine we spend 45 minutes doing this every First Sunday … at a time separate from our regular gathering …to me it defines us … then we have Eucharist as part of our gathering around the Word the other 3 Sundays …
Dana … i hear ya of the “terror” of evangelism in ev. church setting … and yes it often was called “witnessing”.