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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.”

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