Imagination in the Life of the Congregation (Part 2 of the conversation)

*Note: Please refer to my blog post from 8/18/10 titled "A Little Imagination, Please!" before reading this post.

Now, to extend the analogy from yesterday to the church...

Imagination Robbers
I had a soccer coach in high school that would often punish members of the team for being joy robbers.  If someone didn't celebrate with a teammate, cheated to block his goal in practice, or committed some other minor infraction, a whistle would blow, joy robber would be shouted, and push ups would follow.

It is my belief that there are many imagination robbers in the Christianity of the west. Therefore, like my coach, I am blowing the whistle, calling out the fouls, and asking the church to do some hard work to correct the situation. If we are not careful about how we train leaders for and form communities of Christian faith, we will rob them of the life-giving imagination that can come through the Spirit of God. Just a few of the imagination robbers I have seen:

• Conferences - every successful church out there seems to have a conference that, though they deny it, really communicates at some point "Here is how you can be more like us." True, they seek to inspire imagination, but it is an imagination limited by the model/style of the church telling the stories.
• Sermons - we've all heard sermons that take complex topics and boil them down into three easy answers, steps, or points.  The heavy focus on application leaves little work for the listener to actually do.  Simply listen, accept what you hear, and put it into practice.
• Small Group - study guides are a huge money maker for Christian publishers, a big time saver for congregation leaders, and a crutch for small groups (leaders, hosts, and members alike). Study guides are often also a killer of imagination as they propose the right way to study the text is to ask and answer seven discussion questions in order and then to apply it to life.
• Christian Literature - in much the same way successful churches run  conferences, successful ministers write books about their ministry (i.e. Rick Warren, Joel Olsteen, Bob Russell, etc.) I have always hated reading these books because they always tell me how to do ministry just like the author and I have never wanted to be the author (not that they are bad people, ministers, or authors - their just not me and I am not them).
• Church programs - maybe you have been in different scenarios, but the church programs I have been a part of throughout my life were often either copied from another church, created by a minister and then imposed upon the church, or simply done because they had always been done. Many a good Christian faithfully serve in these programs (and good for them!). These servants never or rarely are told they possess within them the imagination to make changes, create new ministries, or take part in completely new movements of God in this world.

Returning Imagination to the Imaginative
Imagination in our board games developed as the players learned together the rules of the game, put initial strategies into practice, reflected upon the experience, spent individual brain time thinking about how to play better, and played again, repeating the process of reflection, development, and innovation after each game.  Might the same not be true in the church?

What would it look like to form a community of faith around the word of God as the book that describes the story of the world and allow that community to take first steps in living out their faith together?  Then, what would it look like to encourage that community to reflect upon its initial attempts, discuss how it might be more faithful to the story of God in the Bible, and plan on making a second attempt?  How can we foster ongoing conversations in the church that foster imagination about how to live as the faith community? What is the appropriate context for presenting ideas, reflecting upon what has worked and what has not, how the community is shaped and how it is not, and what victory/success might look like and what it might not?  How do we give up control of the church enough to allow the common Christian to be filled with the imagination and innovations of the Spirit?

For now, I leave you to imagine some possible answers to these questions and to comment with your thoughts about my ideas.

Tomorrow, I'll discuss some implications from the following point made in a book I recently read - Jesus did not build a church (institutional organization), he built a community of disciples.   (Don't worry, it won't be anti-institutional babble that can be quite common and, sometimes, quite mindless).

A Little Imagination, Please!

So, the wife and I are big board game fans (some say nerds). Not only do we love to crush the opposition in a good nerd game (i.e. Dominion, Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico, or Agricola) but we also really enjoy teaching our friends and family to play these games as well. I've noticed the way we teach games is drastically different based upon the number of times we ourselves have played the game.

The First Time We Play/Teach a Game
The very first time we play a game, we usually have to teach ourselves and our friends who are with us. This always take a long time, but leads to good interaction as questions are asked, preliminary strategies are developed, and rules are clarified. As the game progresses, we learn together what we are doing right/wrong and can all make adjustments accordingly. At the end of the game we will all usually debrief, talk about the winning strategy, and consider what me might do differently the next time. Even though it is a bit slow, this process of discovering, experimenting, and learning leads us all to play the game better in the future and to appreciate the shared experience of learning. It is a journey of discovery that develops our aptitudes and skills and strategic planning.

Teaching The Game After We Have Already Played
If we teach a game after we have played it (especially if we have played it a lot) we always tend to not only teach the rules, but to teach our understanding of the strategy involved in the game. At first, I thought we were being generous in sharing our insights, ideas, and learning. As I look back, though, I have to wonder if we haven't really been limiting the development of our friends' strategy, imagination, and creativity. Instead of letting them discover how they are best suited to play the game, we impose upon them our preferred patterns of thinking and playing. This basically creates mini-models of our strategy, preference, and creativity.

While creating replicas of ourselves in game playing is not bad in and of itself, I have been wondering lately if it is limiting. Didn't we enjoy the process of learning the game and building a strategy off our own understanding of the rules, belief about how to succeed, and observation of what seemed to work or not work in other's strategies? If we so much enjoyed the journey of discovery and if we were able to develop our strategic imagination solely by gathering around the rule book with the other players, would this not perhaps be a better way to inspire strategic imagination in those we teach how to play a given game?

Our Recent Attempts to Teach
Just in the last week, Andrea and I taught our good friends Rick and Melanie two games new to them, but not to us - Agricola and St. Petersburg (two of my favorites). We tried our hardest not to give any strategic advice. While I cannot say we were 100% effective in avoiding advice, we did pretty well. At the end of the game of Agricola, I won, Andrea came in 2nd by a few points, and Melanie and Rick were a distant 3rd and 4th respectively. The results were not surprising - we never expect newbies to win a game the first time out and are quite offended if they do!

The next Sunday at church I asked Melanie what she thought about the new game. Knowing she had been kind of frustrated during game play due to the inability to correct glaring strategic deficiencies she put into place early in the game, I was not at all surprised to hear she had thought about it all weekend - wondering what she could have done differently, how her next game might go, etc. Not only did she think about the game, she and Rick were eager to play again and were even considering adding it to upcoming gift lists.

Game two (on Sunday, just a few days after game one) ended with the mostly the same results. I won again, by a landslide actually, by benefiting from something Melanie missed. Her miss allowed me to get way ahead, never to be caught. Andrea and Melanie tied for 2nd, with Melanie scoring much better than the first time. Rick did miserably, scoring lower than the first time he played (which also happened to me in my first two games). Here are the respective moods of everyone after the game:
*Scott* - excited because he did very well, glad Rick and Melanie picked up the game play, if not the strategy too.
*Andrea* - mad as heck because I crushed her. I love my competitive wife.
*Melanie* - proud of her new high score, somewhat determined never to again make the same mistake that allowed me to win by so much.
*Rick* - ticked and in his words, "miserable." Beneath the sour feeling of playing so poorly, all at the table knew he would play again if it weren't to late in the evening. The failure just inspired more determination and new imagination at what might work.

The Sameness of Shared Strategy
A few remarks to close. If Andrea and I shared our strategies with Rick and Melanie and if they had followed them, we would have all ended up with similar results. In a game, this is simply unacceptable. You do not play a game for two hours to simply have a 4-way tie! Not only would our results have been the same, but our experiences would have been the same as well. Also, we would have frustrated each other to know end as we all tried to use limited resources in the same way, effectually blocking others from fully realizing their strategy. In the end, when we share our strategies in games, everything looks the same. Instead of being given the diverse experience of people from different levels of knowledge bringing themselves to the table to play, evaluate, and react, we get a bunch of robots all trying to do the same thing and only the person who is lucky enough to be in the right position wins - detracting from their joy of victory and frustrating the others to no end.

From The Strategy of Games to Imagination in the Church
In the interest of keeping blogs short, I'll end this post here. In the near future I will apply these reflections to how the church has bought into sharing strategies and the sameness that squeezes out God-given imagination. For now, I'll leave you to imagine how this might apply to living out the Christian life in a faith community.

Shifting our view of Church From Place to a People - Part 2

I would be remiss not to include the following from Warren as well (page 235):

We do not need to choose between "go" and "come"; both are valid forms of evangelism. Some people will be reached by attraction, while others will be reached by confrontation. A balanced, healthy church should provide opportunities and programs for both. At Saddleback, we use both approaches. We say "Come and see!" to ou rcommunity, but to our core we say, "God and tell!"

Agreed.

But I believe good ecclesiology (study of the church) must lead us to conclude the church is God's people in God's places for God's purposes. God's places and purposes are not limited to our buildings.

Shifting our view of Church From Place to a People

I've been reading Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Church in preparation for exams at Luther Seminary. The assignments is to identify strengths and weakness of not only the book but Warren's views of church and models, etc.

Overall, I'm a pretty big fan of Warren. In my opinion, he offers the best of what the mega-church, attractional model of ministry and evangelism can be. Warren and Saddleback do lots of great stuff, but that isn't really the point of this blog.

On page 220 (of my version), Warren writes,

The first line of Saddleback's vision statement says, 'It is the dream of a place where the hurting, the hopeless, the discouraged, the depressed, the frustrated, and the confused can find love, acceptance, guidance, and encouragement.'

This is a pretty good, evangelistic view of a church as a place where people can have the good news of Jesus Christ applied as a salve to their wounds from this world and, hopefully, place their faith in Christ. In my opinion, this view of the church is much more mature than many you will find in the USA these days, but I believe it is still limited in scope.

I want you to imagine for a second how we can make this statement of the church even more powerful and influential. Warren and Saddleback meet thousands of needs a year at their church campus, but this is a limited . How can we take this statement and make it hundreds of thousands, or even millions? It would be very difficult to have facilities for so many people and to attract so many people to one location (though if anyone could do it, Warren is probably your guy).

What if we changed a few words in their vision statement. Look at the old and new below:
OLD - "It is the dream of a place where the hurting, the hopeless, the discouraged, the depressed, the frustrated, and the confused can find love, acceptance, guidance, and encouragement."

NEW - It is the dream of a people who will seek out and go to the hurting, the hopeless, the discouraged, the depressed, the frustrated, and the confused in order to show them love, acceptance, guidance, and encouragement.

Rick Warren has done a lot for Christianity in this country. Imagine what more could be done if we build on his good work and change our view of church as a place to a view of church as a people.

Understanding Missional - Interview Results Part 3 of 4

The interviews I conducted for a research project in early 2010 resulted in four key findings. In parts 1 and 2 of my blogs on these findings, I noted that missional practitioners seem to have a focus on or passion for renewed theology and reshaped leadership. Part 3 of the Interview Results reveals a new topic: re-prioritization of holistic discipleship.

Reprioritization of Holistic Discipleship
Another pragmatic approach revealed to be true in the missional communities led by the respondents is a reprioritization holistic discipleship in the church. Reacting to the programmatic and event-driven nature of the contemporary church, a majority of respondents stated that the church needs to again make reproducing disciples its primary focus. Respondents also claimed that the church needs not only to reprioritize discipleship, but also to abandon discipleship approaches based only on knowledge and add instead include approaches that include experience-based discipleship as well knowledge based discipleship. Though not every respondent used the terminology of experienced-based discipleship, six of the seven spoke about viewing discipleship as holistic, implying that discipleship pertains to every area of life. More specifically, missional discipleship means teaching people who to live on mission for God in every area of their life and in everything they do. One respondent said that in his old, contemporary church he would meet an actor and say, “I need to get this actor onto my drama team.” With a missional mindset, though, the same respondent would now say, “I need to help this actor be the best actor he can be so he can be a missionary to other actors.”

The strongest belief about discipleship that was revealed by the data collected from the interviews pertains to community. Every respondent remarked about the importance of community for the disciple and for the discipleship process. Community to the respondents is not found in small groups, church programs, once a week worship gatherings. Instead, community is about developing a rhythm of life together with others. This rhythm requires sacrifice of time and frequent proximity. The rhythm includes doing mission together on a regular basis as well as other common discipleship tools such as Bible study, prayer, and fellowship. A vast majority of contemporary churches also teach the importance of community, claiming that it is the place where discipleship happens best. Missional churches do not claim discipleship happens best in community. Instead, they teach that disciples live out the mission of God best in community.

Understanding Missional - Interview Results Part 2 of 4

Review
Yesterday I concluded that the 7 interviews done with missional practitioners from across the country revealed that the key belief driving the missional movement was "the belief that the Western Church has lost its true identity." The way these practitioners said the church could regain its true identities is "through the renewal of theology, the reshaping of leadership, and the reprioritization of holistic discipleship and entering the long-term transition process." Part 1 (posted on 5/4) detailed what a renewed theology might look like. Part 2, todays post, details a reshaped leadership.

Reshaped Leadership
Since each of the respondents interviewed was involved in a local missional movement at some level, it is not surprising that they offered practical steps the church can take to regain its true identity as well as theoretical frameworks for regaining the lost identity. Six of the seven respondents either alluded to or directly stated the belief that the church needs to reshape the way it does leadership. Respondents’ comments imply that a reshaped leadership begins with a shared or team-based approach. Speaking to this point, one respondent described the leadership team as his friends with whom he spends every Sunday afternoon relaxing, playing games, and sharing food. This family or friendly feeling seemed to permeate the majority of leadership teams described by the respondents. As friends and family, it was natural for leaders to share responsibility, make decisions together, and develop a more flattened hierarchy than is often seen in contemporary churches. The reason a flattened hierarchy metaphor frequently surfaced as made clear by one respondent who is leading a church planting church. He said, “If you want to build a big church, all you need are two to three superstar staff members, but if you want to develop a church planting movements, you need to be reproducing lots of leaders who share the vision, values, and direction of the team.” Building a team of this manner happens best for those in the missional movement when they are friends, peers, and family instead of bosses and employees.

Respondents also suggested a reshaped leadership focuses upon equipping people for ministry. While many contemporary churches would also say the same of leadership, those in the missional movement seem to take the belief one step further. In fact, one respondent admitted that he was actually out of a job because he had just equipped someone to take over his role in the congregation. In order to be true to his title as equipper, he stepped aside to let the new person fill the role, leaving himself without a source of income.

The radical stepping aside of the respondent aforementioned reveals one of the strongest beliefs about leadership in the missional movement: leaders cannot only teach their followers from the pulpit, in the classroom, or through curriculum and Bible studies. Instead, the respondents strongly claimed that missional leaders must model missional living for the members of the congregation. Six of the seven respondents made this point about leadership, each one of them telling stories about leaders who were able to do much more than anyone imagined simply because they modeled what missional living might look like for their followers. Though not as strongly stated, it was often suggested that leaders need not have everything about living missionally figured out, but that they must be willing to practice mission in community with others. Through the process of success, failure, and eventually, learning, both the leader and the community grow in their understanding of how to live on mission for God. This process may seem chaotic, but leadership, according to the respondents, is a messy process that involves asking questions instead of answering them, offering suggestions instead of giving orders, and pointing in a direction instead of drawing out the map.

Tomorrow, part 3 of 4 will detail the necessity for prioritizing holistic discipleship.

Understanding Missional - Interview Results Part 1 of 4

After interviewing 7 different respondents from across the country, here are the conclusions I reached about what is driving the missional movement. Enjoy!

Results of Qualitative Research
According to the data collected from every respondent interviewed, the primary belief driving the missional movement in the West seems to be the belief that the Western Church has lost its true identity. Whereas Scripture teaches that the church is the kingdom people of God called and sent to participate in God’s mission in the world, those in the missional movement believe that the church has instead become a place and a program focused on growth and success instead of mission. The missional movement is not simply another church growth tool or a new thing for Christians to do. Instead, the missional movement is all about the identity of the church. Most importantly, the missional movement is focused upon helping the church realize that the loss of its true identity is not a problem to be ignored. Rather, the missional church is teaching that the Western church must regain its true identity through the renewal of theology, the reshaping of leadership, the reprioritization of holistic discipleship, and entering the long-term transition process.

Renewed Theology
According to the respondents, the renewed theology driving the missional movement begins with the belief that God is a missionary God. The missionary nature of God is seen both in his huge mission of complete and total reconciliation and in his sending nature. Reconciliation, restoration and renewal seem to be the respondents’ favorite descriptors of God’s purpose for the world. When God is seen in this light, the Gospel becomes a narrative about the fulfillment of God’s mission or purposes. One respondent described the Gospel as more “robust,” “exciting,” and “alive” among missional churches. Instead of seeing the Gospel as a story about how God wants Christians to go to heaven, the same respondent said that it is a story about how God wants Christians to bring heaven to earth.

The final major theological category identified by respondents is ecclesiology. Four of the seven respondents claimed it is only in the identity of a missionary God and the story of God’s mission found in the Gospel that the church can fully understand its identity as the sign, foretaste, and instrument of God’s kingdom (also referred to as God’s reign, mission, and purpose). Perhaps more than in any other section of the interviews, respondents spoke most passionately and fluidly about the need for the church to seriously consider its current self-awareness and how this awareness would compare to the church seen in Scripture as the people of God sent to live under God’s rule for the blessing of the world and the glory of God.

Up next, reshaping leadership in the missional church.

The Foundation of Any Church

Louis Giglio reminded us of an important truth at the Exponential conference in Orlando, Florida yesterday.  Before I go down to the hotel lobby to eat some breakfast, I thought I would share his points.

Bascially, Louis asked "Where does our power come from as church planters?  What should we do as church planters?"

His answers were simple, but spelled out in profound ways.  Our foundations, as church leaders, are these three simple things:
1. The teachings of Jesus
2. The resurrection of Jesus
3. The power of the Holy Spirit.

Giglio went on to make a few interesting point son each topic.
1. It is not about preaching well so that people compliment us.  Preaching is simply about helping people to hear the word of God and doing that well.
2. In evangelicalism, we need to talk more about the resurrection, because it is the hope of the world.
3. We need to appreciate the power of the Holy Spirit.  Think about it, have you ever called the Spirit an "it" instead of a "him."  If we call the Spirit it, we lose the power of thinking about Him as the Spirit of the Living God.

Passionate preacher, good stuff.  Makes me want to continue my journey to be a man of the Word with much more vigor!

The Lifelong Task of Forming Self to God

Quote from Thomas Merton

The person "who attempts to act and think for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others.  He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas."

My Reaction

As I read this quote this morning over my 6 a.m. cup of coffee, it totally rocked my world.  It is so easy for me to shout that the church needs to be different and needs to adopt missional theology, ecclesiology, and lifestyles.  If I do not attend to God, all I will be doing is shouting my anger, my thoughts, and my pride.  It would be better for me to attend to God and never to speak at all then to shout at the world through my own voice.

My Prayer

Father, speak through me, be it a whisper or a shout or anything in between, the words you want your church to hear. Remind me to always attend to you first, so that my words are never my own.  For all those who, like me, desire to prophetically call the church to change, draw them first to you and then send them out into the world.  Amen.

Great Lecture by Mike Frost - Mission

In a recent 1-hr session taught by Mike Frost, author of Exiles and co-author of The Shaping of Things to Come, Frost discussed his perspectives on mission.

Here is a brief summary of his points:
1. The Source of Mission - the missio dei. God, in his nature, because of his love, is a sent and sending God. God is sent in the fact that his love compels him to extend out beyond himself for others. God is sending in that as Trinity, each person sends the other out of love into the world to bring about the purpose of salvation, reconciliation, and restoration. (I was a little fuzzy on the sent nature of God, but I am simply trying to record his points so I kept it in the post)
2. The Goal of Mission - alert the world of the reign of God through Christ. Our goal in participating in God's mission is to make people aware of the simple fact that our God reigns. The goal is not church growth, ecological restoration, extending the kingdom of God or the mission statement of a particular church. Frost argues our goal is simply to alert others that this world is God's and he reigns completely, though we do not yet fully realize, understand, or live under his reign.
3. The Method of Mission - Announcement and Demonstration. As the church, we announce God's reign and we demonstrate it. To announce the reign, we must ask "What does the reign of God look like in this context?" and communicate the answer to the context. To demonstrate God's reign, we must live under the reign in the context and work to bring others' lives under the reign of God as well.
4. The Outcome of Mission - the church. The outcome of God's mission for the world is the church, local and universal. A particular church does not concoct its mission for God. The mission of God concocts the church.

Much more could be written on this, but for now, this will do. Mike Frost - read his stuff. Good guy, great thinker, a new friend.

Missional Literature Review - Part 11 - The Key to Understanding Missional

The Key to Understanding Missional
Seemingly every major scholarly presentation about missional living begins with a disclaimer, which notes how missional has become a buzz word used by churches, parachurch organizations, and Christians alike to refer to everything from world mission strategies to church growth. The disclaimer is then often followed by a few pages detailing the major world councils, the work of Leslie Newbingin, the efforts of the Gospel and Our Culture Network, and the seminal work edited by Darrell Guder, Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, as the foundations of the true meaning of missional. Summing up these foundations, missional living is characterized by a covenanting community engaged in cultural analysis and theological reflection in order to live out God’s mission in the world.

Missional Literature Review - Part 10 - Common Practices of Missional Living - Covenanting Community

Covenanting Community
Though the GOCN uses the term “congregational mission” to capture the thoughts about missional living that will follow, the term was not used here to avoid defining missional living with the word mission. Instead, the broad themes of how the church lives out the missio dei were condensed into two words: covenanting community. Covenant community is the term used by Roxburgh (1998) to describe the commitment to the practices of the way of God in the Christian community. The suffix -ing has been added to covenant to reveal the ongoing process of commitment and reformation in which the community is continuously engaged. Within missional thinking, the covenant community is ascribed four characteristics. It is shaped by an alternative story, relates to the whole of life, adopts an incarnational, servant approach, and is structured for mission.

Contrast Community – Shaped by an Alternative Story

If it is true that the loudest criticism levied against the church by missional voices is that the church has become shaped by cultural values and narratives, it is also true that the loudest plea for change in the church is for the church to be shaped by an alternative story (see Barrett, 1998; Edson, 2007; Roxburgh & Boren, 2009). Instead of being shaped by culture, the church of God is to be shaped by the biblical narrative. The biblical narrative begins to shape the covenanting community when the community “relives it as memory in ritual and repetition” (Roxburgh and Boren, 2009, p. 61). This shaping is defined as a “lifestyle of continual conversion as [the church] hears and responds to the gospel over and over again” (Hunsberger, 1998, p. 86).

As the worldview of the covenanting community is shaped by the gospel, it will be a “powerful witness” (Barrett, 1998, p. 127) as it lives with distinctly Christian practices in an increasingly secularly dominated society. Though the distinctiveness of each Christian community differs both according to the culture and the practices of the community, the point remains that the missional church is a contrast society pointing to a different and better, God-ordered way of living in this world. Each community must discern how God is asking them to live differently in context. Barrett, (1998) captures the theme of the literature, saying “to discern the points of dissent, is to be a missional church” (p. 127).

Communitas – Relating to the Whole of Life

As the covenanting community continuously lives in and with but also against culture, it will find itself pushed to the margins of society, no longer fitting in with the dominant trends of secularism. The experiences of ambiguity, uncertainty, and discomfort of marginality are defined by missional writers as liminality (Frost, 2006; Hirsch, 2006; Roxburgh, 2006). As the community endures liminality together, it becomes more than community, taking on the nature of communitas, a Latin term of equality employed by anthropologist Victor Turner and defined by Hirsch (2006) as “a common experience of ordeal, humbling, transition, and marginalization” (p. 221). The covenanting community becomes communitas as it bound together in the struggle to remain shaped by the biblical narrative in a society that pulls toward a different lifestyle.

Irrevocably bound together by the common struggle, the communitas surpasses the fake and shallow communities commonly seen in the world and often in the culturally trapped church. Core characteristics of the covenanting community living as communitas include self-giving, inclusion, preparation of all people for a diversity of ministry, and being a “communion of equal individuals who submit together to the general authority of the ritual elders” (Edson, 2007, p. 30). The communitas will “cultivate space for people to unlearn old patterns and learn new ways of living” (Dietterich, 1998, p. 152). Therefore, communitas relates to the whole of life as it creates the space for and shapes the entire individual and the entire community for mission. Indeed, mission becomes the very “fabric of one’s life” (Hunsberger, 1998, p. 97).

Contextual Ministry – Adopting the Incarnational, Servant Approach

Shaped by the biblical narrative in a secular world and living as communitas, the covenanting community takes a contextual approach to ministry by adopting an incarnational, servant perspective. To do contextual ministry, it is necessary to be in the context (incarnational) and to discern how to partner with God to redeem the context to his purposes (servant). When it truly understands its missional nature in the roots of Trinitarian theology, the covenanting community becomes a “contagious and overflowing” community of love (Dietterich, 1998, p. 149). As the community walks with and is led by the Spirit, it naturally produces the fruits of the Spirit, becoming a “new apologetic” in a suspicious culture (Dietterich, 1998; Edson, 2007). As a new apologetic, the community remains true to the biblical pattern of God forming a unique people whose existence clashed with and transformed the dominant institutions of their day (Roxburgh, 2006).

To be the new apologetic in the changing culture, covenanting communities “live out their identity as Christian community in close relationship to their contexts without succumbing to the context or . . . denying the context on the basis of their identity, history or tradition” (Fredrickson, 2007, p. 46). Walking the fine balance between living in and being shaped by culture requires great discernment from the covenanting community. Discernment as a necessary tool for missional living is an incredibly common theme in the literature. At its most basic, missional discernment simply asks three questions: What is God doing? What does God want to do? How can we cooperate? (Turnipseed, 1998; Van Gelder, 2007b). These three questions give the community a “missionary vision” (Mouw, 1999, p. 13), but force the church to be flexible, patient, and open to ambiguity as it puts in the effort to allow God to bring clarity to his work in and will for the culture (Turnipseed, 1998; Van Gelder, 2007b).

Intentional Organization – Structure for Mission

The final step for the covenanting community is to intentionally organize itself to fulfill its mission, or to more accurately reflect the literature, to express its identity as a missional community.

Guder (1998) is one of the leading voices calling for missional structures. Citing the fact that form follows function, he states the structure of the church must incarnate the message and mission of God into society. Bullock (2008) picks up on this theme as well, claiming that the missio dei requires the church to take on structures and forms that engage the world. Further, Bullock writes, “How the church is organized is directly linked to its identity and purpose” (p. 105). Not wanting the reader to miss his point or fail to understand, Van Gelder (2007b) spells the form-follows-mission nature of the church with three propositions—“The church is. The church does what it is. The church organizes what it does” (p. 17).

Though the claim to structure for mission is prevalent in the literature, there is a lack of complete clarity as to what such a structure looks like or how a community is to move toward it. This lack of clarity is likely caused by the belief that structures will differ in among local contexts. Like reading a sign in the fog, the careful reader can find a two repeated characteristics that ought to define the covenanting community’s structure: catholicity, and exponential reproducibility. Catholicity, the more prevalent of the two characteristics, refers to the universal and united Church. However the church might choose to structure itself, the structure ought to be a part of and point toward the bigger whole of God’s church throughout the world (Guder, 1998; Turnipseed, 1998).

Exponential reproducibility is not a term common to the missional literature, though it is referenced by Cole (2005, 2008) as key to the structure of the church. Gibbs (2006) also uses the term, labeling missional and emerging churches as “reproducible on an exponential scale” (xiii). The covenanting community, though prepared to change and even cease to exist in a specific form if God so wills, relentlessly seeks to multiply the mission of God throughout the world. It is important to note the covenanting community focuses on expanding the mission of God, not a particular church form or structure.

Missional Literature Review - Part 9 - Common Practices of Missional Living - Theological Reflection

Theological Reflection
Missional living is rooted in a conviction that theology and missiology are inextricably tied together (Edson, 2006). A missiological approach or rethinking of theology appears to focus on three major components: God as Trinity, the Gospel as the good news of God’s reign, and the church as God’s missionary people. Van Gelder (2008) identifies all three components and succinctly defines the core of missional theological reflection:

God is seeking to bring God’s kingdom, the very redemptive reign of God in Christ, to bear on every dimension of life within the entire world so that the larger creation purposes of God can be fulfilled. The church’s self-understanding of being missional is grounded in the work of the Spirit of God, who calls the church into existence as a gathered community, equips and prepares it, and sends it into the world to participate fully in God’s mission. (p. 44)

God as Trinity

The Trinitarian foundation to missional theology is one of the most easily noted facts about missional living. Seemingly every missional writer begins with either one or two foundational principles about God stemming from his Trinitarian nature. The two principles are the economic trinity and the perichoretic trinity (Van Gelder, 2007a; Van Gelder, 2007b; Hall, 2009; Bosch, 1991; Fredrickson, 2007). As economic trinity, God sent the Son and the Spirit to be part of the creation of the world. After the fall of creation, the Father, sent the Son into the world to bring redemption and announce his reign. Both Father and Son sent the Spirit into the world to call, equip, and send the church into the world until the Son is again sent to bring the final culmination of the Kingdom. Thus, God is missionary by nature and is the foundation for the missionary nature of his people, the church. As perichoretic trinity, God is three yet one, a community of interrelation and mutuality. It is in this communal image that the church was created (Van Gelder, 2007) and in this image the church sees God’s will for the world (Padilla, 1998). Recapturing the Trinitarian image of God recaptures the image of the church.

The Gospel as the Good News of God’s Reign

A missiological theology begins with God’s nature and quickly moves to God’s mission, the missio dei. Redemption is both the mission of God and the Gospel. Made available through Jesus Christ, redemption is for the whole world (Van Gelder, 2008) and entails both absolute restorations of earthly communities and total reconciliation of humans to God, culminating in a new heaven and a new earth (Ma, 2009; Padilla, 1998). In this goal, the hostile and alienated world is brought back into God’s natural order of love, justice, and peace – the shalom of God (Dietterich, 2002; Hunsberger 1998).

The gospel in missiological theology is the narrative of God’s mission. As the church reads and rereads, hears and rehears, visions and revisions the story of a God on mission to bring redemption, the church is shaped to be God’s unique missionary people. Roxburgh (1998) captures this common thought of missional writers well. He writes, “If the gospel of God’s unbreaking reign in Jesus Christ is to shape the missional church, then the gospel must be faithfully articulated, studied, explored, and heard over and over again” (p. 213). This statement points to the heart of missiological theology: the shape of the church as God’s missionary people.

The Church as God’s Missionary People

The different ways of defining the missionary nature of God’s people and the nuances to be seen in the semantics of such definitions seem to be endless. Interestingly, most (if not all) either quote, build off of, or give credit to Guder’s (1998) seminal work in the field, Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America. This compilation of essays drives home the nature of the church as active and passive representative of God’s reign, sign and foretaste of the kingdom, and the community of, servant to, and messenger concerning the reign of God (Hunsberger, 1998). The biblical images of salt and light are offered to support the church’s identity as the “eschatological community of salvation” (Hunsberger, 1998, p.86; Barrett, 1998). Elsewhere, the church is named “God’s visionary people” (Roxburgh, 2006; xv), “God’s called out people” (Bullock, 2008, p. 105), the “primary manifestation of God’s kingdom” (Hibbert, 2009, p. 324), a “hermeneutic of the gospel” (Hibbert, 2009, p. 330) and the church of the missio dei (Hirsch, 2009).

Missional Literature Review - Part 8 - Common Practices of Missional Living - Cultural Analysis

Cultural Analysis
There is a belief in missional circles that God works within a culture to bring redemption, but does not destroy the culture (Fredrickson, 2007). The church, reflecting the mission of God, seeks to do the same by living in, with and against culture at the same time, seeking to bring it under the Lordship of Christ (Fredrickson, 2007; Hiebert, 1996). To bring culture under Christ, it is necessary for the church to develop “public theology” (Van Gelder, 1996, p. 43). Also called “local theology” (Edson, 2006, p. 27 ; Roxburgh and Boren, 2009, 100), or a “theological reading of sociology” (Van Gelder, 2007, p. 39), a public theology is a contextualized approach to understanding Scripture for and in a particular location. In order to develop a public theology, missional authors contend that the Christian community needs to live “between gospel and culture” (Hunsberger & Van Gelder, xvi) by knowing how it is shaped by culture and how the gospel will shape the culture.

There seem to be three components of public theology suggested in the literature: theology, cultural analysis, and mutual interpretation. As theology will be the topic of the next section, it is not included here. Though it is a major section of the GOCN effort to help congregations become missional, relatively little has been written about analyzing the culture apart from the broad pictures offered of the North American context. More research needs to be done to effectively help the church engage in specific, cultural analysis. Fredrickson (2006) offers some help, saying that the church should take note of demographic indicators and the ecclesial landscape of the context. Clearly, this is not near enough help, but the academic literature offers little more. Neither does the practitioner-oriented literature help much as it contains mainly anecdotes in different contexts.

Fortunately, the literature on mutual interpretation is not so sparse. Mutual interpretation “best explains the relationship between a missional congregation and the context as they coincide together in space and time” (Fredrickson, 2006, p. 49). Taken from the revised correlation theory of Tracy and Bronning, mutual interpretation envisions a complex dialogue between church and culture, with both sides asking questions and offering answers (Edson, 2006). The church dialogues with the Gospel in order to then represent the Gospel in dialogue with the culture. Hunsberger (1996) states the nature of the dialogue profoundly, saying, “The Gospel meets the culture first here in us. . . . Similarly, the culture meets the gospel first here in us who are the hermeneutical lens through which it may be perceived” (p. 297).

The missional literature reveals a growing, critical reflection about intentional engagement with culture. In fact, contextual interpretation, ministry, and theology appear to be three of the hallmarks of missional living. For missional living to remain grounded in God, though, it must be combined with thoroughly biblical theological reflection.

Missional Literature Review - Part 7 - Common Practices of Missional Living

Common Practices of Missional Living
There are clear foundations or basic principles to the missional living or missional church being called for by so many authors, scholars, and practitioners. Though he lists a few extemporaneous foundations, Brisco (2009) correctly identifies three core truths to missional thinking: (a) God is a missionary God; (b) the Church is God’s missionary people; and (c) missional living is about actively participating in the missio dei, a Latin term meaning “the sending of God” (Waters, 2009). These same principles are echoed by the Center for Parish Development in Chicago, Illinois. A publication produced by the center to define the missional church lists three truths as well: God is a sending God, the church is a sent people, and the people discern and participate in God’s mission (Center for Parish Development, n.d.).

These three principles represent extreme claims, not in the sense that they are radical and offensive, but in the sense that they are comprehensive and seek to define fully God, Church, and Christian living. God is at his core a sending God. The church “live[s] into the imagination they are, by their very nature, God’s missionary people” (Roxburgh, 2006, xv). Speaking of the Christian life, McNeal (2009) says “missional is a way of living” (xiv). Bosch (1991) agrees, noting that “the entire Christian existence is to be characterized as a missionary existence” (p. 9).

The literature shows clear agreement on the three foundation principles of missional living. Expressions of missional living are much harder to delineate as many have tried to list the characteristics and practices of missional people. To create clarity, it is helpful to consider the three-fold focus of the Gospel and Our Culture Network (GOCN). The GOCN seeks to help Christian communities become missional by researching and writing in three areas: cultural analysis, theological reflection, and congregational mission (Hunsberger, 1996). It is important to note the order. The GOCN believes that he missional community moves from culture to Gospel (theology) to mission. Van Gelder (1996) spells the focus out more clearly by identifying the three questions the missional church asks: What kind of world do we live in? What is the good news of the Gospel in this kind of world? How can we be the body of Christ in this kind of world? These three questions will form the basis for which missional living will here be defined. Missional living, according to the broad themes found in the literature and identified by the GOCN requires cultural analysis and theological reflection in a covenanting community.

Missional Literature Review - Part 6 - The Church as Stewards of Change

The Church as Stewards of the Change

A final theme prevalent in the literature on missional church concerns how the church ought to respond to the changes taking place in culture and in the church. In choosing how to respond best, the church faces many temptations. One temptation is to resist the change, sticking to the old way of doing things in the name of remaining true to Scripture (Hall, 1999; Van Gelder, 2007). Resistance, though, will only keep the church separated from culture and will leave it no room to be influential. Another insufficient option is relevance. When the church tries to be relevant, it becomes both “captured” and “intimidated” by culture, not fully loyal to the gospel and not fully engaged in the context (Hunsberger, 1996). The third temptation of the church is simply to resign, give up, and let the changes run unchecked and keeping the Gospel from having its full impact. Instead of utilizing any of these strategies, missional authors suggest the church seek to “steward the change [emphasis in original], asking for positive meaning that is in it and endeavoring . . . to direct the process toward its potential goal” (Hall, 2008, p. 73).
To steward the change, the church first needs to accept the loss of its “old story” (Roxburgh, 2008, p. 76) and see its new “powerlessness” or marginality as a
creative opportunity for change” (Randall, 2007, p. 230). This acceptance requires dealing with the present crisis with the earnest sincerity without succumbing to it (Bosch, 1991). Van Gelder (2007) suggests the church should be both reforming (confessional) and forming (missional).

Though the voices calling for change can be pointed and harsh, in the end their tone is often optimistic. The goal of the criticism is not deconstructive, but constructive, seeking to build missional communities throughout the West. To best understand what missional thinkers hope to construct, it is necessary to take a detailed look at what defines missional living.

Missional Literature Review - Part 5 - Commonly Held Reasons for Change: Argument from Missional Hermeneutic

Argument from Missional Hermeneutic
The final starting point for those who call the church to adopt a missional lifestyle is a missional hermeneutic, “a framework within which to read the Bible” (Wright, 2006, p. 26). Recently, a growing number of major publications are centering full biblical theologies upon the mission of God (see Bosch, 1991; Wright, 2006; and, to a lesser extent, Beale, 2004). These works portray the Bible as a story of a missional God on mission in the world through a particular people.

Of this particular people, Wright (2006) states that the Bible is a narrative of the “indefatigable self-commitment of God to bless all the nations of humanity through the creation of a people as the vehicle of his goal of redemption” (p. 532). The pattern of God’s work is “in” to “out,” beginning with his people and moving to the families of the earth (Brownson, 1996). Abraham is called by God and told to become a blessing, Israel is redeemed out of Israel to be the covenant people of God among the nations, Jesus announces the coming reign of God for Israel and Gentiles, and the early church made Jesus’ proclamation a reality. Wright (2006) indicates the importance of the church recognizing the missional nature and pattern of the Biblical narrative, with the observation that “this is the people to whom we belong. This is the story to which we are a part. This is the mission in which we are called to participate” (p. 532).

Those who see a missional hermeneutic as a starting point for calling for the missional change in the church encourage Christians to see the Bible as more than just a bunch of facts and stories that can help them live good lives (McNeal, 2009; Wright, 2006). Instead, the Bible should be as a missional narrative that guides the community into missional living. In this approach, the Bible is seen to exist for a missional purpose, God is seen to be a missional God, and the people of God with whom the church shares an identity is seen as a missional people (Wright, 2006).

Missional Literature Review - Part 4 - Commonly Held Reasons for Change: The Argument from Personal Revival

Argument from Personal Revival
Comprising much less space in the literature than contextual change and institutional crisis, personal revival of faith is nonetheless a starting point that has led some authors, scholars, and practitioners to call for a missional transformation of the church. Part of the reason this starting point takes up less space in the literature is that it is much more difficult to identify and often cannot readily be separated from the other three arguments of context, crisis, and hermeneutic. It is in the literature being produced by practitioners that personal faith is most often a major starting point (see Chan, 2008; Halter & Smay, 2008; McNeal, 2009). Chan’s (2008) anecdotal beginning to his book on real Christian living, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God, is a perfect example of this starting point:

We all know something is wrong.
At first I thought it was just me. Then I stood before twenty thousand
Christian college students and asked, “How many of you have read the New
Testament and wondered if we in the church are missing it?” When almost every
hand went up, I felt comforted. At least I’m not crazy. (p. 19)

Chan and the students to whom he spoke have what Junkin (1996) calls “restless, lonely, hungry hearts” (p. 309) that realize something different needs to take place in their faith and their churches. The realization of the need and the long for something different are the catalysts for the changes that take place in the practitioner’s life or ministry.

Three missional themes found in the literature seem to be rooted in the author’s personal revival of faith, whether scholar or practitioner or both. These themes are eschatological hope, sacrifice and suffering, and social justice. Ma (2009) claims Christians need to recapture a “universal theology of hope” (p. 189) that points the church and the world to the future reign of God and prepares them for its coming. Laing (2009) also calls for a renewal of the eschatological perspective of hope, claiming its implication will be “missionary obedience” (p. 20) among believers.

As the church looks toward the eschaton, it is to sacrifice itself and offer itself up for suffering that it might be used in the redemptive purposes of God (Turnipseed, 1998; Waters, 2009). Instead of sacrificing, Turnipseed (1998) says Christians have too long allowed the poor, marginalized, and weak to be suffer and calls the church to “refuse to tolerate the sacrifice of others” (p. 532) any longer. If this call is to be heeded, the third theme, social justice, will also be realized.

Both in the church and in the world, people are exhibiting signs of increasing altruism, desire for personal growth, and hunger for spiritual vitality (McNeal, 2009). This increase is placing pressure on the church from all sides to become more missional in its nature and in its ministry. If the trend in the literature holds true, this will be a major theme in the literature, church, and world for at least the next few decades.

Missional Literature Review - Part 3 - Commonly Held Reasons for Change: The Argument from institutional Crisis

Argument from Institutional Crisis
While it is true that many call for the church to become missional in nature due to the contextual change taking place in the world, the main thrust of most authors calling for missional change concerns the institutional crisis in the church. The institutional crisis of the church is difficult to deny. Granberg-Michaelson (2008) claims that not a single county within the United States experienced an increase in worship attendance between 1998 and 2007. The continual decline of membership, financial viability, and societal influence can be traced all the way back to the 1960s (Dietterich & Ziemer, 1998). Not only is the church failing to shape society, statistics show it is “no longer the primary organizing principles that shapes the lives of most Christians,” who are instead influenced by the “dominant trends with in secular society” (Dinolfo, 1999, p. 261).

Within the vast amount of writing calling for the church to change due to the institutional crisis, both external forces and internal influences are identified as the causes for the ineffectiveness of the church. A brief look at the external and internal factors reveals both the variety and harshness of criticism being levied against the actions and inactions of the contemporary, institutional church.

Ineffectiveness Caused by External Forces

The changes in the cultural context of the church have, like a fierce whirlwind, irrevocably changed the position of the church within modern society. Once at the center of culture and society, the church is being pushed to the “sociological periphery” (Hall, 1999, p. 69). Randall (2007) says that the church is shifting from the centre to the margins, the majority to the minority, settlers to sojourners, and privileged to plurality. Having been pushed from privilege in the new, secular society, the old ecclesiologies, disciplines, practices, and organizational structures of the church simply are not working (Dietterich & Dietterich, 1994; Junkin 1996). Architectural evangelism and the “construct a program and they will come” (Roxburgh & Boren, 2009) mentality are increasingly ineffective, but the church does not seem to know how to move forward in new and innovative ways in the strange, new world. As Hunsberger (1996) aptly notes, the church is facing a “crisis of thinking” (p. 334) as to how it fits into the world.
Ineffectiveness Caused by Internal Forces

External factors may have pushed the church to the periphery of society, but many within the missional movement lay scathing blame upon the church for failing to recognize how accommodated it had become to the assumptions of the culture it supported (Hunsberger & Van Gelder, 1996). Hunsberger’s crisis of thinking facing the church is not only how to fit into the new world, but is a crisis in that the church “has not [emphasis in original] thought carefully, critically, or theologically about [its] assumptions regarding the church and [has] failed to noticed how much they have been shaped by the character of modern American life” (Hunsberger, 1996, p. 334). The failure to think critically seems to have allowed three forces to inhibit the effectiveness of the church from within: individualism, consumerism, and institutional idolatry.

Individualism dominates the church’s current view of salvation as well as its models of ministry and is making the crisis worse, according to missional scholars. The focus on individual salvation and personal relationships with God failed to place importance on the community and the world, causing faith to become privatized (Hiebert, 2009). In a world of privatized faith, the church became nothing more than a “voluntary collection of individuals who came together to support and encourage development of their private faith” (Dietterich, 2002, p. 3) and ministry became defined as provision of “resources and services necessary to fulfill individual religious and spiritual needs” (p. 2). A loss of focus took the eyes of the church off the world and culture and placed them instead upon the individual.

Consumerism, the second internal factor inhibiting the effectiveness of the church, is the one word that can describe the major change of the ecclesial landscape during the twentieth century (Fredrickson, 2007). The consumerist church became a “vendor of religious goods and services” (Hunsberger, 1996, p. 334), focusing on raising the standards of worship services, offering more programs, upgrading buildings, and hiring professional ministers to run the church. As ministry staffs grew, Christians entered into what Hirsch calls a “Faustian bargain,” outsourcing ministry to the professionals. This in turn caused Christians to lack maturity and become weak in the faith. Weak Christians make for weak churches.

As individuals increasingly became church shoppers or consumers, heightened competition among churches arose over members. Maintenance and self-preservation of the institution became the focus of many small churches in a secular society. With numbers declining, the church constantly chased the “new and the next” (Roxburgh, 1999, p. 248) in terms of structures and programs to help facilitate church growth. Hall (1999) speaks to this endless need for church growth and success:
Locked into a culturally determined logic of progress, success, and positive
thinking, Christian bodies in North America regularly resist imaginative and v
viable proposal for the future of the church because they do not correspond to
the great expectations that have been fashioned by centuries of ecclesial
triumphalism. (p. 70)

Ecclesial triumphalism, or “expansionism” (Hibbert, 2009), stems from pride in a denomination or tradition and not from mission. When the church’s focus is upon maintenance or perpetuation of the institution, there is a lack of time, energy, and resources to “anticipate and participate in God’s mission” (Forney, 2008, p. 66). This focus upon the church instead of the mission of God can be called “institutional idolatry” (Forney, 2008, p. 63).
Steps Toward Effectiveness

It is worth briefly noting the two major suggestions critics of the individualized, consumerist, institutional church make to move toward effectiveness. First, the church is encouraged to abandon its cultural baggage and structural dependencies for a missional heart and perspective. This abandonment would entail focusing on God’s mission more than church growth (Barram, 2007). To make this shift in focus would include focusing on the external rather than the internal, people development instead of program development, and kingdom-leadership instead of church leadership (McNeal, 2009). Second, the church is encouraged to re-engage in theological study based on the Gospel and the Holy Spirit instead of contemporary church wisdom (Barram, 2007; Hall, 1999; Hunsberger, 1996; Randall, 2007; Van Gelder, 2008).

Missional Literature Review - Part 2 - Commonly Held Reasons for Change: The Argument from Contextual Change

Commonly Held Reasons to Adopt Missional Living
A review of the literature clearly documents a call for the church and its programs to change. The call for change most commonly begins from one of three starting points: contextual change in the West, the institutional crisis facing the Church, or a personal crisis of faith (Junkin, 1996). Though not as common as the previous three starting points, a missional hermeneutic is also beginning to gain ground as a foundation upon which the need for change is established. (see Wright, 2006). Though each of the four starting points are distinct, they are often connected and interdependent as they form one powerful argument concerning the need for the church to change in the West.

Argument from Contextual Change
The notion that the world is changing is certainly nothing new to most contemporary people. It might seem, then, that the call for the church to change that arises from an analysis of contextual change in the world is unnecessary. However, the authors from whom the contextual analysis come claim that the change currently taking place in the world is abnormal, “discontinuous change” (Roxburgh, 2006, p. 7). Roxburgh (2006) categorizes discontinuous change as “disruptive and unanticipated” (p. 7) and claims it always challenges commonly held assumptions.

Though no one seems to be able to define, list, and name the discontinuous change in precisely the same way, the same general culprits of change are often repeated: globalization, religious and cultural pluralism, relativization or democratization of knowledge, advances of science and technology, the collapse of Enlightenment and modern principles and worldviews, growth of postmodernism, secularization of the West, dominance of capitalism and the continue presence of a huge gap between the rich and the poor, and the loss of confidence in primary social structures and relationships (Bosch, 1991; Dietterich & Dietterich, 1994; Hirsch, 2006; Roxburgh, 2006, 2008; Turnipseed, 1998; Van Gelder, 1996, 1998). Summarizing these changes, Wright (2006) says the Enlightenment Tower of Babel built in modernity has collapsed into the fragmented world of post-modernity.

Within the new, fragmented, and confusing world, the position of the church in the West has been drastically altered. Religious diversity has created an environment for individualized faith to flourish and true religion to fade in the light of uncertainty (Turnipseed, 1998). Secularization has de-Christianized the West, leading to a commonly held belief throughout the world that Western theology is suspect at best (Bosch, 1991). It is in this light of a new world and a new position for the church that the call for a missional change comes. The church must realize the West is a “mission field” (Roxburgh & Boren, 2009, p. 75) and should see itself with “exilic eyes as ‘resident aliens,’ an adventurous colony in a society of unbelief” (Hunsberger, 1996, p. 18).

Missional Literature Review - Part 1: Introduction

As part of an Action Research Project being done for the completion of my M.A in Ministry degree, I am researching churches that are transitioning to a more missional identity and structure, particularly in the area of small groups. Over the next several days, I will post short sections from the literature review portion of the paper. If you would like information on any of the cited references, I would be happy to assist. Also, I would love to hear your response to what the literature seems to be saying.

INTRODUCTION
Criticism of the small group movements of the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s is growing increasingly strong. For instance, Boren (2007) writes, “In short, good old American pragmatism [has] turned small groups into a modernistic program that leaders could control and produce growth. … Most of us bought into a set of small-group myths that resulted in growth but little radical transformation” (p. 10). Hirsch (2007) is another example, claiming small groups were used as nothing more than “prop-ups to the ‘real-deal,’ weekend-based church” (p. 4). Smith (2007) is perhaps most scathing of all, saying small groups quickly became “protective, hoarding, territorial and inwardly focused” (p. 15) in the old system.

In addition to this critique of small group movements, Paul M. and Inagrace T. Dietterich (1994) comment on the nature of the church of recent history in the West and call for a missional transformation, claiming the church is caught in “the trap of success” and suffers from “success syndrome [emphasis in original]: a pattern of organizational thinking, behavior, and functioning” (p. 5). Symptoms of the syndrome include insular thinking, parochialism, complacency, and belief in infallibility (Dietterich, 1994). Churches caught in this trap rely on what worked in the past when confronted with new challenges and are unable to be open and creative or accept new ideas and insights. Such churches need a “dramatic shock” to challenge and change the “theological self-understanding” of the church body and bring it into an “entirely new frame of reference” (Dietterich, 1994). Many authors contend that a transition to missional living in congregations is the needed corrective for the problems facing both small group ministries and the institutional church (see Barrett, 2004; Boren, 2007, 2010; Carter, 2009; Dieterrich & Dietterich, 1994; Halter & Smay, 2008; McNeal 2009; Rouse & Van Gelder, 2008; Van Gelder, 2007).

The critique levied against the small groups and the institutional or “Established Church” (Dietterich & Dietterich, 1994) by missional scholars and authors is pointed and clear. Less clear, however, are the solutions offered or the changes proposed. Roxburgh and Boren (2009) admit that the missional concept is hard to define and avoid limiting their thinking to models and structures, leaving many pragmatists wondering how to do missional living in their churches. The missional concept is compared to a flowing river (Boren & Roxburgh, 2009), “not a what but a who,” [emphasis in original] (McNeal, 2009, p. 20), and a Spirit-led initiative unique in every local context (Van Gelder, 2007). Trying to identify clear proposals and solutions to problems in missional literature can be much like grasping at air. Those who write in this field not only recognize this difficulty, but also celebrate it as a move away from the rigid programs in recent church history and toward a more contextual ministry (e.g. Roxburgh & Boren, 2009).

Though writers at times attempt to refrain from limiting missional concepts to definitions and models, a review of the literature seems to show commonalities among scholars, authors, and practitioners alike. The commonalities occur in the areas of why the church needs to live missionally, what missional living looks like, and how Christian communities can begin the missional transition process.

Gracious Intrusion

     Genesis is an absolutely fascinating read. The author of Genesis, traditionally believed to be Moses, used a literary device to clearly mark ten headings (like chapter titles) throughout the book. The Hebrew phrase ‘elleh toledot occurs eleven times in the book of Genesis (2:4; 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10; 11:27; 25:12; 25:19; 36:1 [36:9]; 37:2) and has been translated in many ways including “these are the generations of,” “this is the family history of,” “this is the history of the descendants of” and “this is the account of.”  When these headings are in view, the structure of Genesis is seen as follows: a prologue describing the significance of creation, followed by ten stories of the people of God.
     As the ten stories (or chapters) of Genesis are read, a pattern becomes evident.  One author described this pattern as the sovereign and gracious intrusion of God into human history.  God did not simply create humans and then step back and allow them to do their own thing.  Instead, God worked to ensure humans would fulfill his purposes, despite their obvious sinfulness and short comings.  This is most clearly seen with Abraham and his descendants.
     In Genesis 12, God promises Abraham that He will give him a land, make him a blessing, and grow a nation or people through him.  The rest of the book of Genesis details God building the nation/people.  Constantly God is forced to overcome threats to this promise created by human sinfulness or stupidity.  For instance, Abraham and his descendants are constantly taking matters into their own hands, instead of seeking out God's plans.  Abraham sleeps with his maidservant to have a child, believing Sarah to be barren.  God intervenes to build the lineage through Sarah. Threat solved.  Then God tells Abraham to kill his only son, Isaac.  This is an obvious threat to the lineage.  God provides a ram - threat solved.  One day Abraham thinks it would be a good idea to tell a foreign king Sarah is his sister.  The king takes Sarah as one of his lady-friends.  Again, God has to act, sending a sickness until the king figures out what has happened - threat solved.  Surprisingly, Isaac will do the same exact thing with his wife.  Jacob steals the blessing of Esau, causing enmity between the two brothers.  Jacob's father-in-law later tries to hunt him down. Joseph's brothers sell him into slavery.  Enslaved in Egypt, Joseph is falsely accused and thrown in jail.  Meanwhile, his family is about to start starving due to a famine.  What does God do?  He graciously intervenes each time his people are threatened and builds them into a great nation.
     Through the story of Joseph, Jacob's people, the descendants of Abraham, end up in Egypt.  Once in Egypt, they are incubated for about 400 years until God releases his huge nation from their captivity to fulfill his purposes in the world.  God graciously intrudes into human history to ensure his purposes are realized on this earth.
     God still graciously intrudes into this world to see his purposes fulfilled and he continues to build his people to carry out these purposes.  The church is one mechanism of God's gracious intrusion into the world.  Therefore, I contend it is the responsibility and role of every Christian and every Christian community to graciously intrude into the lives of their family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, sports teams, social clubs, etc.  In recent history, a growing number of voices are calling for the church to begin to refocus on graciously intruding in the lives of those in the community.  I agree, and often find myself asking, Who's life am I intruding with the grace of God?  My guess is we should all be asking this question.

Cultivating Imagination

If there is one concept about missional leadership that has been in my mind lately, it is the idea of cultivating the missional imagination of the Christian community.  I believe God appoints leaders and does give them vision and inspiration to lead.  However, I also believe God can do the same in and through the followers, or members of the community.  Good leaders, I think, will help their community travel down a certain path God has revealed to them WHILE inspiring the community to find unique ways to actually go down the path.

To explore this further, maybe it is like the TV Game Show, Amazing Race.  The leaders of the show reveal and explain the destination to contestants, but do not tell the contestants exactly how to get their.  Clues are given, aides are provided, and the teams are never completely abandoned to the extent where they could be hurt.  This all adds up to empowering each team to find their way to the goal.  Some make it more quickly than others, but all eventually make it.  My guess is the experience is much more memorable and powerful (both positively and negatively) than it would have been if they were simply given directions to follow.

Leadership in the church, I believe, can empower people to use their imagination to follow the path God has in store.  The innovations, ideas, and inventions the Christian community might come up with could quite literally change lives and change the world.  Those who are speaking into my life - authors, practitioners, friends, family, teachers - are cultivating within me a missional imagination.  As the imagination is ingited by these outside sources, the Spirit of God within me adds fuel, leading to a blazing fire of imagination just waiting to burst forth into my life.  Now, my job is to spread the imagination to others.  Imagine this: 100 committed Christians imagining how God could use them to be missionaries to their own context and dreaming about how they can help others imagine the same.  I imagine that would be quite the powerful community.

Imagine if...

Conversation over Coffee

While having a cup of coffee with a friend the other day, he shared with me a frustration with his church.  My friend used to be on the worship team at his church, but was told he wasn't really good enough to have his mic turned up high enough for people to hear him.  Obviously, my friend quit.  Not many people would want to sing into a silent microphone and just be a body on stage.

During our conversation, the extent of the pain inflicted by this event came out.  I heard how my friend longed to be able to be a part of worship and to lead people in worship.  The frustration was that church was just a show where stars are needed to sing, to preach, and to do the Christian act on stage.

This was a harsh observation to be sure, but my heart broke while we talked.  Honestly, tears were coming to my eyes as I listened to a fellow Christian share the hurt caused by a church model designed to attract people in with high quality worship services.  Now, I am not one to say this model is all bad.  I believe in worship and I believe God has gifted people to lead in worship.  But I also believe the church has to find a way to allow for greater levels of participation and expression our worship gatherings.  Worship does not need to be perfect, it needs to be genuine.  Voices do not need to be the most beautiful in the world, they need to be heartfelt.  Preaching does not need to always come from the experts, it needs to come from the people of God.  One person does not need to do all the talking at a worship gathering. 

God certainly deserves excellence in worship.  Sometimes I wonder if God and the church define excellence the same way.  One thing I do know - a community that stifles the voice of one of its members longing to sing out the praises of God has some serious examination to do.

The Discerning Community

While reading Craig Van Gelder's The Ministry of the Missional Church: A Community Led by the Spirit over some coffee this morning, one sentence sent me on a tangent of thinking.  Van Gelder made the observation that Jesus taught his disciples a lot about the nature of the church/people of God, but never really said much about how it would be structured or how it would be modeled.  Instead, Jesus told his followers the Spirit would come and lead them to be the unique community.

Church leaders of all kinds--missional, emerging, denominational, traditional, pastoral, etc.-- talk a lot about models.  I, too, am often captivated by ideas and dreams of ways a church might be modeled or structured.  Van Gelder's, point, however, reminded me that God does not always reveal models to leaders.  God does send the Spirit, though, to equip the people of God for ministry and mission.  Those who lead the church would be wise to remind themselves that the ministry of the Spirit within the church is to empower the people of God.  The role of the leader is to help the people of God hear the voice of the Spirit and to create spaces for dialogue to take place.  When God's people together listen for the Spirit's voice and are constantly sharing what they are hearing, a missional model can emerge.  This model won't be shaped by the church down the road or by consumerism or prevailing church strategy.  Instead, this model will be shaped by the Spirit.

I am missional...hear me roar

For some strange reason, as a young lad I loved to listen to my oldest sister's cassette tape of Helen Reddy's greatest hits.  My father must be so proud!  Reddy's first #1 hit in the U.S. was "I am Woman."  The song which became an icon of the feminist movement in the 1970s, opened with the line, "I am woman, hear me roar." According to a Wikipedia article (see here), Reddy wrote the song to reflect "the positive self-image she had gained from joining the women's movement."  Proud of her new found hope and pride in feminism, she let her voice ring out to the world, making it clear where she stood and what she believed.

If you could hear me now, I am doing my best impression of the first line of "I am Woman," slightly changing the words to "I am misisonal, hear me roar."  Over the last few years I have been on a journey that has been changing the way I think about and do ministry.  During this time, I could not articulate clearly what was happening and so often failed to speak up about it or communicate it to others.  I lacked the confidence in my beliefs and ideas to run them by others

As I continue to read and study missional theology and missional living, I am finding a voice for all of the thoughts and feelings I have experienced the last few years.  Having come through my "dark night of the soul" I am now ready to proclaim, I AM MISSIONAL!  HEAR ME ROAR! In my roaring, I don't want to offend others who think or live differently.  I also do not want to tell them they are wrong.  My hope is I can challenge, inspire and create dialogue so together we can move forward to more fully be who God wants us to be.

My first roar shall come straight out of a book titled, The Missional Leader by Alan J. Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk.  Early in the book, the two authors compare contemporary pastoral models of leadership to missional models of leadership. (Note - they do not argue that the pastoral model is wrong.  Instead, they claim the pastoral model was necessary in the 20th century, but due to cultural change, the missional model may be more effective in the 21st century. For more on their perspective, see my forthcoming blog on Discontinuous Change and the Missional Church).  A table comparing the two styles of leadership is found on pages 12-13 of their book.  Since I cannot do columns, I will first list the qualities of a missional leader.  You can find the similar quality of the pastoral leaders numbered below.

MISSIONAL LEADERSHIP

1. Ministry staff operate as coaches and mentors within a system that is not dependent on them to validate the importance and function of every group by being present.
2. Ordained clergy equip and release the multiple ministries of the people of God throughout the church
3. Pastor asks questions that cultivate an environment that engages the imagination, creativity, and gifts of God's people in order to discern solutions.
4. Preaching and teaching invite the people of God to engage Scripture as a living word that confronts them with questions and draws them into a distinctive world.
• Metaphor and stories
• Asks new questions
5. "Pastoring" must be part of the mix, but not the sum total.
6. Make tension OK.
7. Conflict facilitator.
8. Indwell the local and contextual; cultivate the capacity for the congregation to ask imaginative questions about its present and its next stages.
9. Cultivator of imagination and creativity.
10. Create an environment that releases and nourishes the missional imagination of all people through diverse ministries and missional teams that affect their various communities, the city, nation, and world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

PASTORAL LEADERSHIP

1. Expectation that an ordained pastor must be present at every meeting and event or else it is not validated or important.
2. Ordained ministry staff functions to give attention to and take care of people in the church be being present as they are needed (if care and attention are given by people other than ordained clergy, it may be more appropriate and effective, but is deemed "second-class."
3. Pastor provides solutions.
4.  Preaching and teaching offer answers and tell people what is right and wrong.
• Telling
• Didactic
• Reinforcing Assumptions
• Principles for living
5. "Professional" Christians
1. Celebrity (must be a "home run hitter")
6. "Peacemaker"
7. Conflict suppressor or "fixer"
8. Keep playing the whole games as though we are still the major league team and the major league players. Continue the mythology that "This staff is the New York Yankees of the Church world!"
9. "Recovery" expert ("make it like it used to be")
10. Function as the manager, maintainer or resource agent of a series of centralized ministries focused in and around the building that everyone must support. Always be seen as the champion and primary support agent for everyone's specific ministry.

I don't always track with the pastoral leadership they present, but I think the chart is helpful in highlighting some trends and differences nonetheless.  My hunch, is most church leaders are a combination of both.  My passions and gifts are leading me in the direction of missional and I pray for the chance to challenge others to do the same.

Missional Small Groups (& why Scott Boren is my hero!)

First, let me say Scott Boren is the hero of the day for me today! Below, I list the reasons why:

1. With a name like Scott, he's gotta be good (shamelessly stole this slogan from Smucker's...fyi)
2. He has a forthcoming book titled Missional Small Groups (see link on Amazon).
3. He serves at a church in Minnesota, trying to create missional communities.
4. His article in "Missional Small Groups," a training manual published by small groups.com helped me put the frustration of the past few years into words more clearly than ever before.  I used his words as part of my introduction to the literature review I am working on for a research project (see below)

Here is the first paragraph of my lit review: (It might sound boring, but it is worth the read to understand my perspective on small groups.  Also, it is a rough and unedited free-write.)

Small groups, as an expression of Christian community, have gone through multiple major shifts in the last century.  As Donahue (2007, p. 17) summarizes, the major emphasis on community in recent history began in the parachurch groups of the 1950s through the 1970s, took hold in the church in the 80s and 90s through movements such as the meta-church model and cell churches, and is now evidence in the form of the increasing movement of many churches to combine emphases on community with emphases on mission.  Scott Boren (2007) identifies the root problem causing churches to shift from the small group programs of the 80s and 90s to the missional focus growing in popularity today.  He writes, “In short, good old American pragmatism [has] turned small groups into a modernistic program that leaders could control and produce growth” (p. 10).  Many bought into the “set of small-group myths” to find the programs built “resulted in growth but little radical transformation [sic] (p. 10).  Hirsch (2007, p. 04) calls the small groups in the modernistic programs identified by Boren, “prop-ups to the ‘real-deal,’ weekend-based church.”  Instead of using small groups as a program to cause church growth, Bible knowledge, and connection, these authors, among many others, argue the small group ought to be seen as the church itself, the community of God called to participate in the mission dei. 
 

A Reason to Enter the City, or at least Multi-Family Buildings

Just read a stat in a work published by Bill Donahue from the Willow Creek Association.  While talking about current examples of missional communities starting up in apartment buildings, he noted that 40% of Chicagoland lives in these types of buildings, while only 5% of churches have ministries in them.

A compelling statistic.

To Heck With Strategy

Sitting here in class, doing some research on missional theology, missional living and contextualized ministry (the three components of my literature review for my action research project), I came across the following quote from Vincent Donovan, missionary to Africa and author of Christianity Rediscovered.

Dear Bishop,

… Suddenly I feel the urgent need to cast aside all theories and discussions, all efforts at strategy, and simply go to these people and do the work among them for which I came to Africa. I would propose cutting myself off from the schools and the hospital and just go and talk to them about God and the Christian message. Outside of this, I have no theory, no plan, no strategy, no gimmick, no idea of what will come. I feel rather naked. I will begin as soon as possible … (Vincent J. Donovan)

Makes me wonder, how many Christians, especially church workers and leaders, have felt like this before.  Sometimes, I think, we need to say to heck with strategy, give me the people and let God surprise me. 

A New Name for Chicago

Ezekiel 48:35 "And the name of the city from that time on will be:
       The LORD is There ."

Before concluding his writings, the Prophet Ezekiel shares an experience God gave him.  Chapters 40-48 of his book detail the vision God gives to Ezekiel of a new temple and a new land for his people.  Chapter 47 describes a living water (God's presence is one interpretation) trickling out from underneath the temple.  In just 6000 feet, the small trickle turns into a river so wide no one can cross it.  The river is remarkably life-giving.  Trees grow all along the banks of the river - trees that produce fruit every month of the year for both food and medicine.  When the river flows into the Dead Sea (the saltiest body of water on the earth) the water is made fresh and fish and plant life of all kinds grow and live within it.  In short, when God's presence flows out of the temple into the new city/land the outcome is miraculous growth, incredible fruit production, and transformation from death to life.

After detailing how the new land will be divided among the people, Ezekiel names the new land he has seen.  He calls it "The Lord is There."  All who look upon the city can not help but see God's presence and his power displayed through the growth of his domain, the life he brings, and and the good works produced.  This is my dream for Chicago.  This is my dream for the major cities of the U.S. Imagine if people looked at our cities and no longer saw crime gangs, homelessness and pockets of darkness, but instead saw a community of love.  Imagine if people saw places where people share resources in common instead of mega-millionaires living by people so impoverished they have no where to live.  Imagine if people saw charity instead of greed.  Imagine if people looked at Chicago and said "The Lord is There."

Of all the places, I believe major cities have the potential for this kind of radical change.  Maybe it is just a dream God has given to me, but I often consider the potential that lies within the major city. Here is one example - a dream I often dream.  Consider:

• A small community of believers decides to make Chicago their mission field.  They move into a high rise condo building in downtown, pooling their resources to afford the high cost of  living.  Their mission, to reach discern and meet the needs of their neighbors.  A church is started in the condo.  Worship is held over a huge meal every week.  The community lives as the Kingdom of God and neighbors take notice.  Through evangelism, relationship building, serving and simply being a sign of God's presence, the small community begins to make a difference one just one floor in the high rise.  Another church is planted on another floor, and then another and then another.  Lives are changed, marriages are saved, hearts are turned to Christ.  The kingdom of God comes to the building. As the Christian communities in the building continue to get together and worship and serve, they ask God to show them how to live missionally, how to be missionaries in their context. 

• God, the God who sends his people, soon makes clear he wants 5 different individuals/couples to move into a building down the block.  The communities appoint the 5 missionaries, lay hands upon them, pray for their ministry, and send them with the blessing of God.  Soon another building bows its knee to Christ.  Add a third building into the mix and you have potential for a movement to be launched.  Thousand of people begin spreading the message, feeding the homeless, giving their possessions to the poor.  Chicago, a city known for crooked politicians can be the light.  People can look at it and say "The Lord is There."

Wherever you are, a pray you open you heart to the possibility God might want to send you into a major city to launch an epidemic of kingdom proportions.  The major city near you might just be the epicenter of revival in our country.  Don't get caught in your cave of isolation.  Join the adventure.

Out of the cave...Into the city.

Continuing on the theme introduced in my first blog, I will retain the analogy of the cave.  Read the blog posted on Jan 1, 2010 to get the full story of the church and the cave.

As claimed on Jan 1, I believe the church got caught in a blinding storm of rapid and drastic cultural change.  This change caused the church to lose the privileged and influential position it once held in society and culture.  As the church tried to navigate the way down the mountain through the storm, many factors and failures caused the church in the west to lose focus and direction.  Eventually, the church took shelter in a cave for survival.  It is time for the church to leave the cave.

Part of the storm that took the church off guard was urbanization.  In the late 19th century and throughout the 20th century, people across the world moved out of the rural areas and into urban populations--first into the cities, and then into the new suburbs of the crowded cities.  Consider the United States.  In 1800, about 5% of the population lived in cities.  By 1920, 50% of people in the USA lived in cities.  Today, it is estimated that some 82% of Americans live in cities and suburbs (I'm still trying to determine the populations of urban areas in the US, leaving out suburban areas).

While the people migrated to cities in droves, the church stayed behind.  Used to being in the center of social and public life--literally in the town square, right next to the court house (think Church St. and Main St.)--the church stayed in its cave of comfort instead of following the population.  Today, suburbs are filled with lots of nice churches and congregations, but the cities (large population centers) often go largely ignored. The failure of the church to move into the cities in vast numbers, is in my mind a tragedy that needs to quickly be fixed. 

If the church is to live the mission of God in the United States, it might just be we need to leave the cave and head into the city.  Over the next few weeks, I'll try to strengthen this argument with data collected from respected researchers. 

Bloggers Note: Throughout this missional conversation, I will try hard to present balanced, researched, and truthful facts.  Also, I will attempt to keep my opinions even-keeled and refrain from simply being reactionary and hot-headed.  If ever I fail to support claims or present a balanced perspective, please feel free to instruct and correct me.

For now, if you want to think missionally, think cities.  Major cities in the U.S. represent a huge opportunity for the mission of God to be revealed to millions.

A Hard Decision

In January 1995, Michael Couillard and his two sons took a brief ski trip in Turkey, where Michael was stationed with the U.S. Air Force.  Near the end of the day, Michael and his youngest son, Matthew, decided to go for one more run down the mountain.  As they rode the lift up the mountain, a "white out" storm quickly came in.  By the time they got to the top of the lift, the two could not see the trail down.  Making a long story short, Michael Couillard and his son end up getting lost and are unable to find their way back to the resort.  In fact, they accidentally went down the exact opposite side of the mountain.

On the wrong side of the mountain, trapped in a 3-day snow storm, the two eventually found shelter in a cave.  Frostbite set in in the bitter cold.  The two had nothing to eat and had no survival gear with them.  It seemed as if their only hope would be to wait for rescue.  Eight days pass without any sign of a rescue team.  Finally, Michael was forced to make a hard decision.  He could stay in the safety of the shelter with his son, continue to meet his needs as best he could, and hope for a miracle to find them.  Or he could take action and leave his child behind to find the help they needed.

Michael took action.  After finally succeeding in climbing a slope near the cave, he spotted wooden shacks down on the other side of the mountain.  Though he had not eaten in over a week, he snapped on his skis and made the trek of over two miles.  When he arrived, he found the buildings empty and vacant.  Too weak to make it back up to the mountain where his son clung to life in the cold, Michael could do nothing but sleep.  Not long after he awoke the next day, Turkish lumberjacks found him.  Within hours, Michael and Matthew were receiving the medical care they needed.

The point: rescue would not have come to the Couillards unless Michael made the hard decision to leave the cave.  Though every part of him wanted to stay with his son to protect his offspring, he ventured down the mountain.  Michael almost lost his life, as did his son, but leaving the cave brought salvation, new life.

There is a growing sense in our country that the church is stuck in a cave.  In the not too distant past, the church was on a comfortable ride to the top of the mountain, enjoying privileged and influential positions in society and culture.  Suddenly, a blinding storm of cultural change made the path forward difficult to find.  To survive, the church has been forced to find shelter in the cave of comfort and safety.  Instead of skiing down the slopes in the great adventure God has in store for his people and this world, the church is stuck in survival mode.

My proposal is this - the church needs to leave the cave.  The people of God need to leave the building and the programs behind and need to set out down the mountain once again.  It is outside the cave, on the difficult journey up and down hills, in and out of woods--a journey that may cost the sacrifice of everything once held dear--where the church will again meet the world and salvation will come not only for the world, but also for the church.

This is the story of the church as I see it.  This blog is my venue to describe this story in greater detail, help others see the story as I see it, and share what it might look like for the church to leave the cave.  Stick around.  Keep reading.  Let me know what you think.  God has planted a huge passion in my heart to help the church recapture its missional nature, calling, and vocation.  I pray God uses this blog as one way to bring turn my passion into a reality in the world.