All good missional ecclesiology is owing to the Anabaptist tradition.  I came to understand that at some point in grad school and have only become more convinced of it since.

This is why I want to let everyone I can know about an incredible opportunity coming up this fall.  Ever heard of a DMiss? If you haven’t, you need to familiarize yourself.  It’s kind of like a DMin, but with a few key differences.

The DMiss is an applied research doctoral degree designed for ministry practitioners as opposed to straight academics, but its focus is missiology – an increasingly vital dimension of study for those engaged in ministry within Post-Christendom.

This fall Fuller Theological Seminary is launching an “Anabaptist Missional Perspectives Cohort” for those interested in the DMiss program.  From Fuller’s page on the DMiss program…

The Doctor of Missiology degree equips leaders to effectively integrate theory into missional praxis within the global reality of the twenty-first century.  With this program, key leaders will continue their ministries in-context, attending a cohort-based seminar once a year for four years at Fuller’s campus, and interacting with a Fuller SIS faculty member.

The DMiss program is designed for leaders with a minimum of five years of missional experience who desire:
1. To assist mission leaders in context.
2. To have direct impact on practical ministry.
3. To maximize their leadership potential within their organizations.

If you’re interested in anabaptism or missional ecclesiology, have already got a masters degree, are looking for some more education, and are convinced, like me, that the best forms of education are those rooted in a learning community of engaged Christian leaders, you really need to check out this program.  Deadline for applications is the end of May and if you hurry, you might even be able to get a refund on your application fee!

Learn more about the cohort model of education here.

Learn more about the program structure here.

Let me know if you have any questions, I’d love to talk more about it.  And please forward this on to others you think might be interested.

Last night Amy and I joined a friend for a presentation at Harvest Bible Chapel on the topic of, “What is the Emergent Church?”¹ as part of an ongoing apologetics series they are doing.

As someone who gets to teach the course, The Emerging Church in the 21st Century, once a year, I was looking forward to attending and seeing what was said and discussed; especially considering the speaker for the evening was Dr. David Finkbeiner, a professor at Moody Bible Institute.

I mean, if you want to get a balanced understanding of what the “Emergent Church” is all about, who better to ask than a professor of systematic theology at a school that officially, “does not endorse the emerging/emergent church” right?!

Harvest would have done well (though from what I could tell – would never so much as have considered it) to have invited at least one person who could have spoken as an insider to the EC discussion.

It was clear from the get-go that the tenor of the evening was going to be critical, bordering on condemnatory.  And this, even after Dr. Finkbeiner admitted that there is no simple way to define the EC as a whole.

Dr. Finkbeiner’s focus for the evening was theological method.  His premise was that what undergirds the “Emergent Church” movement is a post-conservative theological method.  His aim was to critique this theological method overagainst a more traditional conservative evangelical one.

Essentially, here’s what that meant…

1) Post-Conservatives err in their non-foundationalist approach to epistemoplogy which takes things like history, context, and culture seriously, where as conservatives rightfully embrace Scripture as the objective and sole foundation to all knowledge.

2) Post-Conservatives err in asserting that absolute truth, while real, may often times be beyond our ability to fully grasp.  Conservatives rightfully assert not only the reality of absolute truth, but affirm our ability to, “with a little hard work,” objectively know it.

3) Post-conservatives err in not championing the inerrancy of Scripture.  Conservatives rightly hinge all their hopes on Scripture having been verbally and inerrantly inspired.

So, here we have a guy who is doing a masterful job of towing the line of modern conservative evangelicalism, lambasting those who dare to think, “There might be some stuff we’re missing here.”

As I listened to him describe some of the perspectives and viewpoints of post-conservative evangelicals I found it hard to believe that he wasn’t converting himself!

He quickly and coyly dismissed a broad range of the most helpful aspects of post-conservative theology…

– The idea that we need one another in the pursuit of truth because all of our perspectives are bound by a host of factors

– The notion that theology loses its character when not born out of an embodied witness

– The view that the authority of Scripture lies not primarily in its abstract character, but in its function in the life of the Church

– The insight that biblical propositional truth derives its meaning and significance from the narratives in which they’re embedded

– That post-conservative theology is, at its core, a prophetic call to revisit some of our modernistic assumptions

In each and every instance, the speaker noted that these are the hallmarks of post-conservative theology and then attempted to show why they ought to be rejected.

OK, so that was the presentation and as enlightening as it was, the Q & A time was even better.  I quote.

“Is Willowcreek an Emergent Church?  I heard they sell Brian McLaren books.”²

“Is the Emergent Church a cult?”

“I’ve heard that Urbana and InterVarsity are becoming more Emergent.  Should I keep my kids away from those groups?”

I actually had the opportunity to ask the last question of the evening…

With a little trepidation, but in the spirit of full disclosure, I teach a course on the Emerging Church at the seminary level and I need to say that I think there have been some pretty unfair characterizations of the movement here tonight.  I was hoping that before we go you might offer a positive comment about the role the EC has had in the recovery of the importance of the Missio Dei or incarnational approaches to ecclesiology.

Dr. Finkbeiner commented that, “Yes, there has been some focus in those areas, but they still are wrong in how they do theology.”  So, no, he didn’t have one positive thing to say the entire evening about the EC.

Left completely aside from the discussion of the evening was the historical evolution of the EC movement, its place in the scope of the collapse of Christendom, and the most relevant bit of information given the scope of the talk, namely, that theological method simply isn’t at the center for 90% of the people who are in any way affiliated with the movement.  For the vast majority, what is central is joining God in his mission in the world and finding ways to make the church, not culturally relevant (as too many assume), but incarnationally faithful in the pattern of Jesus.

Between the tenor of the presentation and the questions and comments of the audience, it’s little wonder that conservative evangelicals are so often characterized by fear and close-mindedness.  There are many in the EC community who are trying to carve out a way of being the church and doing theology that doesn’t fell prey to these charges.  I was really hoping to come away pleasantly surprised by the event.  Sadly, I didn’t.

1. There is no such thing as the Emergent Church. This is a classic conflation of the terms Emergent Village and Emerging Church offered by those who aren’t all that familiar with the topic
2. Someone from Harvest was quick to announce that Harvest doesn’t!

It’s not often I post about stuff like this — even less often that I am inclined to even think much of it, but I got a killer deal on a couple of sweaters that I really like yesterday.

And truth be told, the real credit goes to Amy and her twin attributes of 1) an ability to spot a deal and 2) simply being in the right place at the right time.

So, we’re walking into the store and knowing my wife’s insatiable desire to check EVERYTHING out, I cover her eyes with my hands and lead her, undistracted, through the store so that we can accomplish our one and only task, return an item.

What I didn’t count on was that with her eyes covered, her superhuman powers were redirected to her ears and she made out an announcement over the PA about a free giveaway going on upstairs.  This announcement was barely audible to the human ear and nearly unintelligable on top of that.  How she noticed and discerned the message is beyond me.

She left me to the return and as she sauntered away, shouted back over her shoulder, “Hey, you should check out those sweaters over there.”  I swear we walked by them when she had her eyes covered.  I hadn’t even seen the sweaters.  I finished quick and she was still upstairs, so I walked over to look at the sweaters.  $55 bucks!  “Yeah right,” I thought.  But then I looked closer.  They were marked down to $10 – more than 80% off.

Now listen, I’m not one of those who’s fooled into believing that I could get a sweater that is really worth $55 for $10.  But $10 still seemed like a pretty good deal for how well the sweater fit and looked.  So I got 2!  But the story’s not over, oh no!

We get to the register to check out and they have an offer for a Sears card where you can get $15 off your purchase.  So, between the 80% off sale, the small credit from the return, and the Sears card offer, I walked out of the store with 2 “$55″ sweaters for under 2 bucks.  Oh, and besides the sweaters, Amy came home with a couple kitchen tools that she got for free just for walking upstairs.  I think I’m gonna like shopping with Amy!

The life I live is one narrated by Love.

The other day I was looking for something and when I couldn’t find it where it should have been, I was forced to consult “the box.”

You know “the box” right?  It’s where you have stashed your odds and ends for years upon years.  You have no real idea what all is in there, but you also know equally well that there is no chance you would ever throw that box away!

As I worked through the contents of the box, I was moved to tears.  I found collections of letters, notes, cards, and pictures that I had all but forgotten.

A soccer ball that all my players signed for me when I coached.

A scrap of paper with simple words of encouragement that a good friend tucked in my bag right before I boarded a plane to embark on one of the hardest journeys of my life.

Letters from students with words of love and affirmation from my days as a student pastor.

Today is my 31st birthday – the first that I celebrate with the woman who vowed to love me for the rest of my life.  And if the last 8 months are any kind of gauge, the rest of my life is looking pretty great!

As I stop to think about how I have been loved for the last 30 years, how I am loved now, and how I may yet be loved in the future by people (and, Lord willing, children) that I don’t even know yet, I am overwhelmed with inexpressible joy and gratitude.

May I have the courage to love others as I have been loved – to help narrate the lives of others with the sort of Love that has characterized mine.

I once heard a story of a man who was speaking with Dallas Willard.  In the course of conversation, the man divulged a sin, but commented that it was, “completely out of character” for him.  To which Dallas replied, “No it wasn’t.  If you did it, that IS your character.”

I listened to that and thought to myself,

This expresses well why I love God so much.  Because God is as God acts.

God doesn’t get to be called “loving” if God doesn’t love.  Nor does God get to be named “just” if God doesn’t act justly. We are as we act and God is as God acts.

Instead of taking this in my own personal direction, I was wondering how others might respond to the idea that “God IS as God ACTS.”  What are your thoughts?  What does it mean for how you live your life and interpret your reality?

About a month ago I offered a book review of Tending to Eden: Environmental Stewardship for God’s People by Scott Sabin.  Scott is the Executive director of Plant with Purpose.

Plant With Purpose is an international environmental organization that transforms lives in rural areas where poverty is caused by deforestation. For over 25 years, Plant With Purpose has provided lasting solutions to heal the relationship between people and their environment by planting trees, revitalizing farms, and offering loans to create economic opportunity.

Yesterday, I had the chance to actually interview Scott and ask him a few questions about the book.  Besides providing an overview of Plant with Purpose and the book, Tending to Eden, we spend some talking about the devastation in Haiti, one of the places where they serve, the vicious cycle of poverty and environmental degradation, and the relationship between creation care and the gospel.  The whole interview (~ 22 mins.) is worth the selection of the book that Scott reads toward the end.

If you’re reading this in a feed reader and don’t see the audio player, click through to see it.

Use THIS LINK to see others who wil be participating in the blog tour today, to find out more about Plant with Purpose, and to purchase the book.  If you buy the book through the Amazon link on this page, a portion of the proceeds will directly benefit the rural poor.

Here’s the thing I hate most about blogging – it’s all about the now.  Doesn’t matter how much time you invested or how much thought you put into that post or series birthed by your creative genius – your precious content is forgotten and buried faster than Superman tweeting on speed!

Enter Tweet Old Post.

I stumbled upon this brilliant wordpress plugin recently that resurrects that old content and brings it into the land of the living.

You select an interval (I’ve chosen twice a day), and BOOM – your old content, selected at random based on the criteria you choose, is tweeted.  It even comes packaged with the ability to choose a link shortening service.

One downside – as I have figured out since beginning to use this plugin.  If your readers/followers don’t pay attention, they will think that you’re posting new content and ask you if you’re alright after your car wreck (that happened 4 years ago!).

So, my fellow bloggers, hop on over to here and tell Ajay thanks for writing a plugin that helps us repopulate the interwebs with the precious fruit of our labors.

This is the third and final post in a brief series on the practice of preaching in missional communities.  I’ve already argued that preaching in missional churches is a communal activity and that it aims at the proclamation of biblical truth.  Lastly, I want to suggest that missional preaching calls for and invites a real response from its hearers.

It is a travesty of (quite literally) biblical proportions that we would gather as the Body of Christ, hear from the Scriptures, and not be called – in a meaningful and accountable way – to respond. This is where the theological rubber meets the ecclesial road.  When the theological vision of a church is adapted to meet an individualistic and consumer-driven society, the practice of preaching is bound to the fate illustrated by the cartoon above.  However, where and when a church embraces a missional theology, it sees little point in the practice of preaching if it doesn’t lead to a meaningful and accountable means of response. By this I don’t mean that we have some nugget of wisdom to try and apply to our lives once we leave, I mean right then and there, we respond.  All of us.  Not, “Respond if you want to get saved,” but “Here’s God’s truth for all of us to which we are all called to respond.  Do it!

Typically, at Life on the Vine, we do this through spoken prayer.  The preacher will guide us in a way to respond to the truth and everyone has an opportunity to do so.  For instance, this summer I preached from Genesis 49 and proclaimed the truth that, “Our hope in the promises of God rests on God’s character, not ours.  We all responded to this by praying, “Lord, though I am/have _________, you are/have ___________ and so I pray, __________.”  Those who pray conclude with the words, “Lord, in your mercy,” and the entire congregation, if they can, affirms the prayer by saying, “Amen!”

Because our community is an accessible and sustainable size, these responses are quite public, making them all the more meaningful.

Responding to the truth of the text for the morning doesn’t end on Sunday.  At the center of our community are what we call “Missional Orders,” groups of couples and singles who are trying to share life and serve together.  These missional orders carry the truth with them throughout the week and when we gather we continue to respond to one another by noting the effect the sermon is having on us.

Any thoughts on this?  Are there aspects to the way preaching is practices in your church community that get at this vision or embody something different?  Are there implications of a missional theology/ecclesiology for preaching that you’re thinking of that I haven’t mentioned here?

UPDATE: Be sure to check out what other bloggers are saying about their experience at this gathering.

Dave Fitch here and here, Ben Sternke, J.R. Briggs, Todd Hiestand, Drew Hart, and Geoff Holsclaw (not quite real).  I’ll add more as I become aware of them.

John Chandler is in.

Here’s Geoff Holsclaw’s real one.

Bob Hyatt provides his reflections here.

Jason Salamun, new to Eclclesia, reviews his time here.

——————————————–

The missional community Amy and I are a part of, Life on the Vine, is a part of Ecclesia,

a relational network of churches, leaders and movements that seek to equip, partner and multiply missional churches and movements.

Before I offer some reflections on the national gathering that just concluded, I wanted to mention a few of the unique features of Ecclesia that compel me to appreciate this network more than others.

The Kingdom of God.  As opposed to one particular understanding of the gospel, Eccelsia finds unity in Jesus’ message of the Kingdom thus making room for those who articulate the good news in different ways.

Relationships/Partnerships.  Through and through, Ecclesia is relationally driven. They exhibit no desire for the network to be central, but rather labor to facilitate relationships and partnerships between leaders and churches.

Affirmation of Women.  We still have work to do in this area, but especially at this years gathering which featured a husband wife team as keynote presenters, we put on display what I hope continues to emerge as as a stated value for the importance of men and women partnering in ministry.

I could probably add more, but on to the reflections I go.

Dallas Willard and Bob & Mary Hopkins were the speakers for the main sessions. Todd Hunter was supposed to be there as well, but needed to cancel for personal and understandable reasons.

Dallas was brilliant.  Wisdom seemed to pour out of this man as he spoke.  His main theme through the week was “knowledge.”  He wasn’t speaking of the intellectual/factual sort of knowledge, but the relational/experiential sort. His aim seemed to be that we would be known not just for what we do, but what we deeply, personally, and powerfully know to be true about God and life in God’s Kingdom.

One of the topics Dallas took up in a break out session was that of religious pluralism.  Central to that conversation was the issue of homosexuality.  As he so often does Dallas reframed the trajectory of the conversation by commenting,

I think homosexuality is a disastrous lifestyle, but heterosexuality ain’t doing so good either. And if it weren’t for the failings of heterosexuality, homosexuality may not be such a huge issue.

This is what Dallas does best.  He brings a frame of reference that just isn’t on the radar for so many people.  For Dallas, the main issue is always is our nuanced journey into Christlike character as opposed to simple doctrinal statements or moral judgments.

Bob & Mary Hopkins were equally excellent. Mainly they talked about the functioning of teams and incarnational/contextual issues of church planting and ministry.

They shared from their years of experience with church planting and equipping church leaders and teams in the UK.

Everything that Willard and the Hopkins’ had to say was insightful and helpful, but I don’t think it was my favorite part of the week.  My favorite part of the week was the consistency and pervasiveness of voices from within the network.  A big part of this was the size of the gathering – capped at 200.  But more than that, the structure of the gathering featured panel sessions, extended Q&A sessions, and specific opportunities for us to hear, both as a large group and via breakout sessions, from those who are leading local churches within the network.

I may have some more thoughts that surface later, but for now, here’s the twitter stream (#eng2010) from the conference as well as the live blog we used.  The audio from the conference should be available soon and I’ll be sure to let you know when it is.

Amy and I are both networkers through and through.  Each of us has enjoyed cultivating networks and communities of friends in the various places we have lived across the US and abroad.  These are people who have helped, encouraged, shaped, and loved us.  Because we want to do what we can to stay in touch with these people (you?), we’ve decided to compile a 1-page letter about every other month that highlights what’s been going on, what’s coming up, matters in which we hope you will rejoice with us, and others in which we hope you will support us in prayer.

We got our first one out in the last few days.  If you didn’t receive it, there are 2 possible reasons.

1) We had no idea you might be interested in receiving it.

2) We tried to send it to you, but must have had the wrong email address.

In either case, if you didn’t receive our letter and would like to, leave a comment or drop us an email via the contact page and we will add you to the list of folks that we email these letters to.

Thanks for continuing to allow us to share our lives with our – nothing means more.  We’re also hopeful that this might be a pathway to more of you sharing what is going on in your lives as well.

Click the image below to download our first letter.

In my last post I was making the claim that given a missional ecclesiology, the practice of preaching is a communal activity.  On top of this, I would like to suggest that preaching in missional churches seeks to proclaim biblical truth.

Now, don’t miss this. I don’t mean “proclaim biblical truth” in the fundamentalist, “The Bible says it, so that’s the end of discussion and you’re stupid if you don’t see it” sort of way that’s maddeningly common, but in the, “In faith, we proclaim this to be true about God and life in God’s Kingdom,” sort of way.

Because missional churches seek to shape a people for mission in a Post-Christendom world, every activity of the community, including preaching, is meant to be a formative practice in this regard.  As Stutzman says in the paper mentioned previously,

Missional preaching deliberately draws contrasts between the gospel message and the practices and values of American civil religion, aiming for conversion from habits shaped by participation in American democracy to habits formed through Christian discipleship.

In preaching, missional churches seek to proclaim the truth of the reality of God’s Kingdom in the midst of every other competing reality.  The point of preaching for missional churches is not anthropocentric/therapeutic - meant to make people feel emotionally better.  Nor does it seek primarily to be relevant in order to captivate or entertain an audience.  It is not even so concerned with being exegetical or expository – patently cerebral types of communication.  Missional preaching is theocentric – it is a practice in which we look for God’s reality to intersect with ours and DO something in us and in our midst.

So, for instance, each and every sermon preached at Life on the Vine features a rhetorical phrase of some sort.  This is a simple way to articulate the truth that is being proclaimed from the morning’s text.  The rest of the sermon, normally about 20-25 minutes since it’s not seen as more central than any other part of the liturgy, is spent, not unpacking a text, but proclaiming a biblical truth from that text that addresses us and calls us all to some response.

For instance, this summer I preached from Genesis 49 and proclaimed the truth that,

Our hope in the promises of God rests on God’s character, not ours.

The aim in my preaching of this sermon wasn’t mainly to explain the text so that people could understand and try to apply it to their lives, but to proclaim the truthfulness of the text by calling out what it was DOING, namely, calling its hearers to believe, not believe by intellectual assent, but believe by ordering their lives around, this biblical truth.

And the only way to get at this, is to call for a real response.  That’s our topic for next time.

Not too long ago I offered a post on, “Preaching in the Missional Church.”  Basically it was an excuse to pimp this awesome paper by Ervin Stutzman of Eastern Mennonite University.  Apparently that wasn’t enough for my good friend Wess, who asked what missional preaching looks like

To try and do justice to Wess’ question, the importance of the topic and to make space for better discussion, I’ve decided to divy this up into three posts.  I’ve got in mind to describe three unique attributes of preaching in missional churches and then illustrating them by way of examples from Life on the Vine, the missional community Amy and I are a part of. (Dave Fitch, one of the co-pastors of LOV, offers some reflections on this same topic here.)

In missional communities, preaching is a communal activity which seeks to proclaim biblical truth that calls for and invites a real response.

In most churches, the task of preaching is the responsibility of one individual – 9 times out of 10, a man.  Not only does the task of preaching often remain unshared, but the scope of preaching does as well.  This reality conflicts with the communal nature of missional theology and ecclesiology.

In missional communities, one of the central aims would be for a team of teachers, whose giftedness is affirmed by the congregation, to share responsibility not only for preaching and teaching, but for giving their time and attention to identifying and equipping other gifted teachers in the body.

Life on the Vine is shepherded by a 3-person team of bi-vocational pastors.  Not only do they share teaching and preaching responsibilities, but they also facilitate what we call a “College of Preachers,” every summer.  This gives those who have (or at least want to discover if they have) the gift of teaching, the opportunity to use and explore this gift in a guided way.

In addition, we follow the church calendar.  This means that we are all aware, well ahead of time, of those texts which will be preached each Sunday.  Whoever is responsible for the preaching portion of our liturgical service also facilitates a time of teaching and dialogue for an hour or so before the worship service.  This time gives the entire body the opportunity to speak to the text for the morning and it gives the preacher the opportunity to (re)shape their sermon in light of the insights, questions, and concerns of the body.

I’ll speak to the issue of missional preaching proclaiming biblical truth next time.  For now, what are your thoughts on preaching as a communal activity?  Is this important to you?  Why or why not?  What might be other ways to achieve the same goal in different ways?

I was fortunate enough to receive a pre-release copy of Tending to Eden: Environmental Stewardship for God’s People by Scott C. Sabin from Judson Press.

Sabin is the Executive Director of Plant with Purpose, a Christian relief and development agency.

Christians have a responsibility to love and care for our environment as part of God’s creation and Sabin gets that for sure, but that’s not the genius of the book.  The real beauty of this book comes in the author’s ability to explain to readers, with remarkable insight and simplicity, the inherent connection between caring for the environment and caring for the poor and oppressed. He does so by providing a relational framework for understanding the issues throughout the book.  Through first-hand stories and lessons learned from years of experience, Sabin unmasks the naivete and ignorance of the brand of evangelicals for whom creation care is auxiliary to (their version of) the gospel.  He suggests – at times more implicitly than explicitly, that all the challenges we face, as well as the solutions to those problems, are relational in nature

Throughout the book, the author tackles issues such as deforestation, sustainable agriculture, sanitation, grassroots enterprise, and climate change.  In each case, his aim is to point out how our engagement with these issues has everything to do with out concern for those who are most globally at-risk.

For Sabin,

…without God, all the development and environmental restoration in the world will not bring transformation.

At the same time, he is able to articulate that transformation is not something other than God-infused labors of development and environmental restoration.

As someone who believes that one of the hallmarks of the missional church is listening to voices from the margins, I was struck by this comment from the author.

The idea that stewardship and conservation are part of a liberal agenda seems ludicrous in much of the developing world.  I remember the shock on the face of our Dominican director when I tried to explain the suspicion with which many U.S. churches regarded the environmental aspects of our work.  It was a horrifying thought to him that American Christians would be less than enthusiastic about caring for the earth.  Many of our brothers and sisters in the developing world are way ahead of us in their understanding of stewardship, and there is much that we can learn from them.

For anyone wishing they could find a book that offers a global view of some of the most pressing environmental challenges without getting lost and confused in technical jargon, this book is an excellent resource. The book even features a discussion guide at the end for each chapter making it an excellent choice for groups interested in studying and talking about these issues together.  Through raising our awareness and offering practical suggestions, Sabin offers readers a hope for the future that is rooted not in our ability to affect change, but in God’s invitation to join him in his mission of the reconciliation of all things.

I regret that I’ve never med Ed Stetzer face to face.  I’d like to believe we’d be fast friends who share a mutual passion for people coming to know Christ and joining in God’s mission in the world.  At the same time, we’d disagree about a lot.  For starters, a blog post he published yesterday critiquing the need for missional (among other) conversations.

Ed seems worried about missional conversations that don’t…

involve men and women being redeemed, changed [sic], and transformed by the gospel.

I read that and think to myself, “What?  Where in the flip is he getting his definition of missional and who is he talking to?  These are the things that are at the very center of missional theology and ecclesiology.”  I have worked hard over a healthy number of years to stay involved in every way I can imagine in the missional conversation and outside of the very fringes that you find in any population, I simply don’t know of any missional people or groups that would merit this kind of concern.

Ed says,

It is never a good thing to be defending our lack of converts to Christ while we are busy converting people to our cause. To me, it is the difference between complaining and creating a new (and better) way.

He goes on to say,

I don’t want missional to mean attacks on mega and fast growing churches who are reaching people “wrongly,” while missional churches are reaching few “rightly.”

I think I get Ed’s heart here, but these statements are FAR too simplistic. One of the main reasons for the lack of converts in missional and emerging churches is the popularity of churches who are, in fact, “reaching people ‘wrongly’.” For those who embrace missional theology and are trying to cultivate missional communities, especially in contexts where Christendom still exists, we are fighting an uphill battle… and wearing a 100 lb. pack… and it’s raining… and we’re barefoot… and…  You get the point.  In a culture which still features the cheap grace of individualistic salvation and consumeristic church involvement, guess what – the message of dying to yourself, submitting yourself to a community and joining in God’s Kingdom mission that will, in all likelihood, threaten your identity and lifestyle is pretty unpopular.  When given the option, would-be converts will of course respond,

Thank you very much, I think I’ll just attend St. McDonald’s where I get saved by raising my hand, I can disappear in the mass of people, and the entertaining music & speaking gives me warm fuzzies every time I’m there.

The fact of the matter is that those who identify with missional theology engage in this fight for the very reasons mentioned above – because the converts made by the dominant expressions of Christianity in the US are in no meaningful way redeemed, changed or transformed. I doubt many people are more aware of the crisis of nominal Christianity in the US that Ed, so I find this a surprising oversight.  So, albeit with the character and concern of Jesus, I think this is very much a biblically justifiable fight for missional people to be engaged in – the fight for biblical faithfulness and fulfilling of the command to make disciples.

Ed goes on to say,

I am not willing to say that a lack of converts is a sign of unfaithfulness. But, I am willing to say that too many change movements are not seeing lost people’s lives changed.

Fair enough, but this reality is far more poignant and dire when we consider the lack of disciple-making happening in long standing traditions that aren’t thinking about change at all!

Stetzer rounds out his post by saying,

So, let’s continue conversations about being “missional” or whatever, but let’s not do so if it distracts us from the mission. Instead let’s talk about these issues but not let them distract us from our main focus–showing and sharing the love of Jesus to a desperately lost world that needs a message of hope.

To this I say a quick and hearty AMEN!  But I am also quick to resist Ed’s false dichotomy by pointing out that having “conversations about ‘missional’ or whatever,”  aimed at the faithful practice and witness of the church is VITAL to the manner in which we show and share the love of Jesus.  Not having these conversations, or having them poorly, is far more dangerous than seeing them as a distraction.

Between the promise I believe missional theology and ecclesiology hold for the trajectory of Western Christianity and how incredibly misunderstood both remain, I submit that we need WAY more conversations, not less.

A little over a week ago, my cousin-in-law Josh, asked how one might go about transitioning traditional churches into “something more missional at its core.”  Since I have banged my head against this wall for years in several different churches, my response will be a mixture of, “here’s where I failed,” and “here’s what I think is most helpful.”  For anyone who might have missed them, my posts on, “The Move: The Journey from Attractional to Missional,” and “What is Missional?” would be really helpful in understanding where I am coming from.

I should say a few things at the beginning to help frame my thoughts.

1) This is a wine skins issue (Mt. 9:17).  Anyone considering this topic who thinks (whether they realize it or not) that this is basically about getting new wine into old wine skins is destined for frustration and failure – I speak from experience!  Missional churches represent brand new wine skins, not just new wine.

2) This takes a long time.  The most experienced people will tell you 8-10 years minimum.  When we are talking about changing the core identity of, not just a person, but a community, we have to expect a long hard road.  An apt analogy – God got Israel out of Egypt in pretty short order, but it took another 40 years to get Egypt out of Israel.

3) No one person is capable of maneuvering this transition.  Solo pastors are dead in the water in this regard.  And this isn’t to say that the better way is having a team of top-down leaders – this will end up being damaging as well.  One of the keys to instilling missional DNA in a church community is inspiring and encouraging new imagination from the bottom.

Those things being said, what does it take?  What might the process look like?

My short answer is,

A Spirit-guided intermingling of communal practices, teaching, and prayerful reflection.

Here’s my slightly-longer expansion on those three things.

I take for granted that fundamental to the distinctions of “traditional” and “missional” is a vision of what it means to be the church in Post-Christendom vs. Christendom.  My personal opinion (others may disagree) is that there is no point in talking about what it means to be a missional church until Christendom has been rejected as a cultural value. Thus, transitioning traditional churches to missional ones is a non-linear process of deconstruction and reconstruction.  Communal practices, teaching, and reflection are the tools which assist in this ongoing task.  It would be a (classically modern) mistake to think of this as a mainly intellectual enterprise.  Instead, in the integration of these things, deconstruction and reconstruction happen alongside one another.

Since there is no universal model to apply to this topic, we are better served by asking general questions that need to be answered in specific contexts.  Here are some questions which I think would serve us well in maneuvering this sort of transition.

– In both small numbers as well as large, what are the practices we can engage in as a community that will shape us into people and “a people” who think and act like Jesus?

– As we try to be honest with ourselves, what things are we doing as a community that don’t seem to be contributing to our spiritual formation?

– How do we incorporate space in our times together (in homes, in meetings, in gatherings) to intentionally reflect on and respond to what we sense God is speaking and doing in our community?

– Who are those in our community who seem most gifted to teach (identified by the fruit of their teaching helping people become more like Jesus)? How can we encourage these people to engage with authors and speakers who are dealing with the subject of missional ecclesiology on our behalf?

– How do we make incremental yet strategic changes in the percentage of money that goes to those things which ensure our security as opposed to those things which necessitate faith in the midst of great risk?

Over and above questions like these, I would also suggest these sort of biblical principles for those who shoulder the responsibility for a transition like this:

– Find people of peace who can be trusted and are willing to commit to the journey. Ask for their help.

– Demonstrate servant leadership by being open, transparent, and broken.

– Commit to structures of biblical conflict resolution.  Entrust to God’s care those who choose to leave (there will be many and this is not necessarily a sign of poor leadership).

OK, there’s some initial thoughts.  I’m sure I’ll have more so I hope to continue the discussion by way of comments.