Almost a year ago to the day, my friend JR Woodward asked me to contribute a post to a series he was doing on his blog.

I was asked to answer the question,

If your local city newspaper asked you to describe the ‘Good News,’ what would you write?

I was living and pastoring in Memphis, TN at the time, a city broken and divided in many ways, so I was more than happy to participate.

A year later, that series has morphed into a book, Viral Hope: Good News from the Urbs to the Burbs (and everything in between).

The most exciting thing about the book, to me anyway, is that as I read these essays, I realize that I am privileged to personally know about 1/2 of these men and women who have a deep gospel hope for the place in which they live.  I’m almost as excited that this book marks the debut of Ecclesia Press, a new publishing division of the Ecclesia Network that I think has the potential to be a huge resource to missional church leaders by giving voice to those who are in the missional trenches, seeking to cultivate disciples and communities that join in God’s mission in the world.

Here’s a blog post with links to the 50 authors of the book and their original posts.

If you are looking to pick up 1-4 copies of the book, you’ll need to go to Amazon.  But, if you’d like to pick up 5 or more, be sure to go to the Ecclesia Press site to get discounts based on the quantity of your order.

You can follow ViralHopeBook, EcclesiaPress, and EcclesiaNet on twitter.  Or, if you really wanna get crazy, you can follow me

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Alan Hirsch.  The book he co-authored with Mike Frost, The Shaping of Things to Come, was the first I read that began to help me understand the angst I felt with the attractional model of church so prevalent in the US.

This is why I was so thrown a few days ago when I read that Alan Hirsch had asserted that American Christianity is the great hope for the Church in the West.  He made comments to this point in the opening remarks of his talk at a conference called “Verge” in Texas.  You can view the video (Session 2) here.  At one point he said,

If we don’t win the battle of the decline of the church here in the states, then it’s not going to come from anywhere else.  We will win or lose the battle over here in the states.

His rationale seemed to be that 1) the Church is the rest of the West is all but dead and 2) that Americans have a built-in entrepenurial (apostolic) sort of spirit.

On this count, I was surprised and disappointed on 2 levels.

First, he seemed to communicate a latent assumption that “the West” maintains a position of superiority in terms of global Christianity.  He admitted that Christianity is growing in non-Western parts of the world, but never suggested that our hope might lie in learning from what God is going there.

Secondly, he referenced the American entrepreneurial spirit as the key factor in our ability to “win the battle of the decline of the church.”  I was blown away!  I was immediately reminded of a quote by Einstein, which, even more surprisingly, he referenced later, but totally misused,

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

It is American entrepreneurialism that got us into the mess of creating a church system predicated on the cultural values of individualism and consumerism.  Relying on the same characteristic is hardly a promising solution.

Over and above all these disappointments comes a more biblical/theological one, namely, that putting our hope in anything except for a willingness to sacrifice what is most dear to us, to listen to the voices of those on the margins, and to trust God with our future (which may very well mean the increasing marginalization of the church), is, in any sense, in keeping with God’s desire for the Body of Christ.

There was a 2nd major part to Hirsch’s presentation that really made me nervous.

He made the claim that the dominant expression of church in America, that of the seeker-sensitive/attractional model, has a market appeal to about 40% of the American population.  This yields what Hirsch called a “strategic problem” and a “missionary problem.”

The “strategic problem” is that 95% of the churches in the US are seeking to become the kind of church that appeals to this same 40% of the population.

The “missionary problem” is that 60% (and growing) of our population is being virtually ignored.

So far so good, but at one point Alan was commenting on attractional types of churches that are “reaching” the 40% of the American population and said, “Those who do this well should strive to do it better.”  Not change what they are doing, just do more of the same, better.

In affirming an attractional (or what he is now calling ex-tractional) model of church simply because it succeeds in drawing a crowd, he fails to critique the most devastating reality, namely, that these churches, on the whole, don’t make disciples. By and large, they facilitate the already pervasive nominal christianity that pervades at least 40% of the American population.

Let me try to summarize my push back on what I am hearing and seeing from Alan Hirsch as of late.

1) Putting our eggs in the basket (Easter week!) of the American church is futile, if not sinful.  This is exactly how we got where we are and trying harder ain’t gonna cut it.  It may very well be that God is at work killing off a defunct ecclesial trajectory and we would do better to repent and ask for mercy than to rely on any ability we think we possess to save the day.

2) Alan is right, there is a descent portion of the American population that has some natural affinity with the sort of church which thrives in Christendom.  But, merely because people will respond to an attractional model of church does not make it ok.  A pragmatic victory is almost never a biblical one.  Attractional models of church are built on the cultural values of individualism and consumerism and, save for the grace of God, are incapable of yielding the sort of disciples the world desperately needs.

I have a serious and growing concern regarding the temptation to make missional marketable.  The temptation is especially seductive to those who, like Alan, have a deep love for the church as the Body of Christ and want to see it thrive.  But, if God means for missional theology/ecclesiology to benefit the church, it will remain an invitation to repentance, sacrifice, and death.  This sort of invitation has never had much market appeal, especially in the US.

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.

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.

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.

While I really enjoyed writing out my own thoughts on a missional vision of theological education at the end of last year, I was really wanting to get around a bunch of missional leaders to get their opinions on some key questions.  Being at the Missional Learning Commons two weekends ago was a great opportunity to do just that.

Here were the questions we wresteled with…

1) What are the skills necessary for missional leadership which differ from those needed for  pastoral roles within Christendom?

2) Currently, what are the most important resources that seminaries have to offer for the equipping of missional leaders/communities?

3) What resources for the formation of missional leaders/communities are offered through other avenues?

4) To whatever extent I feel prepared to live or lead missionally, the thing which has equipped me most in that regard is…

You can see how people responded to those questions here.

I also invited everyone who attended to do a brief online survey answering some different questions on the same topic.  If you’d like to participate, you can find the survey here.

And of course, for the sake of discussion, feel free to offer any responses here in the comment section.

Amy and I had a great time at the Missional Learning Commons in Ft. Wayne two weekends ago.

The theme of the weekend was,”Deeper Church.”  Essentially what that meant was having discussions about certain topics which surface when we stop thinking about church as a worship service with a host of corresponding programs and begin to embrace church as a way of life in which we are joining God in his mission of reconciliation and the restoration of all things.  Some may want to try and explain how these are really two ways of saying the same thing, but for the vast majority of people who have been involved in this conversation for any length of time, the differences are too real and too important to dismiss with semantic gymnastics.

On Friday night there were maybe 30 people in attendance to discuss Soong-chan Rah’s book, The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity.  This conversation was continued as the topic of the final session on Saturday.  Both conversations were engaging and helpful.  While the book had clear shortcomings and oversights, it served as a springboard for us to ask the question, “Why are missional congregations so white?”  We see this as a problem because implicit in missional theology is the value for listening to voices from the margins of society – something which should be a no-brainer to those of us who regard Scripture (a book authored by those speaking from the margins of society!) as our guiding text.  Those who live on the margins of society have much to teach those of us who don’t and the longer our congregations remain socio-economically and culturally homogeneous, the more the Body of Christ, and by implication, the world to which we testify of an alternative reality, suffers.

In light of that, we had discussions about the practices of deeper churches, what sharing the gospel means and looks like for deeper churches, and whether or not these deeper churches should have paid staff.  This session was led by a 3-person panel: Matt Tebbe one of the pastors of Life on the Vine who is bi-vocational, JR Woodward, who raises all of his support, and Bob Havenor, who was advocating for an up-paid approach to church leadership.

Thanks to Ben Sternke who put the missional commons site together, you can find audio from all of the sessions here.

If you are in the midwest and interested in the missional conversation, I hope you’ll consider joining us next year – details TBD.

This afternoon Amy and I are joining about a dozen others from our church community as attenders at a Missional Learning Commons in Ft. Wayne, IN.

At the invitation of Dave Fitch (who has blogged about this gathering here), I attended my first one of these in December of 2007 before Amy was in Chicago.  Last year Amy attended without me as I was in Kenya.  So, especially since we have committed as a couple to helping cultivate a new missional community in the next year, I am really excited for us to get to participate in one of these together.

Here’s what I love about this event.

A) It’s free.  And that’s not because it sucks.  It’s because the “business” of Christian resourcing needs to die.

B) It’s local.  The people who attend these every year have a real chance to stay meaningfully connected.

C) It’s not about personalities.  Those who speak, are more like conversation starters.  There is much more time given to dialogue than monologue.

D) There’s no hype.  No book sales, no t-shirts, no vendors.

It’s just a band of brothers and sisters who are trying get on the same page about the implications of a missional ecclesiolgy as Christendom continues to crumble here in the midwest.  It’s a living example of what I meant when I blogged about “The Power and Promise of Regional Gatherings for the Equipping of Missional Churches.”

Looking forward to a great weekend of connecting, discussing, dreaming, and praying.

In a new book, Fresh + Re:Fresh: Church Planting and Urban Mission in Canada Post-Christendom, Dave Fitch offers an introductory chapter entitled, “Fifty Years of Church Planting: the Story as I See it…” in which he summarizes the dominant approaches to church planting over the last few decades and discusses some of the major differences within Post-Christendom.

In speaking of the differences in the multiplication of church communities in Christendom vs. Post-Christendom, Fitch says,

Among the new missional leaders, church is the name we give to a way of life, not a set of services. We do not plant an organized set of services; we inhabit a neighborhood as the living embodied presence of Christ.

In agreement, I’d say that “cultivating missional communities” might be a better way to describe what we have more often known as “church planting.”  In that vein, Fitch goes on to talk about the sorts of leaders necessary to cultivate missional communities suggesting that…

– they will be survivors

…the new missional community leaders must have patience, steady faithfulness and the ability to live simply. They must be able to get jobs and not see the ministry as a privileged full time vocation. They must have a mental image of how they are going to sustain their lives financially, relationally, spiritually and personally.

– they will be communal shepherds

They are not starting and managing an organization. They may not even be good at organization. Instead they are cultivating a communal sense of mission identity among a gathering people ‘for this time and place.’

– they will be interpretive leaders

Interpretive leaders do not dictate from the pulpit a list of do’s and don’ts and solutions from God for every problem. They interpret the Scriptures to open our eyes to what God is doing and where He is taking us. In other words, they cultivate other interpreters/listeners.

– they will be directors of spiritual formation

We must ever navigate against putting on a show that will attract; rather we must develop a liturgy that is simple, accessible and Scriptural and that guides our lives into Christ and guards us from the distractions that would take us away from Mission. …there will be no missional community of people formed and shaped for mission if we just preach Mission as a legalistic requirement. Mission requires patience, a sense of vision and a level of self-denial that can only be formed inwardly in living bodies, trained in the simple organic disciplines/liturgies of the historic church.

– they will be leaders who give away power

Hierarchy is the product of Christendom. It hails to a day when Christianity still held power in society…  It is my belief therefore that missional leadership needs always to be multiple. Most missional pastors/leaders need to be bi-vocational (bi-ministerial) for their own survival. Such leaders must learn to mutually submit to the other leaders as they guide the journey of the community. They must mutually learn to mentor leaders and give away power.

A final insight from the chapter is this little gem,

This kind of leader often does not come from our (all too often) modernist seminaries. They are grown in a community which gathers to worship the Triune God so as to discern Him at work in our midst. (my thoughts on that here)

Beginning the year with this post is no coincidence.  Amy and I have committed to serve alongside others from Life on the Vine to help cultivate a new missional community in 2010.  There’s a lot more questions than answers at this point, but we’re excited to see what God might do as we make ourselves available.

While I am sure to offer tid bits on this process on the blog from time to time, if you would like to get the inside scoop on a regular basis as someone who would commit to be praying for us, leave a comment or let us know through the contact page. Peace to you in the New Year and thanks for your prayers & support.

Previous posts in this Series:

Preliminary Thoughts | The Root of the Problem | The Fruit of the Problem | New Soil | Community Rootedness | Character Formation | Conviction Shaping | Contextual Training

Christendom bore no real need for leaders who were cultural pioneers.  After all, if the culture is already Christian, what do we have to pioneer?  It would be logical to conclude then, that as Christendom crumbles, the need for leaders with the skills for cultural pioneering would increase.  This would be true and mistaken at the same time.  It’s true that we have a greater and greater need for cultural pioneers, but the crumbling of Christendom isn’t the reason.  Rather, a missional vision of the church carries with it an inherent need for leaders who serve as cultural pioneers which means we need a vision of theological education capable of equipping men and women for this task.

Allow me to offer just 2 basic points to support my argument for this need.

First, missional churches operate out of the assumption that mission is part of God’s very character and nature.  God sends the son, the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit, the Trinity sends the Church as the Body of Christ.  Little wonder then that missional church leaders lament the modern phenomenon of churches playing the role of vendors of religious goods and services that spend the bulk of their time, energy, and money trying to get people to come.  Missional churches are not those who focus on offering the best “Christian” stuff (teaching, programs, groups, etc.), but those who focus on engaging with world’s darkest and toughest needs.

Second, missional churches tend to be marked by their attention to Jesus’ announcement of the good news of God’s Kingdom, the new reality inaugurated in Jesus.  Just as Jesus stood at odds with the culture of his day on account of his allegiance to God’s Kingdom, so too the missional church of today will find itself at odds with the culture of our day as we seek to embody God’s Kingdom through faith in Jesus.  To understand the local church as an expression of a new reality, however, means that we recognize the need for leaders capable of cultural pioneering.

Current models of theological education seem to come up short in terms of their fit to equip male and female leaders on both these counts.  How then are we to go about doing so?  I offer three ideas for the training of cultural pioneers.

1) Deep involvement in a missional community

There is no better way to learn how to be a cultural pioneer that to participate in a community that is seeking to do this very thing.  My hope and expectation would be that to a great degree, the various aspects of this missional vision of theological education that I have been describing would all serve to produce leaders who think and act in terms of cultural pioneering.  I have a hard time imagining that someone could give themselves to a process of formation that is rooted in community and centered around character formation through the shaping of Kingdom convictions and contextual training and emerge as someone who would rather manage a program driven group of individuals than lead a community into the world as an expression of God’s alternative reality.

2) Encourage Cultural Creation & Cultivation

I am indebted to Andy Crouch and his book, Culture Making, for my thinking (and language) on this.  The power and trajectory of Christendom resulted in a church that, at various times, thought of “culture” as some monolithic thing that it could condemn, critique, copy, or consume.  Only now, as we increasingly find ourselves on the margins of society, are we rediscovering the postures of creating and cultivating culture.  We create culture through values, practices, and imagination.  However, as Crouch says,

We cannot make culture without culture.  And this means that creation begins with cultivation – taking care of the good things culture has already handed on to us.  The first responsibility of culture makers is not to make something new but to become fluent in the cultural tradition to which we are responsible.  Before we can be culture makers, we must be culture keepers.

This leads us directly to the third ingredient in forming cultural pioneers.

3) Practicing Discernment

The need for skilled discernment is going nowhere but up!  Never before in human history has so much information and so many opinions been so easily accessible.  Add to this the pervasive individualism and relativism of Western culture and you are left with a cultural nightmare for those who believe in such a thing as contextual faithfulness to biblical truth.  As Jesus’ disciples were, we must be taught to see, hear, and feel with eyes, ears, and hearts attuned to the reality of the Kingdom of God in our midst.  How are we ever to create culture unless we can discern our way through it as followers of Jesus?  This takes years of practice within community and remains a lifelong discipline.

Are there other aspects of cultural pioneering that you think I’m missing?  How else might we equip others to this end?  Anxious for your (end of the year and end of the series!) thoughts.

Previous posts in this Series:

Preliminary Thoughts | The Root of the Problem | The Fruit of the Problem | New Soil | Community Rootedness | Character Formation | Conviction Shaping

I have tried to make a case that a missional vision of theological education is one rooted in community that emphasizes the formation of Christan character marked by Kingdom convictions. I would further suggest that a missional vision of theological education will seek to train leaders contextually.

This is missiology 101.  Urban ministry is different than suburban.  Ministry amongst the poor is different than ministry amongst the affluent.  Ministry with adolescents is different than ministry with senior citizens.  Traditional theological education, however, is not equipped to train people with these nuances in mind.  The dominant expression of theological education within Christendom has been training at geographically specific institutions.  These schools of course bring their own context to bear on the training they are doing, but are necessarily limited by that same feature.  Geography isn’t the only problem, the very model of education employed in the seminary environment distances, if not outright separates, theological education from contextual factors.  Some schools have begun trying to correct this problem through online education, allowing students to continue serving in their present context while doing intensive biblical & theological study.  As I said here, these innovations within the current system of theological education are helpful, but they aren’t aimed at the other aspects of missional theological education that I have already covered.  So, the question before us is,

Within a missional vision of theological education, how will contextual leadership development take place?

I can think of at least three aspects of a beginning answer to that question.

1) Networks

Church networks are the missional answer to the decay of denominations. For good or for bad, denominations are crumbling.  In an era of post’s (post-modernity, post-Christendom, etc.) you can add to the list post-denominationalism.  Springing up in their place are inter-denominational networks of churches.  In my opinion, the best of these are striving to make a shared vision of missional living more central than individual points of doctrine.  Besides always being rooted in a particular context, the realities of globalization and pluralism mean that no one congregation has the capacity to train leaders for the church of the future by itself.  It must look outside.  If leaders are to be identified by local communities and if these same communities are to take primary responsibility for their holistic formation and contextual training, then meaningful involvement in a healthy network of missional churches through the sharing of resources and common ministry is a big part of how we accomplish the contextual training of leaders.

2) Apprenticeship

The most valuable resources to the spiritual formation & training of leaders are men and women who offer years of faithful service within a given context. Reading, writing, and peer discussion all have a vital place in the formation of missional church leaders, but all of these dimensions gain their final value in terms of their practical implications in a given context.  Seasoned leaders are invaluable in helping to achieve this goal.  Cultivating missional church leaders who have the skills necessary to help a body of people understand the gospel and its implications in contextually appropriate ways calls for a mentor-apprentice(s) dimension to any process of theological education.

3) Civic Engagement

Civic engagement needs to increasingly become a hallmark of both missional church ministry and leadership formation.  Immersion has long been a defining mark of truly cross-cultural ministry.  Therefore, those churches who embrace the West as a mission field should immediately resonate with the idea that the best way to become incarnationally faithful is to immerse themselves in their context.  The reason for this is at least 2-fold 1) To discover where and how God is already at work. 2) To discern what incarnationally faithful witness to the gospel will mean and look like.

If it’s not already obvious, this aspect of a missional vision of theological education is tied directly to the centrality of the Missio Dei for a missional ecclesiology.  A big part of what makes missional churches missional is their abdication of attractional approaches to church and ministry in favor of incarnational ones. All that Jesus said and did was said and done in light of the people he was speaking to and the place he was speaking in.  In both ministry and leadership formation, we do well to follow this pattern of contextual wisdom.

What has your experience with contextual leadership training been?  Do you see other ways to accomplish this goal in or outside of traditional models of theological education?

In my next post, I hope to round things off with some thoughts on cultural pioneering as a final mark of a missional vision of theological education.

I get a huge amount of joy out of teaching & preaching.  I once took a spiritually oriented personality profile test sort of thing that articulated my bent toward preaching like this:

The Teacher leader focuses on the integration of truth into the personal and social elements of the community.

I’m thinking about this today because I just finished reading a brilliant paper, “Preaching in the Missional Church” by Ervin R. Stutzman, a professor of homiletics at Eastern Mennonite Seminary.

Quick Aside: If you want to get a truly helpful understanding of what missional is all about, listen to Anabaptists!

In the paper he unpacks a number of distinctives of a missionally-shaped (Post-Christendom) vision of preaching and also addresses the need for new methods of training these sorts of preachers which just happens to relate perfectly to this series I am doing on a missional vision of theological education.

Check out the article here and feel free to drop a comment if you have a thought or question.