Church

Seven Steps Toward Renewal

July 16, 2011, by No comments yet

I just read the epilogue (which is titled From Here to the Kingdom) from The Community of the King by Howard Snyder. It was encouraging to read his suggestions for a local church to increase its “kingdom vision and become more authentically the community of the King” written nearly 35 years ago.

1. Undertake a study of the biblical nature of the church.
2. Evaluate the quality of the community life of the church.
3. Attempt to think through what the Bible teaches about gifts of the Spirit.
4. Attempt to transcend the clergy-laity dichotomy in both thought & speech.
5. Consider forming one or two new congregations from the existing church.
6. Form some small-group fellowships as mission.
7. Identify segments of the surrounding population especially open to the gospel where new churches could be planted.

Being “Sent” is Not First About Outward Actions

July 8, 2011, by 1 comment

I absolutely love this excerpt from George Hunsberger taken from “The Church Between Gospel & Culture“:

To state this point even more directly, being missionary and being a “sent” community – a “body of people sent on a mission” – is not first about the church’s outward-moving actions, whether actions to attempt to convert or actions to try to make a difference, whether actions close at hand or actions at a distance. It is first about how the church goes about those actions and the character of its own life in the process. This character develops not when a church – or its representative – leaves its geographic location. Rather, it happens when a church takes leave of cultural loyalties alien to the gospel. This step can and must lead to movement outward. But it must be the prior disposition if geographic leaving is to be genuinely missionary.

In other words, being missionary is about conversion as a way of life for the church, a way of life that shapes its movement to convert and its actions to make a difference. Our current movements to convert and make a difference generally do not arise from such a way of life. They are too much marked by a failure to recognize as intrinsic to our faith a fundamental departure (over against comfortable accommodations to the culture) and a sacrificial immersion (over against sectarian withdrawals from the society). As Donald Posterski has put it, we have ironically done what is seemingly impossible. We have inverted the dictum of Jesus: we are of the world but not in it. We have become “both captured and intimidated by the culture.” In our minds and hearts we have not sufficiently departed to the loyalties of the gospel, and with our hands and feet we have not become deeply enough immersed on behalf of the gospel.

(George R. Hunsberger, “Acquiring the Posture of a Missionary Church” in The church Between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North American, 292)

Church Planting & the Missio Dei

June 11, 2011, by 1 comment

Stuart Murray’s “Church Planting: Laying Foundations” is one of the finest books written on the topic of church planting. While the vast majority of books on church planting focus on the “how,” Murray offers a very welcome emphasis on both the theological and historical framework for church planting.

When discussing the theological foundation for church planting Murray argues that all church planters operate within some theological framework, but most often these frameworks “are assumed rather than articulated and adopted uncritically rather than as the result of reflection.” He also states that while inadequate theological reflection will not necessarily hinder short term growth, it will limit the long term impact of church planting and may result in “dangerous distortions in the way in which the mission of the church is understood.” He writes:

Church planting is not an end in itself, but one aspect of the mission of God in which churches are privileged to participate. We can understand the scope and implications of this mission, and the place of church planting within it, in relation to three important theological concepts.

Murray then elaborates on the topics of missio Dei, incarnation, and the Kingdom of God. In regards to the concept of missio Dei he shares these thoughts:

Missiologists have increasingly been drawn to this phrase to express the conviction that mission is not the invention, responsibility, or program of human beings, but flows from the character and purposes of God. Historically, the term mission was first used by theologians to refer to the acts of God, rather than the activities of the churches.

God is the Missionary, who sent his Son and sends his Spirit into the world, and whose missionary purposes are cosmic in scope, concerned with the restoration of all things, the establishment of shalom, the renewal of creation, and the coming of the kingdom of God, as well as the redemption of fallen humanity and the building of the church. Mission has a trinitarian basis and is theocentric rather than anthropocentric. Mission is defined, directed, energized, and accomplished by God.

For church planting this has considerable significance. First, the inevitable interest in internal church structures which characterizes church planting initiatives, as plans are developed for the formation of a new congregation, must not subvert the primary focus on the mission to which this new church is being called. Missio Dei is toward the world rather than the church. Robert Warren writes: “A church effectively engaged in mission will see that participating in the missioDei will involve shifting emphasis from a focus on the life of the local church . . . to concern for the world in its need, joys and struggles.”

Second, the broad scope of missio Dei must not be reduced to evangelism or church planting. Church planting is legitimate only if set within a broader mission context. Divorced from this context, church planting may represent little more than ecclesiastical expansionism. (Can anyone say “video venues” – those are my words not Murray’s!)

Church planting can too easily embody a limited vision of mission that concentrates on one or two aspects of this mission (usually evangelism and church growth) to the neglect of other vital aspects (including working for justice and peace within society, concern for the environment, and engagement with culture).

The Faith of Leap From Hirsch & Frost

May 17, 2011, by 8 comments

Over the past several years I have read every book that Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost have written individually and collectively. I have probably been most influenced by Hirsch’s “The Forgotten Ways“, Frost’s book titled “Exiles” and their collaborative work, “The Shaping of Things to Come.” Having just finished their latest book, “The Faith of Leap“, I believe it may just be their best work to date. They present a theology of risk, adventure and courage that will challenge the reader to step boldly into participating in God’s mission with a renewed sense of purpose.

One element that I have always appreciated about Hirsch/Frost is the way they bring together applicable material/research from a wide range of disciplines (sociology, science, business, history, etc.) and filter it through a theological/biblical lens. This book is no different. Every chapter is replete with wonderful insight, illustrations, and encouragement to engage in mission in a way that will propel the reader out of the typical self-concern to other-concern, from “holy huddle to venturing out into God’s world.” After reading the first chapter I tweeted that it alone was worth the price of the book. However, reading further, I discovered that I felt the exact same way with each subsequent chapter.

To fully engage in God’s mission and live the life He intends for Jesus followers, we must embrace risk and adventure. Hirsch/Frost provide excellent instruction on a range of topics to help the reader do just that. They unpack the critical issue of developing “communitas” rather than simply “community.” They deal with the importance of overcoming “risk aversion” and the dangers of individualism in the realm of risk taking, and the related damage caused by our pursuit of safety and security. They provide practical insight for a church to move from complacency to developing a sense of urgency for God’s mission.

There is also an extremely helpful discussion in one of the final chapters titled “Missional Catalysis” in which Hirsch/Frost illustrate perfectly the need to understand mission as the organizing, catalyzing (and even revitalizing) principle of the church. There is much in each of the seven chapters to encourage the reader to understand risk and adventure as an indispensible component of a life with Jesus. You will certainly not be disappointed with this excellent addition to the missional church conversation.

Sentralized Missional Conference

May 14, 2011, by No comments yet

I am very excited to share some details about a conference scheduled for this September here in Kansas City. I believe the Sentralized Conference is going to play a significant role in the ongoing missional conversation in the United States.

There were at least two major reasons for organizing a conference like Sentralized. First, we believed there is a need to continue to bring clarity to the missional conversation. Even with the considerable amount of writing and dialog around missional concepts over the past decade, the use of missional terminology remains confusing in many circles. Unfortunately some view “missional” as the latest church growth strategy, or a better way of doing church evangelism. Others see missional as a means to mobilize church members to do missions more effectively. While still others believe missional is simply the latest Christian buzz word that will soon pass when the next trendy topic comes along.

However, we would argue that those who believe missional is merely an add-on to current church activities, or perhaps even a passing fad prevalent only among church leaders, have simply not fully grasped the theological and missiological magnitude of the missional conversation. While it may sound like hyperbole; the move towards missional involves no less than a complete and thorough recalibration of the form and function of the church of Jesus, as it attempts to discern how to participate in God’s mission. By bringing together some of today’s best missional thinkers and authors; we desire to assist God’s people in thinking deeply about God’s mission in the world.

Second, we want to ensure the missional conversation moves beyond theory. We want to inspire and propel the church to engage in God’s mission in life changing ways. That is why a significant feature of the conference will focus on practical engagement; through the stories and personal examples of some of the best missional practitioners around, participants will struggle with how to practically organize the church around God’s mission.

The conference will kick off with a book release party involving two new books that will be released in October; “The Road to Missional” by Michael Frost and “Sacrilege” by Hugh Halter. In addition to Frost and Halter other speakers throughout the conference will include Alan and Deb Hirsch, Dan Kimball, Neil Cole, Mike Breen, Lance Ford, Mindy Caliguire, Helen Lee, Kim Hammond, Michael Stewart, Eric Mason, Rickie Bradshaw, and Geoff and Sherry Maddock.

For more information on the conference schedule, speaker bios, and registration go to the Sentralized Conference website here. I hope to see you in KC this September.

Conversation Between Hirsch & Stetzer

May 14, 2011, by 1 comment

Following is a good conversation between Alan Hirsch and Ed Stetzer. Topics include, among other things, the theological foundation of the missional conversation, the importance of recognizing the missionary nature of God, how missiology must inform our ecclesiology, and how existing congregations can begin to make a missional transition.

Assumption of the Attractional Imagination

April 25, 2011, by 1 comment

The assumption of the attractional imagination is that average people outside the church are looking for a church and know they should belong to one, and therefore, church leaders should create the most attractive attractional church possible. The mission, then, is to get people to attend. This story is still repeated over and over again across North America. It’s not that we shouldn’t be attractive for those looking for a church to attend; it’s that this has become the primary focus of churches, and as a result they miss what the Spirit is up to in the world. . . .

– Introducing the Missional Church: What it is, Why it Matters, How to Become One by Alan J. Roxburgh and M. Scott Boren

The Church in a Broken World

April 20, 2011, by 1 comment

Check out these two challenging and inspiring talks by Micheal Frost from the recent Upstream Collective Vision Tour in Prague.

Church in a Broken World

April 13, 2011, by 1 comment

You don’t have to leave your office or home to participate in Michael Frost’s One Day events April 13 and 18 in Prague and Budapest during the upcoming JetSet tour.

View videos posted soon after each discussion led by Frost about “Church in a Broken World.” Then share you input and ask questions by commenting on this site or on the Upstream blog, as well as via Twitter (#js2011) and Facebook.

Register now for the One Day events and look for the first videos later in the day April 13 from the Prague One Day hosted by The Upstream Collective and Bridge Community Church.

The Marginalization of the Church

March 25, 2011, by No comments yet

This past weekend I conducted a workshop on transitioning existing churches in a missional direction. We began our time together making sure the group was on the “same page” in regards to the state of the church in America. For a portion of that discussion I shared the following article on the marginalization of the church. This section of the document comes after a brief discussion on the shift into a period of Post-Christendom taken from Douglas John Hall excellent little book The End of Christendom and the Future of Christianity.

The magnitude of the marginalization of the church during this time of post-Christendom has been expressed by many. In the introduction of The Church Between Gospel and Culture, George Hunsberger writes about the crisis in the life of churches in North America: “The crisis, most simply put, is that the social function the churches once fulfilled in American life is gone.” [1] Eddie Gibbs in the book Church Next argues that “mainline denominations are facing an avalanche of problems that place question marks over their future. Some of these problems are so pressing that they may even threaten the denominations’ survival.” [2] In the book Death of the Church author Mike Regele offers a concise summary of the multiple issues involved in the marginalization of the church when he writes:

At the brink of the twenty-first century, the king who knew not Joseph is the collective culture of which we are a part. The combined impact of the Information Age, postmodern thought, globalization, and racial-ethnic pluralism that has seen the demise of the grand American story also has displace the historic role the church has played in the story. As a result, we are seeing the marginalization of the institutional church. [3]

The marginalization of the church that these and other authors [4] speak of can be validated in an array of church statistics and trends. In 2005 Sally Margenthaler painted this picture of the American church landscape:

Despite what we print in our own press releases, the numbers don’t look good.   According to 2003 actual attendance counts, adult church-going is at 18 percent nationally and dropping. Evangelical attendance (again, actual seat-numbers, not telephone responses) accounts for 9% of the population, down from 9.2% in 1990. Mainline attendance accounts for 3.4% of the national population, down from 3.9% the previous decade.  And Catholics are down a full percentage point in the same ten-year period:  6.2% from 7.2% in 1990. Of the 3,098 counties in the United States, 2,303 declined in church attendance. [5]

More recently David Olsen, Director of the American Church Research Project [6] and author of The American Church in Crisis has compiled comprehensive data on the state of the church in the United States. The research provides reliable attendance numbers for each of the 3,141 counties in the U.S., for each state, and for the nation as a whole. [7] One of Olson’s most significant findings is the apparent “halo effect” [8] that has been evident in the majority of polls on church attendance. Polls conducted by organizations such as Gallup and The Barna Research Group have consistently reported weekly church attendance in the range of 40 to 47 percent over the past four decades. However, Olson and other sociologists [9] effectively argue that church attendance numbers are in reality much lower.

A study published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion compiled data from more than 300,000 Christian congregations in the United States and found that the churches totaled 52 million people in attendance, or 17.7 percent of the American population in 2004. [9] The research of the American Church Research Project showed that 17.5 percent of the population attended an orthodox Christian church on any given weekend in 2005. [10] The total percentage was broken down into three major church categories including; evangelical at 9.1 percent, mainline at 3 percent, and Roman Catholic with 5.3 percent. [11]

One addition insight gleaned from Olson’s research is the simple fact that the growth of the American church is not keeping up with the robust growth of the American population. From 1990 to 2006 the population of the United States grew by 52 million people, which happens to be the same number of people who attend church on any given weekend. “In 1990, 52 million people attended worship each week – in 2006 the number remained unchanged. However, because of the sizable population growth, the percentage of Americans who attend church is declining.” [12]

While population growth and church attendance figures vary in different regions of the country the numbers are alarming regardless of location. Olson writes:

America’s population is growing at dissimilar rates throughout the nation. The Sunbelt states (the southernmost states from Virginia to Southern California) continue to grow most rapidly in population, while the Great Plains region and the Rust Belt (the industrial cities bordering the Great Lakes) have stagnant growth rates. The rate of population growth creates a major impact on whether the church can keep up with the increase in the population. In Arizona, for example, church attendance grew 7.3 percent from 2000 to 2005, robust growth by any standard. However, the population grew by 15.3 percent during that same period, producing a new attendance percentage decline of 7 percent. Typically, the faster a region’s rate of population growth, the more difficult task the church faces in keeping up with those increasing numbers. . . [However] in no single state did church attendance keep up with population growth! [13]

Paralleling Olsen’s finding on those who are moving away from religious affiliation the 2008 Religious Landscape Survey conducted and published by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life discovered that the fastest-growing segment of religious affiliation in the county is the nonaffiliated (16.1 percent of adults age eighteen and older). [14] Furthermore, those moving into the unaffiliated category outnumber those moving out by greater than a three to one margin. Throughout the previous two decades, this percentage of unaffiliated Americans had held between five and eight percent, meaning that the unaffiliated group has more than doubled in the past ten years. In the face of such startling statistics some researchers are predicting that if current trends continue, sixty percent of existing churches in America will disappear before the year 2050. [15]

Specifically focusing on Southern Baptist Churches, Ed Stetzer has written on the concerning trends of evangelistic impact in the vast majority of SBC churches in North America. [16] Stetzer cites statistics from the Leavell Center at New Orleans Baptist Seminary that “tell a disconcerting story – 89 percent of churches in the Convention are not effectively reaching the lost. According to the study, only 11 percent of the churches are experiencing healthy growth. [17] Stetzer goes on to describe the criteria used by the Leavell Center to measure church growth health as the following:

*  10 percent total membership growth over five years
*  at least one person baptized during the two years of the study
*  a member-to-baptism ratio of 35 or less in the final year of the study
*  for the final year of the study, the percentage of growth that was conversion growth must be at least 25 percent

Furthermore, when reporting on membership trends in SBC churches Stetzer contends that if current trends continue, over the next 50 years “projected membership of SBC churches would be 8.7 million in 2050, down from 16.2 million in 2008. . . . Using U.S. Census projected population figures, SBC membership could fall from a peak of 6 percent of the American population in the late 1980s to 2 percent in 2050.” [18] In The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, Christine Wicker offers a troubling summation of the wide variety of statistical data when she writes:

Evangelical Christianity in America is dying. The great evangelical movements of today are not a vanguard. They are a remnant, unraveling at every edge. Look at it any way you like: Conversions. Baptisms. Membership. Retention. Participation. Giving. Attendance. Religious literacy. Effect on the culture. All are down and dropping. [19]

———————————————————————————-

1 George R. Hunsberger, “Introduction,” in The Church Between Gospel & Culture, ed. George R. Hunsberger and Craig Van Gelder (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), xiii.

2 Eddie Gibbs. Church Next: Quantum Changes In How We Do Ministry (Dover Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000), 66.

3 Mike Regele, Death of the Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 182.

4 See David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1991), Craig A. Carter, Rethinking Christ and Culture: A Post-Christendom Perspective (Grand Rapids: Brazo, 2006), Rodney Clapp, A Peculiar People: The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian Society (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1996), Mike Erre, Death by Church (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 2009), Michael Frost, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), Darrell Guder, Missional Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) and Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986)

5 Sally Morgenthaler, “Windows in Caves,” Fuller Theological Seminary News and Notes (Spring 2005), Retrieved July 23, 2009 fromhttp://churchconsultations.com/resources/faqs-resources-and-info/a/apostolic-movement-in-the-emerging-world/windows-in-caves-by-sally-mogenthaler/

6 http://www.theamericanchurch.org/

7 David Olson, The American Church in Crisis (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008)

8 See Stanley Presser and Linda Stinson, “Data Collection Mode and Social Desirability Bias in Self-Reported Religious Attendance,” American Sociological Review 63, no. 1 (February 1998): 137-45.

9 Kirk Hadaway and Penny L. Marler, “How Many Americans Attend Worship Each Week? An Alternative Approach to Measurement,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44, no. 3 (September 2005): 307-22.

10 Olson, 28.

11 The division into evangelical, mainline, and Roman Catholic denominations is based on the typology found in the Glenmary Religious Congregations and Membership Study. All African American denominations are considered evangelical in this typology. Eastern Orthodox churches are included in the total number but are too small in attendance to receive their own category distinction. The classifications can be found at the Association of Religious Data Archives at http://www.thearda.com/

12 Olson, 36.

13 Ibid., 37.

14 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey(Washington, D.C.: Pew Forum, 2008), Retrieved July 1, 2009 fromhttp://religions.pewforum.org/

15 Norman Shawchuck and Gustave Rath, Benchmarks of Quality in the Church(Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 12.

16 Ed Stetzer, “The Missional Nature of the Church and the Future of Southern Baptist Convention Churches,” in The Mission of Today’s church: Baptist Leaders Look at Modern Faith Issues (Nashville: B&H, 2007), 73.

17 Ibid.

18 Rob Phillips, “Southern Baptists Face Further Decline Without Renewed Evangelism Emphasis,” Lifeway Research, published July, 2009, retrieved August 4, 2009 http://www.lifeway.com

19 Christine Wicker, The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008), ix.