Dmin Project

History of Missional Church – Part II

November 1, 2009, by 1 comment

History of Missional Church – Part I

The British Gospel and Culture “Programme”

The British version of the Gospel and Culture movement was initiated by Newbigin in Britain during the 1980s and came to be known as a “programme.” Newbigin had been entrusted by the British Council of Churches with the task of planning a major national conference pursuing Christian engagement with contemporary Western culture. It was shaped largely by his writings during that period, which included three significant books: The Other Side of 1984 (1983), Foolishness to the Greeks (1986), and The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (1989). The major themes of each of these books not only played an important role in the formation of the British “programme” but they continue to influence the missional conversation today.

The Other Side of 1984 was a published essay that Newbigin prepared for the British Council of Churches conference held in 1984; thus, the name of the book. In it, Newbigin presents two major themes. First, that Western culture is in crisis because it has too closely tied itself to an Enlightenment worldview. Newbigin argues that those in the west believe that science and technology holds the answers to unlimited progress. Moreover, in the west scientific explanations have replaced dogmatic explanations. However, the shift to a world dominated by science and technology has not led to a rational and meaningful world, but instead has led to a crisis of meaning and purpose which can only be remedied by a serious reaffirmation of faith.

The second theme concerns the loss of influence the church has had upon the culture. According to Newbigin, the church’s voice has been marginalized in large part because it has surrendered its place in the public sphere and retreated into the private sector. Newbigin desire is not to have the church return to a position held during the time of Christendom; he simply believes that faith must always be involved in the dialogue with other patterns of thought.

In Foolishness to the Greeks, Newbigin provides an excellent analysis of the central features of Western culture. He asks the question, What would be involved in a genuinely missionary encounter between the gospel and Western culture; especially a culture that has fragmented life into the artificial distinctions between facts and values, public and private lives, and particulars and absolutes. Newbigin places Christian truth claims in constant dialogue with modern issues. He interacts with the tensions between the truth of Scripture and science, politics, and the institutional church. In each case he asks, What must the church claim to know, do, and be in a post-Christian culture?

Finally, in The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Newbigin continues the theme of contextualizing the gospel in a postmodern, pluralistic culture. He writes on the necessity of shaping the gospel within culture and yet insisting that the gospel cannot endorse everything in culture. Moreover, the work of contextualization is not something set aside for individual Christians alone, but for Newbigin it is at the core of the mission of the church. Describing the congregation as “the hermeneutic of the gospel,” he underlines the nature and purpose of the renewed communities of God’s people.

History of Missional Church – Part I

October 26, 2009, by 6 comments

As presented in an earlier post, Christianity in North America has experienced a move away from its position of dominance as it has witness the loss not only of numbers but of power and influence within society. “The United States is still, by all accounts, a very religious society. The pollsters affirm that Americans and Canadians believe in God, pray regularly, and consider themselves religious. But they find less and less reason to express their faith by joining a Christian church.”[1] As a result, many historical denominations are now in serious decline, while others are just now beginning to recognize that they are now in their own mission field location.

This recognition of the North American religiosity shift to a post-Christian, neo-pagan, pluralistic mission field has lead many to return to the foundation of what it means to be the church of Jesus Christ in the world. “This involves the issue of ecclesiology (ecclesia = ‘church’; -ology = ‘the study of’). In the midst of our changing world, we are in constant need of continuing to engage in the study of the church, to explore its nature, to understand its creation and continuing formation, and to carefully examine its purpose and ministry.”[2] The chief discussion that has emerged over the past few decades around these important issues of ecclesiology and missionary engagement in North America is known as the “missional church conversation.” While there are a number of prominent contributors to this dialog, by far the most influential has been the contributions made by missiologist Lesslie Newbigin.[3]

The Influence of Lesslie Newbigin

Upon returning home to England in 1974 from missionary service in India for nearly 40 years, “Newbigin took up the challenge of trying to envision what a fresh encounter of the gospel with late-modern Western culture might look like.”[4] In the book Foolishness to the Greeks, he posed the question: “What would be involved in a missionary encounter between the gospel and this whole way of perceiving, thinking, and living that we call ‘modern Western Culture?”[5]

Newbigin’s missiology was largely formed by the mission theology that took shape within the International Missionary Council (IMC) conferences of the 1950s through the 1970s. Perhaps the most significant of these conferences was the one convened in Willingen, Germany in 1952. At Willingen the conference recognized that the church could be neither the starting point nor the goal of mission. “God’s salvific work precedes both the church and mission. We should not subordinate mission to the church nor the church to mission; both should, rather, be taken up into the missio Dei, which now became the overarching concept. The missio Dei institutes the missiones ecclesiae.”[6] It was here that this idea (not the exact term) missio Dei first surfaced. When discussing the paradigm shift that began at Willingen, David Bosch writes:

Mission was understood as being derived from the very nature of God. It was thus put in the context of the doctrine on the missio Dei as God the Father sending the Son, and God the Father and the Son sending the Spirit was expanded to include yet another “movement”: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit sending the church into the world. As far as missionary thinking was concerned, this linking with the doctrine of the Trinity constituted an important innovation. Willingen’s image of mission was mission as participating in the sending of God.[7]

While the Trinitarian foundation for mission theology was later formulated as the missio Dei by Karl Hartenstein,[8] and still later given fully expression by Johannes Blauw in his 1962 book The Missionary Nature of the Church,[9] Lesslie Newbigin articulated his own expression in The Open Secret.[10] Central to Newbigin’s understanding of mission is the work of the Triune God in calling and sending the church, empowered by the Spirit, into the world to participate fully in God’s mission. This theological assertion understands the church to be the creation of the Spirit: which exists in the world as a “sign” that the redemptive reign of God’s kingdom is present; it serves as a “foretaste” of the eschatological future of the redemptive reign that has already begun; and it serves as an “instrument” under the leadership of the Spirit to bring that redemptive reign to bear on every dimension of life.[11]

In the following extended excerpt from an outstanding PhD dissertation on Newbigin’s missionary ecclesiology, Michael Goheen provides an excellent summation of the significance of Newbigin’s lasting influence on mission theology:

First, Newbigin’s work has served as the catalyst for bringing the issue of mission in western culture to the forefront of the agenda of mission studies. The appearance of his book The Other Side of 1984 marks a major milestone for a missiology of western culture. With unusual skill the book crystallized a number of issues which have stimulated vigorous discussion. The stream of books and articles written by Newbigin since that time has continued to focus the issue for many people. The Gospel and Our Culture movements in Britain, North America, and New Zealand, the Missiology of Western Culture project headed up by Wilbert Shenk, and a growing stream of publications on the issue bear witness to the stimulus that the work of Newbigin has produced in the last couple of decades.

Second, Newbigin played an active and central role in the International Missionary Council and the Commission of World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches. After serving as a missionary in India for twenty-three years, Newbigin took the post of general secretary of the IMC and then director of CWME of the WCC. His influence was formative for many of the discussions throughout since 1948. Newbigin was shaped by the theology, missiology, and ecclesiology of the early ecumenical movement. Yet when there was a dramatic challenge to that paradigm, Newbigin was able to appropriate many of the insights of the new challenge. His flexibility along with his commitment to tradition makes his insight for the current ecclesiological discussions significant.

There is a third reason for focusing on the work of Newbigin. Not only has he provided an impetus for renewed reflection on the issue of mission in western culture and been an active participant in the ecumenical movement, Newbigin has also paid close attention to ecclesiological questions throughout his long and distinguished career as a recognized leader in the context of three settings: as a missionary in India; as an ecumenical leader in a global context; and as a missionary to the West. A glance at his bibliography reveals at once the interest that Newbigin has had in ecclesiological issues in his published work. His record as a missionary, bishop, ecumenical administrator, and pastor all testify to his commitment to the local church. Indeed, it is his vast experience in struggling for a missionary church in many different contexts that has nourished his deep and valuable theological reflection on ecclesiology. It is precisely the missionary ecclesiology developed by Newbigin that has been foundational for and formative of both his work within the ecumenical movement and his call for a missionary encounter with western culture.[12]

1. Darrell L. Guder, Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, ed. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 1.

2. Craig Van Gelder, The Missional Church and Denominations: Helping Congregations Develop a Missional Identity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 2.

3. For a complete biographical sketch of Newbigin’s life see: Paul Weston, Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 1-16. See also, George Hunsberger, Bearing the Witness of the Spirit: Lesslie Newbigin’s Theology of Cultural Plurality (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998).

4. Van Gelder, The Missional Church and Denominations, 2.

5. Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 1.

6. David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1991), 370.

7. Ibid., 390.

8. John A. McIntosh, “Missio Dei” in Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, ed. A. Scott Moreau, Harold Netland and Charles Van Engen (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 631-633.

9. Johannes Blauw, The Missionary Nature of the Church: A Survey of the Biblical Theology of Mission (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962).

10. Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: Introduction to a Theology of Mission (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995).

11. Van Gelder, The Missional Church and Denominations, 3.

12. Michael W. Goheen, “As the Father Has Sent Me, I Am Sending You”: J.E. Lesslie Newbigin’s Missionary Ecclesiology” (PhD diss., Utrecht University, 2000), 22.

Missional Church Bibliography

October 20, 2009, by No comments yet

For those who are interested in doing more research on the missional church conversation, here is the 12 page bibliography that was a part of my dissertation.

Missional Church Bibliography

The Need For a Missional Ecclesiology – Part II

October 11, 2009, by 3 comments

Here is another small section of chapter one of my dmin project. This portion follows a discussion on the marginalization of the church in America, as well as part one shared in the previous post.

To achieve a move from treating the church as a vendor of religious services to being a body of people sent on a mission there must be a renewed emphasis on the nature of the church and its missionary encounter with a post-Christian society. Hunsberger provides one way of framing the necessary transitions that must take place in the beliefs and practices of the church. He believes there are at least three practical shifts that can lay the foundation for sound theological and missiological “rethinking” in the life of the local church.

First there will need to be a shift from program to embodiment. “It makes a difference whether a church is oriented toward producing programs and services for potential consumers, or whether it is committed to cultivating habits of life that help us be faithful to the gospel together.”[1] Programs are not necessarily wrong; they simply need to be subservient to the purpose of the church, which is to be an instrument of God’s mission. Programs are not for the simple consumption of church members but are for the purpose of growing members so they can be sent out into the world to participate in what God is already doing in the lives of people. Mike Erre in Death by Church speaks to this transition when he writes:

The church was birthed out of the mission of God, and not the other way around. This means that we don’t take Christ to a region or people group, but we instead show up and pay attention to the work that Jesus is already doing. We have to move away from the current mind-set about church, ministry and mission and think again about our participation in the ministry of Jesus in the world. This change is difficult for us because it means we are no longer the initiators or sustainers of mission and ministry. Instead, we are focused on discerning the movement of God’s Spirit as we week to join Him in what He is already doing. This involves waiting, asking, seeking, knocking – disciplines and activities that cannot be mass-produced or consumed.[2]

The second shift that Hunsberger believes must be embraced by the church is a shift from being clergy dominated to being laity oriented. In other words, the emphasis must shift from the “professional Christians (clergy), who are center stage in the gathered church, to Christian professionals who are ministering in the world and in the workplace.”[3] Martin Luther’s idea of the priesthood of all believers was that all Christians were called to carry out their vocational ministries in every area of life. Every believer needs to be encouraged to fully understand how their vocation plays a central part in God’s redemptive Kingdom.[4] Mike Regele speaks to this dynamic of vocational ministry for all believers when he writes:

If the local congregation is the primary unit of mission in the twenty-first century, then the individual members of the local congregation are the primary agents of mission. We have the opportunity to again image the lay person as playing not just a supporting actor role but a lead role in the mission of Christ’s church in the world. The Pauline notion of being ambassadors for Christ takes on renewed meaning, not just for those who enter into “full-time Christian work” but for those who work, period. Each one of us must be captured by the vision of playing this role in every activity we undertake.[5]

The third shift, which is perhaps the most crucial in assisting the church in the development of a missional mindset, involves a shift from recruitment to mission. Hunsberger rightly contends that the two words, “recruitment” and “mission” move in opposite directions. “Recruitment is the orientation inherent in the vendor church, which tries to attract people to be regular and committed consumers of its programs and services – that is, to be satisfied customers. Mission moves in an opposite direction. It moves outward. It is concerned about giving the gospel away, not getting people in.”[6]

Robert Warren in Building Missionary Congregations makes a helpful addition to this third shift by highlighting the point that when the church moves its emphasis off of the needs of the church and on to the needs of the world, the typical pastoral role will also change:

A church effectively engaged in mission will see that participating in the missio Dei will involve shifting emphasis from a focus on the life of the local church, and a concern to keep everyone happy (which too easily passes for ‘pastoral concern’), to a concern for the world in its needs, joys and struggles. The work, for example, of engaging with the sick, the grieving and the dying, as well as with the moral issues of such roles in society as those concerned with wealth creation or medical ethics, is indeed pastoral. It is the shift form the maintenance and ‘keeping people happy’ mode in which the church all too often operates, into engagement with these situations that will bring the church into the pastoral-in-mission mode of operating. [7]

Conclusion

While religious interest remains strong in American culture, people are increasingly examining alternatives to Christianity to supplement their religious beliefs and behaviors. In a chapter titled “Post-Enlightenment Culture as a Missionary Problem” author Lesslie Newbigin argues that the missiological dilemma is not reaching a secular society, but more troubling, reaching a society that is thoroughly pagan. Newbigin writes, Western society “is a pagan society, and its paganism, having been born out of the rejection of Christianity, is far more resistant to the gospel than the pre-Christian paganism with which cross-cultural missions have been familiar. Here surely, is the most challenging missionary frontier of our time.”[8]

Scottish missiologist Andrew Walls further emphasizes both the gravity and urgency of the challenge when he writes:

It is now too late to treat Western society as in some sort of decline from Christian standards, to be brought back to church by preaching and persuasion. Modern Western society, taken as a whole, reflects one of the great non-Christian cultures of the world. There is one department of the life of the Western church that spent centuries grappling with non-Christian cultures, and gradually learned something of the processes of comprehending, penetrating, exploring, and translating within them. That was the task of the missionary movement.[9]

The church in America must once again engage in the task of the missionary movement of which Walls speaks, however today those same missiological efforts of the past must be directed towards Western society. It is essential that the church in America recognize that it is now living in a mission field which requires sound missionary thinking and activities. Furthermore, it is necessary that the church gain a clear understanding of the missio Dei,[10] the mission of God, and see how it, the Church, is to be sent into the world to actively participate in what God is already doing. Instead of being shaped by mission statements, business models, or marketing and church growth techniques; the church must be shaped by participating in God’s mission. Ed Stetzer writes:

A proper understanding of the biblical and theological basis of being on mission begins with an understanding of the nature of God. He is a missionary God – in this and every culture. . . . The missionary posture is the normal expression of the church in all times and places. The theological concept of missio Dei, the mission of God, recognizes that God is a sending God and the church is sent. It is the most important mission in the Scriptures. Jesus Christ is the embodiment of that mission; the Holy Spirit is the power of that mission; the church is the instrument of that mission; and the culture is the context in which that mission occurs. . . . The source of missionary identity is located in the nature of the triune and sending God, and is connected ontologically with the very existence of the church. . . . The church needs to realize that mission is its “fundamental identity.”[11]

What does this imply for the church in America that faces the challenge of doing ministry in a post-Christian, pagan, pluralistic context? First and foremost it means that the church must recapture the missionary nature of God and His church, and as a result see, as Stetzer states, that mission is its fundamental identity. It is essential that the church once again become a missionary people who move beyond a Constantinian model, that presumed a churched culture, to an apostolic, missionary approach intent on penetrating the vast unchurched segments of society. It means the church will “need to be turned inside out in order to bring those outside in. It will not suffice to simply invite the seeker to come to us to hear the gospel on our turf. Instead the church will have to be the church in the world – gathering for worship in order to go out in mission.”[12]

In the final chapter of Foolishness to the Greeks, Newbigin provides a clarion call to the church to activate its missionary calling as God’s instrument sent into the world on His behalf, when he writes:

The church is the bearer to all the nations of a gospel that announces the kingdom, the reign, and the sovereignty of God. . . . It is not meant to call men and women out of the world into a safe religious enclave but to call them out in order to send them back as agents of God’s kingship.[13] (emphasis added)

The contemporary church is in desperate need of a self-understanding that will empower it for ministry in this changing world. That self-understanding, however will come only when the church fully embraces the reality that it is in fact a called people – but as Newbigin states, it is called for the unmitigated purpose of being sent.

1. Hunsberger and Van Gelder, 344.

2. Mike Erre, Death by Church (Eugene: Harvest House, 2009), 136.

3.  Hunsberger and Van Gelder, 345.

4.  Gene Edward Veith, God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2002)

5.  Regele, 220.

6.  Hunsberger and Van Gelder, 345.

7.  Robert Warren, Building Missionary Congregations (Glasgow, Scotland: Church House Publishing, 1995), 26.

8.  Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 20.

9.  Andrew Walls, “Western Society Presents a Missionary Challenge,” in Missiological Education for the Twenty-first Century, ed. J. Dudley , Charles Van Engen, and Edgar Elliston (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 19.

10. For a brief history of the concept of mission as missio Dei, see David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991), 389-93.

11. Stetzer, 78.

12. Gibbs, 236.

13. Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, 124.

The Need For a Missional Ecclesiology – Part I

October 6, 2009, by 1 comment

Following is another section of chapter one of my dmin dissertation. This comes immediately after a discussion on the marginalization of the church, which I shared a portion of here.

While the disestablishment of the church from the dominant seat of culture is disturbing to many Christians in North America, it is seen as a positive development by others because they believe the church can now “recover its identity as shaped by the scriptural story rather than the cultural story,” [1] and in turn regain something of its “genuine mission in the world.” [2] Some would argue that the church, as a result of buying into the cultural story of consumerism, materialism and pragmatism has veered away from its self-understanding as rooted in the mission of God and assumed other agendas. [3]

In the book The Church Between Gospel and Culture, theologian George Hunsberger offers three distinct ways people view the nature of the church. He argues that the manner in which people perceive the church becomes determinative for the church’s agenda. The first view is what Hunsberger labels the “Reformation Heritage.” With this view he argues that Protestants have inherited a particular view of church – the right preaching of the gospel, the right administration of the sacraments, and the exercise of church discipline – that has left us with an understanding of the church as “a place where certain things happen.” [4]

Hunsberger labels the second view as the “Contemporary Variation.” He believes that while the church in North America is not far removed from the view that church is “a place where certain things happen,” a more accurate description of the way people view the church would be as “a vendor of religious goods and services.” [5] From this perspective, members are viewed as customers for whom the religious goods and services are produced. The participants expect the church to provide a wide range of services from favorite music and children programs to fellowship opportunities and marriage enrichment options. With such a model, evangelism evolves into membership recruitment, which may more accurately be called “capturing market share.” The livelihood of this kind of church “is dependent on having a sufficient number of satisfied, committed customers.” [6]

The third view of the nature of the church is identified as the “Missionary Vision” or as Hunsberger more often refers to as “a body of people sent on a mission.” [7] The central point with this view is that the church is to be understood as a people called and sent by God to participate in His mission for the world. Or as Lesslie Newbigin states in The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, “It seems to me to be of great importance to insist that mission is not first of all an action of ours. It is an action of God.” [8]

Hunsberger’s taxonomy of how people view the nature of the church raises three very important issues surrounding the missionary posture of the church. First, when people within the church hold to a view that the church is “a place were certain things happen,” they become inwardly focused and expend their resources on maintenance rather than mission. The church becomes a place where the needs of its members take precedence over the needs of those outside the organization. In early 2006 researcher Thom S. Rainer wrote:

In a recent survey of churches across America, we found that nearly 95% of the churches’ ministries were for members alone. Indeed, many churches had no ministries for those outside the congregation. Many churches seem to exist only for themselves. While there certainly should be ministry available for church members, often the balance between external and internal ministries is heavily skewed toward internal. When churches seek to care and minister only to their own, it’s a likely sign that decline is in motion and that death may be imminent. [9]

Or as Bill Easum writes in Unfreezing Moves, “Most Protestant congregations are stuck in the muck and mire of their institutions with little or no movement toward joining Jesus on the mission field. To them faithfulness means supporting their church and keeping it open.” [10]

Second, when a church adopts the view that it is “a vendor of religious goods and services,” it in turn relies on church growth strategies and marketing techniques to attract customers, or new members to the church. However, in the religious climate of today, marketing approaches seem to be wearing thin, especially among younger generations. After discussing the negative image of Christianity among younger people, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons conclude that “no strategy, tactics, or clever marketing campaign could ever clear away the smokescreen that surrounds Christianity in today’s culture. The perception of outsiders will change only when Christians strive to represent the heart of God in every relationship and situation.” [11]

After discussing the mounting problems of connecting with the majority of the population that report alienation from the form of church that relies on marketing techniques and church growth principles, Alan Hirsch offer this candid critique:

How do they access the gospel if they reject this form of church? And what would church be like for them in their various settings? Because what is clear from the research . . . is that when surveyed about what they think of the contemporary church growth expression of Christianity, [their response ranges] from being blasé (“good for them, but not for me”) to total repulsion (“I would never go there”). At best, we can make inroads on the blasé; we can’t hope to reach the rest of the population with this model – they are simply alienated from it and don’t like it for a whole host of reasons.

What is becoming increasingly clear is that if we are going to meaningfully reach this majority of people, we are not going to be able to do it by simply doing more of the same. And yet it seems that when faced with our problems of decline, we automatically reach for the latest church growth package to solve the problem – we seem to have nowhere else to go. But simply pumping up the programs, improving the music and audiovisual effects, or jiggering the ministry mix won’t solve our missional crisis. Something far more fundamental is needed. [12]

Eddie Gibbs speaks to a possible reason behind the move that so many churches make toward marketing strategies to reach those outside the church:

Churches throughout the Western world find themselves increasingly marginalized from society as they endeavor to relate the good news to people whose assumptions and attitudes have been shaped by modernity and postmodernity. Our post-Christian, neopagan, pluralistic North American context presents crosscultural missionary challenges every bit as daunting as those we would face on any other continent. Unfortunately most pastors and church leaders have had no missiological training. Consequently they resort to marketing strategies in place of missionary insights in their attempts to reach out to a population that is becoming increasingly distanced from the church. [13]

The theological and missiological concerns associated with the first two issues surrounding the understanding of the nature and activity of the church leads us to the third and most pressing issue – and one stated in the previous quote by Eddie Gibbs – that the church is in dire need of instruction in the area of mission. Again, Gibbs writes:

The majority of church leaders throughout the Western world find themselves ministering in a rapidly changing cultural context that is both post-Christian and pluralistic. Consequently their outreach ministries are as crosscultural as those of their more traditional missionary counterparts seeking to make Christ known in other parts of the world. Consequently they are in as much need of missionary training to venture across the street as to venture overseas. [14]

1. Goheen, 38.

2. Hall, 36.

3. Reggie McNeal, Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009), 22. See also Rodney Clapp, A Peculiar People (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity, 1996) and Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Nashville: Abingdon, 1989).

4. Hunsberger and Van Gelder, 337.

5. Ibid.

6. Hunsberger and Van Gelder, 339.

7. Ibid, 341.

8. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluarlist Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 134.

9. Thom S. Rainer, “Seven Sins of Dying Churches,” Outreach Magazine 5, no. 1, (January/February 2006), 16.

10. Bill Easum, Unfreezing Moves: Following Jesus into the Mission Field (Nashville: Abingdom, 2001), 10.

11. David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity And Why it Matters (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 226.

12. Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006), 37.

13. Gibbs, 36.

14. Ibid., 27.

The Marginalization of the Church

August 7, 2009, by 6 comments

I haven’t been doing much with the blog the past several weeks, primarily because I have been trying to do some writing for my dmin project which needs to be completed in the next few weeks. Here is a small portion of chapter two which involves identifying the ministry problem, which in my case is the marginalization of the church in North America (and my local context) as a result, at least in part, to the lack of sound missionary thinking and activities.

The following portion 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. [10] 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. [11] 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. [12]

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.” [13]

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! [14]

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). [15] 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. [16]

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. [17] 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. [18] 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.” [19] 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. [20]

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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 from http://churchconsultations.com/resources/faqs-resources-and-info/a/apostolic-movement-in-the-emerging-world/windows-in-caves-by-sally-mogenthaler/

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

8 For a definition of “halo effect” see Appendix A, “Glossary of Terms”.

9 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.

10 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.

11 Olson, 28.

12 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/

13 Olson, 36.

14 Ibid., 37.

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

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

17 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.

18 Ibid.

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

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

History of Missional Church Conversation

December 12, 2008, by 3 comments

As part of my doctorate of ministry project I recently chronicled the history of the “missional church conversation.” In doing so I reviewed and summarized the influences of the International Missionary Council (IMC) conferences, Johannes Blauw, Lesslie Newbigin, the Gospel and Our Culture (GOC) program in the UK, and the eventual emergence of the Gospel and Our Culture Network (GOCN) in the United States.

Furthermore, I created a list of each of the publications to date in The Gospel and Our Culture Series as well as other significant books that have contributed to the conversation in the past decade.

Well this week I was delighted to receive Craig Van Gelder’s latest edition, “The Missional Church & Denominations” which includes (in the introduction) a brief historical summary of the missional conversation that nicely parallels my work. (Although it would have saved me a significant amount of time if Van Gelder’s current work would have been available about four months go!)

Here is an abreviated sampling of Van Gelder’s very helpful historical overview with added links to each of the publications mentioned:

The Influence of Lesslie Newbigin

In returning home to England from the foreign mission field in the 1970s, Newbigin took up the challenge of trying to envision what a fresh encounter of the gospel with late-modern Western culture might look like. He focused on this issue perhaps most sharply in his book Foolishness to the Greeks, where he posed this question: “What would be involved in a missionary encounter between the gospel and this whole way of perceiving, thinking, and living that we call ‘modern Western Culture?”

A movement that tried to address this issue emerged in England in the 1980s and comes to be known as the Gospel and Our Culture (GOC) conversation. While the GOC discussion first surfaced in England, it soon spread to the United States, where it was taken up by a new generation of missiologists who were focusing their attention on addressing the North American context as its own unique mission location.

Newbigin’s missiology was largely shaped by the mission theology that was born within the International Missionary Council (IMC) conferences of the 1950s through the 1970s. This was a Trinitarian understanding of mission, or what is commonly referred to as the missio Dei, the mission of God.

Influenced by the biblical theology movement of the 1930s-1940s, this Trinitarian foundation for mission theology began to take shape at the Willingen Conference of the IMC in 1952 and was later formulated as the missio Dei by Karl Hartenstein. Johannes Blauw then gave it fuller expression in his 1962 book The Missionary Nature of the Church.

Lesslie Newbigin articulated his own expression of this mission theology in The Open Secret  (1978). Central to his understanding of mission is the work of the triune God in calling and sending the church through the Spirit into the world to participate fully in God’s mission within all of creation. This theological formulation understands the church to be the creation of the Spirit: it exists in the world as a “sign” that the redemptive reign of God’s kingdom is present; it serves as a “foretaste” of the eschatological future of the redemptive reign that has already begun; and it serves as an “instrument” under the leadership of the Spirit to bring that redemptive reign to bear on every dimension of life.

The British GOC Programme

The British version of the GOC movement that developed during the 1980s came to be known as a “programme,” and it was shaped largely by the writings of Newbigin during that period: The Other Side of 1984 (1983), Foolishness to the Greeks (1986), and The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (1989).

The GOC Network in the U.S.

As the British programme began to gain public recognition, a U.S. version of the Gospel and Our Culture conversation also began to emerge. Several consultations sponsored in the mid-1980s by the Overseas Study Mission Center stimulated interest in the question Newbigin had posed in the Warfield Lectures at Princeton in 1984 (later published as Foolishness to the Greeks).

A network began to take shape from these early events in the mid-1980s; by the early 1990s, under the leadership of George Hunsberger, the Gospel and Our Culture Network was publishing a quarterly newsletter and also convening a yearly consultation. By the mid-1990s, the movement in the United States had begun to find its own voice beyond the influence of Newbigin, and the Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company began to publish a series of books under the moniker The Gospel and Our Culture Series. To date the following volumes have been published in this series:

George Hunsberger and Craig Van Gelder, eds., The Church Between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America (1996).

Darrel L. Guder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (1998).

George Hunsberger, Bearing the Witness of the Spirit: Lesslie Newbigin’s Theology of Cultural Plurality (1998).

Craig Van Gelder, ed., Confident Witness — Changing World: Rediscovering the Gospel in North America (1999).

Darrel L. Guder, The Continuing Conversion of the Church (2000).

James V. Brownson, ed. StormFront: The Good News of God (2003).

Lois Y. Barrett, ed., Treasure in Clay Jars: Patterns in Missional Faithfulness (2004).

This literature has focused on understanding North America as its own unique mission location and the church as being missional by nature, and it continues to stimulate a very important conversation.

There are a number of other books from several different publishers that have also contributed to this conversation, which include the following:

Craig Van Gelder, The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000).

Richard H. Bliese and Craig Van Gelder, eds., The Evangelizing Church: A Luthern Contribution (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2005).

Alan J. Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk, The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006).

Patrick Keifert, We Are Here Now: A New Missional Era (Eagle, ID: Allelon Publishing, 2006).

Craig Van Gelder, The Ministry of the Missional Church: A Community Led by the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007).

Craig Van Gelder, ed., The Missional Church in Context: Helping Congregations Develop Contextual Ministry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007).

Richard W. Rouse and Craig Van Gelder, A Field Guide to the Missional Congregation: A Journey of Transformation (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2008).

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For additional publications that I believe have added to the missional conversation check out the Reading List link at the top of the page.

Van Gelder on Missional Church

November 22, 2008, by 5 comments

Here is a link to a short video (17 minutes) on the Allelon website that I believe is worth the time. The video is an interview conducted by Alan Roxburgh with Craig Van Gelder.

Van Gelder is professor of congregational mission at Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is author of “The Essence of the Church,” “The Ministry of the Missional Church,” “The Missional Church in Context” and editor of “Confident Witness — Changing World” and “The Church Between Gospel and Culture.” (All of which are excellent, but the last two are my favorites)

There are a couple of issues raised in this video I think are important to consider. First, I appreciate Van Gelder’s emphasis on the theological foundation of missional church. Like many others in the missional church conversation, Van Gelder sees the necessity to shift the starting point for any discussion on the topic of mission.

Instead of beginning with questions surrounding the mission activities of the church, we must start first with questions concerning the missio Dei, or what is God’s mission in our context. I am reminded of Bosch’s quote that “It is not the church which undertakes mission; it is the missio Dei  which constitutes the church.”

Second, this emphasis on participating with what God is doing raises the crucial issue of discernment. When we start with God’s mission it is imperative that we think well when we observe and ask, “What is God doing in my neighborhood, workplace, or school?” And the follow-up question, “In light of our gifts and resources, how does God want us to participate with Him?”

With this issue of discernment in mind, I want to ask a couple of questions.

As the church, what do we need to do differently to discern where and how God wants us to participate in our communities?

In what ways might your church do things differently in your context?

The Missionary Nature of the Church

November 6, 2007, by No comments yet

missionary-nature-of-the-church.jpgThere is no other Church than the Church sent into the world, and there is no other mission than that of the Church of Christ. . . .  If one wants to maintain a specific theological meaning of the term mission as “foreign mission,” its significance is, in my opinion, that it keeps calling the Church to think over its essential nature as a community sent forth into the world.

Seen in that light missionary work is not just one of its activities, but the criterion for all its activities . . . . It is exactly by going outside itself that the Church is itself and comes to itself.

- Johannes Blauw in The Missionary Nature of the Church

Re-Imagine: A Missional Church

November 3, 2007, by 1 comment

Here is a excellent introduction to what a missional church would look like in very practical words and images by Jonathan Dove, Pastor of Mt Albert Baptist Church in Ackland, New Zealand.