The Shaping of Things to Come

The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21^st Century Church

Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch 2013 Baker Books

Here’s a brief summary of this book that I’ve referred to before. It’s by two Australian writers who share a broadly Evangelical outlook and have experience of working with new missional projects in Australia. The section on Jesus as Messiah is particularly relevant for my theme.

As I’ve been reflecting on our need to engage with popular culture throughout this Sabbatical one thought keeps coming to me. The established dying (Western) church needs to live out the sacrifice of Christ by releasing their resources so that a new generation might believe.  The time has come to say to those who wish to hold onto their buildings, established but failing patterns of being church,  that it is time to let go, to give thanks and praise for all that has been accomplished, but then to release what they have for those who are being and becoming church in new ways. As previous generations risked all in missionary endeavour funded by the established church, so must today’s cross-cultural missionaries who risk much be supported in prayer, money and good will by those who cannot do the work themselves but can allow it with their blessing and support.   With these thoughts in my head I turn to the book itself:

Frost and Hirsch call the church to see itself as a missionary movement, not an institution (the Methodist Church in UK has been trying to refocus itself in this way for a number of years now!). An oft-repeated theme is that we must engage in culture without compromising the gospel:

The Church that Jesus intended was meant to be a permanent revolution and not a codified civil religion; mere chaplains to the prevailing Empire (31).

The writers argue that today’s church is still living in the outmoded Christendom model (where the church had power and influence across the globe). This sees the church as

·        Attractional (expecting people to come to its buildings to receive the gospel)

·        Dualistic (living with a separation between spiritual and earthly things:  Christian life and community is separate from the world).

·        Hierarchical in its organisational and thinking.

The church needs to become:

·        Missional

·        Incarnational

·        Messianic

·        Apostolic

Provocatively, the writers state:

...the death of Christendom and the emergence of postmodernism and the new global culture have highlighted the bankruptcy of the existing church and its inability to have a positive effect on Western society. (86)

The book uses example, Biblical material and other insights to unpack each of these four aspirations.

MISSIONAL

Quoting from Gerard Kelly the writers point to what the church should become:

The Church will focus on core faith, on minimum essential order, on people and their gifts, on flexible patterns of life held together in communion and on a shared sense of community. (33)

Several examples are given of church as shared projects, community enterprise and emergent faith community.

Again the writers stress the importance of holding onto gospel values and the need for the missional church to combine the liberal emphasis on community development with the evangelical desire for personal and community transformation. As a way of understanding this, they offer the model of church as ‘Green space’

Green is of course made up of yellow and blue.  Yellow space represents a personal Christian spirituality: Bible study, church attendance, personal moral/ethical behaviour. Blue space represents other-focussed Christian spirituality: justice seeking, social concern, public moral/ethical behaviour.

Green Space, created from blue and yellow is occupied by Green People where ‘story and context, the individual and the communal, the interior world and the exterior world, the religious and non-religious, find genuine  meeting. (46, emphasis added)

INCARNATIONAL

The enfleshing of God in Jesus is the central motif of our faith yet we have so often separated Jesus into the Spiritual and the earthly; this dualistic thinking has seeped into church life, order, doctrine and teaching over generations. It is foundational thinking for many if not most Western Christians.

The incarnational church will do as God did in Palestine 2000 years ago, enter into our world (John 1). As God’s people, the church needs to enter into the context of the people among whom we live. There is a role for gifted evangelists (specialists) but also a significant role for all believers in both supporting these specialists and engaging with others day by day.

The incarnational church is one where the church can relate to a people group in their context, recognising their culture, identifying with them and living among them without compromising the Gospel:

To identify incarnationally with people will mean that we must try to enter into something of the cultural life of a ‘people’; to seek and understand their perspectives, their grievances and causes; in other words their real existence, in such a way as to genuinely reflect the act of identification that God made with us in Jesus. (57)

Drawing on agricultural life in Australia, Frost and Hirsch point to the metaphor of Fences and Wells. Operating across thousands of acres it’s almost impossible to keep herds in one place by erecting fences although many try and are thwarted in the attempt.  The Christendom model church is good at defining its limits; who is in and who is out; it has a ‘bounded’ sense of its own identity.

The missional church however is ‘centred.’ A more effective way of working with the herds is to dig wells that draw the animals to the centre. This model of church has a clear identity, strong Jesus-based core values which provide refreshment and nourishment and encourage people to go out into the wider world knowing that they are free to return to that centre. There are no defined outer limits.

An incarnational church is one that is contextual and goes beyond cosmetic changes to seating, worship content and music in an attempt to draw people into a traditional ‘Sunday slot’:

To contextualise is to understand the language, longings, lifestyle patterns, and worldview of the host community and to adjust our practices accordingly without compromising the gospel. (111)

MESSIANIC SPIRITUALITY

In this section a contrast is painted between Jewish and Greek spirituality. So much of the early and subsequent church’s thinking has conformed to Greek patterns which favour aesthetic thought and practice over the Jewish approach which is essentially earthy, practical and holistic. The ethereal dualism between body and spirit, embodied in the creeds has done a disservice to the God who dirtied God’s hands by becoming human. Ironically we are at a point in history where people are often attracted to the historical Jesus but not to a church which focusses on the aesthetic, spiritual practices of religion:

We need [Jesus’] model of holy laughter, of his sheer love of life, of his infectious holiness, of his common people’s religion, for our day. We want to say that being Christ like is not only hard work; it is a load of fun. At its best, worship is play. (145)

The section on ‘The Redemption of Pleasure and the Missional Task’ chimed with me especially as from time to time during my Sabbatical (and on these pages) I have wondered if my topic was too trivial, not sufficiently weighty for serious theological reflection and contemplation. As I enjoyed myself at festivals I even felt tinge of guilt….

Frost and Hirsch strongly argue that the disconnect between God and pleasure has resulted in droves turning away from the church as our message appears out of touch, oppressive and negative. Is it any wonder that many people associate Christianity with a list of things that shouldn’t be done or enjoyed, that we get into so many tangles about what happens in the bedroom? People can meet with God in and through their experience of, and love for, life itself. Pleasure can be a greater motivator for God than pain or threats:

Missionaries and leaders do well to learn that people are motivated by their deepest pleasures, and if we can connect these to God, we will have established a vital bridge into the lives of ordinary people. Clearly Scriptures teach us that God not only made the orgasm and the taste buds and the spices and garlic* but that we should enjoy what he has given us within the framework of his moral will revealed in Scripture. (157)

(*I might add camping, popular music, street food and dancing to the list!)

So here’s a call for the rediscovery of the Messianic or Jewish roots of who Jesus is. This means finding God in the everyday, in all aspects of life and certainly in the unexpected.  It’s time to stop drawing false distinctions between secular and sacred; spiritual and practical; active and intellectual. The Lord our God is ONE!  Therefore deeds are as important as faith. Whilst the writers do not argue against the centrality of salvation by faith they have no time for aesthetes who are disengaged from the daily reality and struggle of life:

The reclamation of the deed as a means of grace is vital if we wish to sustain a vigorous missional engagement in our respective contexts. (163)

Such spirituality requires us to accept the challenge of Jesus to go out into community in twos and threes, to integrate God, world and church in our daily lives working as partners with God, remembering that wherever we go, God is already present ‘wooing, forever courting, constantly wowing, and acting redemptively by drawing people to himself’ (200)

APOSTOLIC LEADERSHIP

Drawing on Ephesians 4: 1-16, the writers call for a rediscovery of distinctive five-fold leadership gifts in the missional church APEST*). They offer both theological and sociological insights to these gifts which they argue are essential to the missional church and can be found in both lay and ordained people:

*Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Shepherd and Teacher (APEST)

Frost and Hirsch combine theological and sociological thought to produce a scheme and I’ve mapped some of Belbin’s leadership styles just because I’m more familiar with them:

PROPHET – QUESTIONER Knows mind of God on issues related to church and speaks to community effecting transformation and growth. Disturbs, agitates.  PLANT

EVANGELIST – RECRUITER  Passionate communicator of organised message, recruits to the cause                 RESOURCE INVESTIGATOR

SHEPHERD- HUMANISER Carer, social cement/glue COORDINATOR/TEAM WORKER

TEACHER – SYSTEMISER Philosopher, translator IMPLEMENTER

APOSTLE – ENTREPRENEUR Moving the church forward. Pioneer, strategist. Innovator, visionary SHAPER

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_83.htm

Frost and Hirsh stress the need for these aspects to co-exist and to relate to one another:

Paul seems to be saying that without a fivefold ministry pattern we CANNOT mature.  If this is true, it is impossible to estimate what terrible damage the church has done through the loss, even active suppression of this crucial dimension of New Testament ministry and leadership. (209)

The importance of leadership is stressed as is the recognition that a good minister is not always someone who has the gift of good leadership.

Their final section highlights the need for imagination which is perhaps to be prized above knowledge if we are to see a new beginning for the church;

And it’s one of the core tasks of leadership to help the community to dream again. (271)

This must involve empowering people, listening deeply to their longings and dreams – the management of meaning.  Nothing less than paradigm shifts will do. Keys to making this possible are: Encouraging Holy dissatisfaction, embrace subversive questioning, becoming a beginner (reverting to a child-like mind-set rather than donning the position of expert), taking more risks and creating a climate of change.

MY FINAL THOUGHTS

When I read books like this I am left with the sense that we must get on with it, yet also a little nagging doubt as to how on earth we can get from where we are to where we want to go. The book concludes with some church planting models which are interesting but in many ways less radical than the examples and thoughts that have gone before. There’s a call for the raising up a generation of new leaders which is pivotal and timely:

Much of our future lies in the precarious hands and hearts of a generation that finds it a difficult task to decide and commit. Our heartfelt prayer is that our youth will find the necessary courage to break with the enslaving power of the habitual and familiar. (281)

True and Amen to that BUT what about the existing established church? How can we just write off years of tradition, generations of faithful witness and building up of resources? Risk taking entrepreneurs are not confined to the younger generation in church. Indeed in some churches it’s very hard to find the younger generation. Where they exist, they are so often busy people but they are also amongst those who are disengaged from the structures of the church. The very people who according to Frost and Hirsch hold the future in their hands, are the people who are living in the contextual world of popular culture where the incarnate Jesus is so often hidden.

So what’s to be done?  I return to my opening thought that a resurrection church which believes in the sacrificial death of the Incarnate God needs to challenge itself to practice what it believes, to be willing to sacrifice the resources that we have built up because they are not ours to keep, to free these up so that those with Spirit filled vision and imagination can be released to explore new ways of creating an innovative and imaginative incarnational mission church for 21^st Century. A contextual church that lives within, celebrates and enjoys popular culture and discovers afresh the living Jesus who goes before and offers life in all its messiness but also in its abundant glory?