We do this, of course, because we are comfortable with what is familiar. We do it with good intentions, because the structures we have known took us a fair distance. We enjoyed a measure of success with what has gone before. As a result, we project into the future that what worked then will work tomorrow. We fail to take into account the overwhelming reality of cultural shift. We thus fail to innovate and adapt.

The implications of this are loss of genetic diversity, loss of working knowledge of how to learn and adapt in a wide diversity of contexts. When we select leaders consistently for a few key traits, traits formed in response to certain cultural contexts, we gradually marginalize other types of leadership. We end up where we are, with thousands upon thousands of pastor-teacher types, and very few healthy prophets and apostles. (Though they are still out there, mostly working as plumbers and carpenters and in para-church organizations). Even our young leaders are largely formed for roles that are rapidly vanishing.

In biological terms, we have reduced genetic diversity significantly. Where now is the knowledge we need to adapt to new circumstances?

What has actually occurred is seen regularly in nature. As an organism reduces the range of its possible responses by virtue of narrowing genetic diversity, it becomes extremely vulnerable. A single virus or bacteria can wipe out an entire generation or species. This is nearly what has happened with the church in the west. Certainly in specific towns and cities, particularly in the UK, this can be seen to be occurring. Hundreds of church buildings stand empty. I wonder how far we are away from this same scenario in Canada?

It strikes me that the solutions are already in progress. Perhaps the largest single factor in recovering genetic diversity is becoming connected to a larger network. What this looks like in practice is conversation and relationship and learning. I’ve written a great deal on this and I won’t try to summarize here; I particularly valued the work of Margaret Wheatley and Fritjof Capra in this regard. Capra writes,

“emergent structures… are the informal structures: the alliances and friendships, the informal channels of communication (the grapevine), the tacit skills and sources of knowledge that are continually evolving. These structures emerge from an informal network of relationships that continually grows, changes, and adapts to new situations.” (Creativity and Leadership in Learning Communities)

Over the last three decades, I have watched church planting change dramatically in Canada and the Northern parts of the United States. Back in the sixties/seventies, we used to send fifteen or twenty people from one local church into another place several towns over that was “under-churched.” We would hold worship services, teach Sunday school, have a children’s ministry. We would set up shop. We would choose a pastor who “had all the tools” as they would say. He (most often a male) would be young, energetic and able to work like crazy. We would send out pubic announcements expecting many who were looking for a church to just show up. And if we did the basic services well, then we assumed the little gathering would grow into a self-sustaining church in 3 years. In many ways, these church plants resembled franchises.

Church planting worked like this because there were still large numbers of Christians to draw from for a congregation. We were in the great post-WW2 expansion in North America. New towns and subdivisions were springing up left and right. And just as each town needed a supermarket, a library and public schools, so also it needed a church. One could assume that out of the many thousands moving here into these new habitats, some would be Christians and need a church. So we planted churches like franchised local grocery stores. This was the era of Christendom.

In the eighties, the focus on church planting changed. Post WW2 expansion had slowed. More and more of the suburban boomers had not returned to the churches of their youth. The focus of church planting shifted to recapturing these now unchurched people for Christ. Now when we went to plant a church we needed to first conduct marketing surveys. We asked what we could do to make church more relevant and user friendly.

The surveys focused on finding out what unchurched people were looking for. What turns them off of church? How can we do church in a way that relates to these people? How can we make church relevant so that the “unchurched” would come to our services? What could make church more attractive? We focused on delivering the services with “excellence” and “efficiency” characteristic of the marketplace. In these ways we planted churches like Wal-Marts. The seeker service and church growth methods were invented. Hundreds of boomer generation people came who had left the church a decade before. Many hundreds of people in traditional churches left as well for “the new and improved” big box churches. Today, hundreds of mega-churches exist across North America as a testimony to the “success” of this approach to church planting.

Church planting like this worked because there were still huge numbers of unchurched people who had once learned of Christ in the earliest years of their upbringing. These unchurched had some familiarity with who Jesus was. Deep within their boomer psyches, Jesus still carried credibility, even authority, even if they did consider the church obsolete. We assumed therefore that if we could just make Jesus more relevant and attractive (as opposed to their former experiences of church) they would come.

If the Bible could be communicated in a way that was meaningful to people’s everyday life and needs, these unchurched would surely listen. And they did come. People making “decisions for Christ” multiplied. Church-planting like this, however, still depended upon what was left of the vestiges of North American Christendom. A majority of the conversions were former high-church catechumens “coming back to Jesus.” They had never made a “personal” decision to follow the Jesus they had earlier been taught about (most often in catechetical rote fashion). In this way, the seeker church movement was built upon Christendom.

The days of Christendom are fading fast, and a following change in mindset of those who would plant churches. As the number of Christians without a church shrinks, as the number of unchurched who once were catechumens of Christianity grows extinct, I have witnessed first hand a new wave of church planters who think of church planting in completely different ways. They are not interested in competing for the leftovers of Christendom. They resist the notion that the church is in need of just one more innovation. They are interested in nothing less than becoming missionaries, to plant churches cross culturally, to cross cultural barriers to people who have no knowledge or language about Jesus.

FROM SETTING UP GROCERY (BIG-BOX) STORES TO CULTIVATING GARDENS

For those of us born before 1970, this change is truly stunning. The landscape of post-Christendom demands we think about church planting with a new eye for faithfulness, truth and integrity. Among the new missional leaders, church is the name we give to a way of life, not a set of services. We do not plant an organized set of services; we inhabit a neighborhood as the living embodied presence of Christ. Missional leaders now root themselves in a piece of geography for the long term – becoming not only missional but also incarnational.

When we plant today, we survey the land for the poor and the desperate, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually as well. We seek to plant seeds of ministry, kernels of forgiveness, new plantings of the gospel among “the poor (of all kinds)” and then by the Spirit water and nurture them into the life of God in Christ. We gather on Sunday, but not for evangelistic reasons. We gather to be formed into a missonal people and then sent out into the neighborhoods to minister grace, peace, love and the gospel of forgiveness and salvation.

The biggest part of church, then, is what goes on outside gathering. If the old ways of planting a church were like setting up a grocery store, now it is more like seeding a garden, cultivating it, and watching God grow it amidst the challenges of the rocks, weeds and thorns (I owe this metaphor to my co-pastors at Life on the Vine). What do these leaders look like? How can we walk alongside them? After hanging with a hundred or so of these leaders over the past few years, I have observed that missional leaders will most often be the following kinds of people.

THEY WILL BE SURVIVORS

Enduring missional leaders must learn how to survive financially and spiritually for the long term. They must be able to hold down a job that does not consume them, but that enables them to live simply for the long term. In Christendom, the denominations used to pay someone to go plant a church. This would usually be one person who was unusually gifted and (based upon the above premises) could get a self-sufficient church going in three years. This person was in essence paid to extend an organization, open up a franchise, and set up a version of church that mirrored the distinctives of the denomination.

In the new post-Christendom, this doesn’t make sense. In my opinion it takes at least 5 years of “seeding a community” before one even begins to see an ethos of community and new life develop that can be a cultural carrier-transmitter of the gospel. As a result, the new missional community leaders must have patience, steady faithfulness and the ability to live simply. They must be able to get jobs and not see the ministry as a privileged full time vocation. They must have a mental image of how they are going to sustain their lives financially, relationally, spiritually and personally. This must take the shape of a sustainable rhythm. In my experience, these kinds of leaders are often found among the young and disenchanted evangelicals. I have learned they merely need a vision and a support network and they are willing to sacrifice in ways my generation never would.

THEY WILL BE COMMUNAL SHEPHERDS

I have found that missional leaders are most often shepherds of an overall ethos of a community. They are not starting and managing an organization. They may not even be good at organization. Instead they are cultivating a communal sense of mission identity among a gathering people “for this time and place.” It used to be every church planter had to be an extravert entrepreneur, someone who looked good and had the perfect family. Single people need not apply. This person had to be a good salesman (woman) and had to have endless energy. He or she had to set a vision, direct a course, motivate and sell.

It’s true that many of these qualities are helpful in starting new things. Yet I have seen, in this new era, that the missional leader is more often someone who can take time and be with people. He or she will listen to people, discern the needs, articulate where we are going, and knit the community together in a common struggle with gentleness, encouragement, and listening. We do not gather as we once did to hear a charismatic leader preach an entertaining piece of inspiration. We do not gather for a professional piece of programmed worship experience. In the new post-Christendom we are coming together to be formed and shaped, supported and edified for the Mission as a band of brothers and sisters. Yes, we do gather on Sundays to hear the Word, to be nourished at the Table, and respond to what God is calling us to — but we do all this not as individuals but as a community, a community “sent out” into mission.

These kinds of leaders do not grow on trees; they must be mentored in character for the patience and faithfulness such shepherding requires. The type A person who is always selling or programming something has a role – don’t get me wrong. But missional communities will not grow unless there is a nurturing, sustaining presence prodding and investing for the long term. Leaders that can adapt, roll with the punches, and shepherd communally are more valuable than the high-powered “strong starters” who wish to be on to the next thing in two years.

These new kinds of leaders are mentored not through leadership conferences and books, but in regular times together to practice together listening and mutual submission. They need to see love and consistency, and they need guidance and not a dictator.

THEY WILL BE INTERPRETIVE LEADERS

Rarely do missional leaders lead their communities as the featured Bible teacher who dictates the Alpha and Beta of Biblical doctrine. Rather they are interpreters of what God is doing communally through the teaching and preaching of Scripture. They read Scripture in community and preach looking for what God is calling us to in the neighborhood. It used to be that every church planter was a gifted preacher who could draw the crowds. Those days are past.

They are, not because you cannot attract dissatisfied or thrill seeking Christians from other churches with a great preacher, but because we have seen that true spiritual growth occurs communally only when the whole congregation is involved in times of praying, hearing, submitting and responding to the Word. Interpretive leaders do not dictate from the pulpit a list of do’s and don’ts and solutions from God for every problem. They interpret the Scriptures to open our eyes to what God is doing and where He is taking us. In other words, they cultivate other interpreters/listeners.

In a different way then, we must mentor leaders who are more than great preachers. They must lead their communities in seeing what God is doing via the eyeglass of Scripture. “Where is God taking us, where is he calling us?” How do we respond faithfully in this time and place?

The sermons and teaching of missional leaders, therefore, fund the corporate imagination of God’s Kingdom in our midst and where He is at work in our everyday lives. And when conflicts arise, we sit and pray, submit to one another, and pray for courage and humility and discern the Scriptures for the journey we are in called to make in God’s mission. This kind of leader often does not come from our (all too often) modernist seminaries. They are grown in a community which gathers to worship the Triune God so as to discern Him at work in our midst.

THEY WILL BE DIRECTORS OF SPIRITUAL FORMATION

I believe that missional leaders must know how to guide the community in spiritual formation. Admittedly, this kind of leadership is not common among younger evangelicals at least. Yet I still believe that the development of communal worship liturgies that are historically thick yet still local and organic is crucial for these times. We now recognize that the consumerist forces of our post Christendom Canada (and even worse in the United States) cannot be resisted as isolated individuals. An individual alone cannot resist the forces of desire that tell us a five bedroom house, and two new cars are more important than Mission, the very life we share with the Triune God. Our communities therefore must be places of spiritual formation, of resistance to the forces of distraction, unsatiated desire and exploitation of those we choose not to know.

This means that our Sunday/Saturday gatherings must be places of spiritual formation, encouragement and sending out for Mission. We must ever navigate against putting on a show that will attract; rather we must develop a liturgy that is simple, accessible and Scriptural and that guides our lives into Christ and guards us from the distractions that would take us away from Mission. I know that liturgy is a difficult pill to swallow these days for the newly arriving missional leaders. But there will be no missional community of people formed and shaped for mission if we just preach Mission as a legalistic requirement. Mission requires patience, a sense of vision and a level of self-denial that can only be formed inwardly in living bodies, trained in the simple organic disciplines/liturgies of the historic church.

THEY WILL BE LEADERS WHO GIVE AWAY POWER

Missional leaders that have served for any length of time have learned how to die to their egos and allow God to use every man and woman’s gifts in the community for the furtherance of His Kingdom. Hierarchy is the product of Christendom. It hails to a day when Christianity still held power in society, when Jesus was still established as a given in Canada (even when the protestant liberal Jesus dominated Canada, there still remained a basis for authority and a respect for who Jesus was).

Hierarchy made sense in a day when the preacher in the town was looked up to and held power. This old world, when one man could wield influence and get things done in the name of Christ, is waning. As a result, no one man or woman can lead a community from the top down and expect the church to go on as a viable social reality. We cannot be the very Body of Christ if we do not empower the manifold gifts in the community to minister the kingdom as part of everyday life. If we even try to operate out of the old hierarchical ways, missional communities will flounder and their leaders will die from exhaustion. I have seen it happen over and over.

It is my belief therefore that missional leadership needs always to be multiple. Most missional pastors/leaders need to be bi-vocational (bi-ministerial) for their own survival. Such leaders must learn to mutually submit to the other leaders as they guide the journey of the community. They must mutually learn to mentor leaders and give away power. Different strengths should be recognized among leaders and then multiply that leadership (following the APEPT model of Frost and Hirsch’s The Shaping of Things to Come).

This model subverts the CEO pastorate style we have all become so used to because each pastor gives away power instead of consolidating it. This kind of pastoral leadership models a living body for the rest of the community to see instead of dictating to the rest of the church to “just do it.” In this way, all shall own the leadership of this community and the journey we are on in the Mission. This kind of leadership needs to be mentored, modeled and practiced and it never comes easy.

THE PROMISE OF CANADA’S NEW MISSIONAL LEADERS and the COMING OF MISSIONAL ORDERS

All of the above paints a picture of not just a new kind of leader, but also a new vision of what Canadian church can look like in post-Christendom. There is an invigorated ecclesiology emerging here in these up-and-coming church planters. This view of church places emphasis on forming a social life together that is rich in community. Inherent in this social life is the drive to be hospitable, open communities that invite the stranger into our midst, telling Our Story, ministering the grace and healing of the gospel. We will take up space, not as a defensive enclave, but as the visible manifestation of His reign ahead of time for all to see and experience.

This view of church says we must dedicate ourselves to a specific geographic area for many years at a time. We must inhabit this geography for Christ and discern where God is at work in those who cross our paths daily. We must look for the hurting and confused across this landscape, every day seeking to incarnate Christ to them. And we must patiently listen to our neighbors, blessing them and praying for their restoration.

This long-term presence in our neighborhoods makes mission to the lost within post-Christendom possible. This new sense of ecclesia knows we must live all of the above as a way of life born out of our relationship with the Triune God revealed in our Lord Jesus Christ. We must engage together in rhythmic transformational practices of spiritual formation that order our lives into God. Only in this way can we avoid becoming a new kind of social justice legalistic holiness. Many will recognize in this description some of the Rule of St. Benedict including the rule of conversatio (community), hospitalitas (hospitality), stabilitas (geography), and obedientia (transformative practices of mutual submission). This is the way of missional orders – an expression of kingdom life that can root missional communities in the new post-Christendom of the West.

Birthed out of this view of Christ’s church, emerging missional leaders imbibe a mentality that is drastically different from the church planter of the past. They lead in ways more akin to an Abbot (or Abbess) of a Medieval missional order than an entrepreneurial wiz-kid of the typical franchise start-up church. They possess character like a patient gardener as opposed to the restless CEO numbers-cruncher. Indeed, most (not all) of the missional leaders I have met already exemplify strains of the new mentality. I believe this bodes well for the future. For I believe this new generation of pastors provides hope for a renewal of Christianity in Canada. They are already leading communities, house churches and monastic-like orders all over the country.

Like a fermenting revolution evolving out of a tired and reified ancien regime, these tiny bands of Christians have come on the scene committed to live a shared life of worship, spiritual formation, community, hospitality and service to the poor (of all kinds). In ways never imagined by the machinations of the evangelical mega-church, many of these bands are already infecting their neighborhoods with an embodied gospel that cannot be denied — only responded to.

Knowing Christendom is gone, these new leaders carry no pretension. Instead they embody the gospel in its most compelling, authentic, non-coercive form. This new wave of Christians is small in number and possesses little to no resources financially. Most do not impress with their grandiose visions. They do not hang in the halls of power. They do not make a show of their successes. Yet their vision of a simple Christian habitat as witness in the world reminds me of the Irish missional orders God used to effect a profound conversion of European society in the 4th century. We have seen the world changed like this once before (read How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill). Could we be in the early stages of seeing God move in a similar fashion once again? Let us pray it be so.

How do we lead a church community to engage mission as a way of life? How do we steer a congregation out of evangelism programs into everyday missional living? How do we train a congregation out of Christendom habits and instill post Christendom virtues (character for living faithfully in post Christendom)? I think leaders walk along and among their communities. Along the way, they lead by consistently (and kindly) rejecting some old habits and directing the imagination towards other possibilities. This is the never-ending work of cultivating missional habits of imagination among a people. Here’s my list of what to reject (slowly put to death in a congregation) and what to direct (nudge people forward) a congregation’s imagination toward. I’ve learned a lot of these things from missional thinkers/practitioners but have found all these things to be surprisingly simple and possible in my own life.

1.) Kindly Reject doing Outreach Events. Instead direct imagination towards ways of connecting with people where they are. Outreach events take up much time, planning and enormous “congregational capital” (if I may put it that way). In post Christendom outreach events rarely “work.” And you simply cannot compete with the local Park District or Megachurch event planning neutral site events. Instead, with little effort or cost, direct the people’s imagination towards seeing the ways you can connect with people in their everyday situations by going to the same place at the same time every week. Stoke imagination for the way ordinary life is the stage of God’s working. Visit the same places at the same time every week (this is easy for me because I am pathetically boring and love doing the same thing everyday). This has revolutionized my missional life with not a single ounce of extra-expended energy spent on my part. I believe the same could be true for every member of our church Body. Thanks to Alan Hirsch for teaching me about this.

2.) Kindly Reject evangelism as a one time hit on a target with a preconceived outcome. Kindle imagination toward seeing mission as part of regular daily, weekly and monthly life rhythms where out or regular life God works to use your life to impact people for the gospel in unforeseen ways. There is no precision strike technique, instead we need to train our eyes to pay attention to our life rhythms and be ready to minister out of everyday life, where God is already working to bring people to Christ.

3.) Kindly reject building multiple use buildings as if by building a gymnasium on the church campus we can bring people into the orbit of the church. Instead stoke imagination for what can happen when we go inhabit the gyms already in the neighborhoods. We should build less third spaces, and inhabit more the ones already there.

4.) Kindly reject one-on-one evangelism and the techniques associated with such apologetic persuasion. Instead direct imagination for inhabiting places in two’s or three’s or more. Hospitals, PADS Centers, the school systems, the park districts and places of hurt and pain too numerous to mention are all places where there are forces at work that can take under any one isolated saint. But two or three Christians together become an undeniable force for the kingdom under the Lordship of Christ.

5.) Kindly reject the Sunday morning gathering as an evangelistic event for it cannot be that in the new post Christendom cultures. Instead fire up imagination for the formation that comes from a communal encounter with the living God in Jesus Christ. As we hover around the altar, in silence, in prayers of submission, in affirmation, in confession, in healing prayers, in the hearing of the Word, and the Table, as we sing in praise and thanksgiving at what He has done, and then as we are sent out by God in the Benedictory challenge, we are shaped for His Life in Mission. It is simple, organic, takes a lot less planning than a mega show, and alot less money. And if any non-believers do happen to come, they won’t confuse this with a Tony Robbins event.

6.) Kindly reject coercive persuasion and argument in our witness. Instead stoke the imagination of your people for seeking “one person of peace” (Luke 10) among the lost of their neighborhoods. Look for that one who, though never having heard the gospel, is dispositionally ready (been readied by God) to receive. (Thanks to Mike Breen at the EcclesiaNet conference this past week for this idea).

7.) Kindly reject presumptuous postures of power as we live our lives among those who do not know Christ yet. Instead direct the imagination towards the way Christ always enters the human situation in humility. So don’t come to your neighbors as the one with the answer, but as the one searching for the answers that always point you towards Christ. Come to your neighbors humbly and in need. Instead of offering them a meal, find ways to participate in a meal with them. If you’re in the suburbs ask them if you can borrow their lawnmower.

8.) Kindly Reject Surveying the neighborhood – Direct the imagination toward exegeting the neighborhood. Surveying looks at the neighborhood as a place to market our church, find out what they are looking for and appeal to it so that they are attracted to the idea of coming to church. Exegeting a neighborhood requires inhabiting the neighborhood, seeing the neighborhood as a place for redemption, discovering where the hurting are and the unjust structures are. See the possibilities for ministering the gospel to those who are lost and through the gospel (over time) seeing that very culture transformed.

9.) Kindly Reject problem solving – instead direct the imagination towards “appreciative inquiry.” We often approach church through problem solving. What is wrong with our programs? What needs are we not meeting? What needs to be tweaked? What are we not doing right? This is negative, mechanical and lifeless. Instead, let’s direct our community’s imagination to noticing where God is working among us and around us, to recognize it, praise God for it and participate in it through the gifts we have been given.

That ends David’s post. To these I would add:

10. Kindly reject strategic planning in favor of thoughtful preparation. We really don’t know the future… but we know that the Spirit is birthing his kingdom among us as we respond faithfully day by day. We keep our eyes on Jesus. Newbigin warned us that, “the significant advances of the church have not been the result of our own decision about the mobilizing and allocating of “resources” [rather] the significant advances have come through happenings of which the story of Peter and Cornelius is a paradigm, in ways of which we have no advance knowledge.” (The Open Secret)

11. Kindly reject heroic paradigms of leadership. Sola pastora is neither a biblical principle nor sound wisdom, and our emphasis on professionalism has subverted the spiritual nature of the task. Furthermore, all of Paul’s letters addressed to entire communities, and Eph. 4 tells us that apostolic teams are the norm. Missional thinkers like Alan Hirsch, Eddie Gibbs, Robert Webber and Alan Roxburgh have demonstrated that certain leadership types are conspicuously absent in our communities. Others have helped us to see that hierarchical models are unbiblical. (See Fitch ch 3 The Great Giveaway, Gibbs, ch 2 Leadership Next and Missional Church ch 7).

One of the more interesting discussions is on the whole question of a “social” gospel as opposed to regeneration as the heart of the issue. Mike quotes from Jonathan Dodson that “social action doesn’t create [the] new community:”

Although social action mission creates community, it doesn’t create new community. Regenerated, new creation is the unique work of God the Spirit (Tit. 2.11 ; Gal. 6:15 ) through faith in the Son (Tit. 3:6-7 ; 2 Cor. 5:17). If we convert people to community and social mission alone, and not to Christ, we offer a very incomplete gospel. Regeneration is both social (Matt. 19:28) and spiritual (Tit. 3:5). The Spirit, not social mission, makes men new

.

This is both helpful, and partial…

It is helpful because it is important to know what we mean by regeneration, referencing the work of the Spirit in the heart of a believer. It is partial, because it tends to push us away from the frame of missio Dei – which is the movement toward shalom, a wholeness of God in action in the world, where there is no “spiritual” gospel as opposed to a “social” one. It is abundantly evident in the Old Testament that justice and economic issues are near the heart of the gospel.

However, Jonathan is right that social mission alone does not produce shalom. It may create the conditions that make shalom possible, and it certainly makes shalom visible. But to say that it does not PRODUCE shalom does not mean that it has no value in this world. These last points are really important. The Gospel becomes visible in the new community, through signs of the kingdom, foretastes of the shalom that God will one day bring in fullness. The new community performs and proclaims the word in its shared life in the neighbourhood.

And this life and work for justice has real value — God genuinely loves and cares for this fallen world, and will love and care for the world in spite of its response. If nothing else, Matthew 25 should instruct us that God’s care for the poor has no conditions attached. God in Godself overflows with self-sacrificing love, pours himself out for this world knowing it might reject him. Ultimately we embody the love of God in our communities not because we know that love will transform the world, but because this is the nature of God. Ultimately mission appears as the self-unfolding of contemplation.

* * *
The Thursday morning session at the Congress again featured Stuart Murray and Juliet Kilpin — a lovely interweave of academic analysis and on-the-ground but in-process experience. It leads me to hope that Urban Expressions might publish a book about what they are learning.

Stuart opened yesterday’s plenary by noting the shift in the last ten years. In years past when we went into a neighborhood we assumed that God had not been there until we showed up. Now we assume the opposite — that the Spirit goes before us and has already been at work. So we look for signs of the kingdom and we watch and listen to see and hear what God is doing.

The second shift, growing out of the perspective above, is that we do not focus on building a congregation but on partnering with what God is already up to. As Juliet later pointed out, this translates into saying “yes” to many things we would have considered distractions in the Christendom frame of church planting. We say “yes” to participate in neighbourhood initiatives, “yes” to hospitality, “yes” to lending and borrowing equipment, yes to helping neighbours with projects, and yes to advocacy. We find ways into the warp and woof of neighbourhood life. The feel is more like chaplaincy with missional intent, entering as priests of a parish where the buildings are our homes.

One of the implications, often pointed out by David Fitch, is that planting missional communities will take much longer, and metrics along the way will be completely different. Instead of quantitative, they will be qualitative, found mostly in stories of belonging and care.

As a result, the scope of church planting is both larger and smaller than we previously thought. It is smaller — so much is already happening and our part is only to attend, to notice what God is already doing and join with him. Moreover, the kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision.

It is larger — it moves toward shalom with the wide scope of the meaning of that word — reconciliation, justice, peace, sharing, beauty, healing, and no one left behind.

In this morning’s session Juliet pushed at some of the things that restrain us from embracing a missional vision. Our Christian sub-culture has increasingly assumed that safety is one of God’s gifts to us — this in spite of the nature of the sacrifice that brings us to a common table. We have become risk averse — and more so as we and our structures age. The more we attain, the more we might lose. She used a clip from “The Bucket List.” The patient is on a death-bed — do we simply call it quits or do we try to find the joy again?

Stuart called us to STOP starting with church. Missiology must precede any renewal of ecclesiology, and this is going to call for a freedom to experiment and attention to context. His thoughts here reminded me of Hugh Halter’s take on process in The Tangible Kingdom. Our temptation is to begin with structure — structures are familiar, offer a sense of control, and provide a sense of safety. But instead we must start with people. Forms will follow function and relationships built in the context of kingdom life.

This isn’t easy for people who are used to success via tried and true methods, who are used to being at the center and not on the margins. Yet there is so much GOSPEL here.. leaven in a lump, the mustard seed that is small and annoying and persistent. Much of the push back we hear during an event like this comes from men and women who want a new method handed out in a box.. a quick fix.. or a three step solution that allows things to remain more or less as they are. Sadly, we don’t have this luxury. Instead we are invited into a risky adventure with God — called to lose our lives in order to find them, called to the same vulnerability that characterized Jesus incarnation. We are called to a city we have not seen. Newbigin writes of Roland Allen that,

“[his] charge against modern missions was that they had been tempted by their alliance with colonial powers to act as though the mission of the church could be pursued in the style of a cultural educational campaign, as though the object was to multiply replicas of the sending churches. In contrast Allen rightly saw that in the New Testament portrayal of mission the central reality is the active work of the living Holy Spirit himself. It is the Spirit who brings about conversion, the Spirit who equips those who are called with the gifts needed for all the varied forms of ministry, and the Spirit who guides the church into all the truth. The Spirit is not the property of the sending church or the missionary who is sent. It is not part of the missionary’s duty to mold the new church in to the style of the old. The Spirit is sovereign and free…” Newbigin, The Open Secret, 130

Does that mean that everyone “gets it?” Not a chance. Some never will. It’s important that we recognize this up front. Frankly, I think if we all saw the seriousness of our situation many of us would be jumping off bridges. Many others would be leaving ministry. Some would be on their knees a lot more…

I have echoed many of my blog posts on the Congress on RESONATE.

Today I wanted to note a resource that has been really helpful to me over the years. Vineyard USA publishes Cutting Edge magazine. To this day it is a free publication. They have had some outstanding articles over the years. The latest issue has a couple of good ones, the best probably being an interview with the authors of Evangelical Ecclesiology. The article title is “Theological Foundations for Church and Culture.”

But the article I want to quote from in this post is the last in the magazine, an interview with Charles Park. This one hurt. In short it reaffirmed that in terms of leadership development for the Canadian church (broadly defined I might add) we are way behind the eight ball. Working from some ideas in Blue Ocean Strategy, Park argues that the Vineyard has tried to operate in the big sea of seeker sensitive, when God has designed it to operate in the small sea of postmodern ministry and mission. He notes that entering the big sea means less impact, and skews the development of leaders toward a culture that is dying. Where then will they find leaders equipped for the new culture? In my head I am hearing, “this is a call to Canada.”

I was looking for something else and stumbled across a blip penned by Jordon Cooper about three years back. Jordon is one of the brightest thinkers in Canada, and also happens to be more widely read than thirty million of us. Jordon’s outlook is very bleak also (but not without HOPE mind, but our hope isn’t in the church now is it?). In that blip he writes,

“We look for [the] defining locations and people for a lot of different reasons. The main reason is that most church leaders are not church leaders. As George Barna said a couple of years ago, most pastors are wonderful people but are not leaders and so we naturally want to appoint leaders to go where we are afraid to go ourselves. Charlie Wear said something to me years ago in a Denny’s in Fullerton and it was something like, “If you have God’s calling, why are you waiting on the permission of someone else?” but that is strongly built in to how we see ourselves in the big scheme of things. Despite everyone calling themselves a visionary leader, very few people are that. Most are followers, even among “leaders”. Even on Resonate there has been two discussion threads that start with, “Where is Canada’s Brian McLaren ?” or in other words, why won’t someone tell me what to do within my church?

“My other reason for why we do this comes from our own intellectual laziness or fear of making a mistake. A couple of years ago I read the amazing book [The Ingenuity Gap] by Canadian political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon who introduced me to the idea of a global ingenuity gap .. In it he points out that all over the world, the experts don’t know nearly as much as we think they do and make decisions based on too narrow a knowledge. This leads to the wrong answers, partly because they haven’t looked at all of the questions yet. After a while it is easier to follow someone else that has had success and assume that they have it all figured out. Coming out of a post-theology modernity, the temptation is to follow the lead in the area of programming. The results are a bunch of clone churches based on Axis or whoever else is edgy and cool.”

All this to say, I believe our situation in Canada is far more bleak than 90% of Canadian leaders realize. Frankly, I’m not sure we want to know. Ok, honestly — I don’t want to know.

If you love the church, hit your knees more often….

A longer version of this post is HERE.

Pray..

Dave Fitch – the Cultivate Talk on Missional Orders from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.

The Forgotten Ways surveyed church history, systems theory, and the practices of adaptive leadership in the context of recovering a missional ecclesiology and missional practice. Movements That Change the World eschews the systems perspective for a social-historical survey of missional movements that have changed their world. It also incorporates some organizational theory, in particular the adaptive leadership perspective.

Addison is working at integration of theory and practice and does an admirable job. Overall his work is both inspiring and convicting: we in the west are in deep trouble and the maps we used in the recent past do not show us the way forward. Will we relearn dependence on the Holy Spirit in this liminal place?

Steve is intent on driving home his message: our task is to make disciples and to transform our world. And that is done primarily by means of living, vibrant and dedicated individuals who are part of dynamic movements. While Steve comes close to denigrating theological education, he never quite tips over that edge, but instead simply points to the data: an educated and professional clergy has always limited the expansion of the church. Dynamic movements, Hirsch or Roxburgh would remind us, always surf the edge of chaos. The balance between design and emergence, Word and Spirit, is not achieved in classrooms but by risky adventurers who are out there on the edge following the cloud.More…

Steve describes five common features of vibrant moves of God, and these also comprise the five chapters of the book : a white hot faith; commitment to a cause; contagious relationships; rapid mobilization; and adaptive methods. In contrast to modern trust in technology, reason and sociology, it is not money, great plans and strategies, large numbers, or academic qualifications that will ensure the spread of the gospel and the transformation of the places we live. Rather it is radical dependence on the Spirit, radical commitment to Jesus and a passion for his kingdom that will produce expansion.

Steve notes numerous individuals and groups which exemplified these traits. These include the Moravians under Zinzendorf, St Patrick, Floyd McClung and the Dilaram House movement, Wesley and the Methodists, William Carey, Tim Keller, Ralph Moore, persecuted but thriving believers in Communist China, and many others.

I was struck again by the parallel between LTGs, Zinzendorf’s bands, and the triads being employed by groups like Life on the Vine. FORGE Canada will also use triads to anchor discipleship and formation on mission. There is no better way to grow people than putting them face to face.

The last third of the book engaged me the most. It consists of two sections: Rapid Mobilization and Adaptive Methods. Steve opens with a quote from a contractor who is less interested in the buildings than in building builders. This kind of vision and passion is the sort that forms dynamic movements.

Steve relates a conversation with Des Nixon, who added an extension on his home. “I don’t build buildings, Steve.. I build builders.” Des has a kingdom vision and a plan to multiply himself. Steve follows this conversation with a look at the Methodist circuit riders and the explosive growth of the movement in the United States up to 1850. Then he summarizes some of the work of Roland Allen in The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church (a primary missions document and if you haven’t read it, find it).

Roland Allen describes seven ways to inhibit growth and expansion. Here are a few:

3. when the spread of the gospel is controlled out of fear of error, and both error and godly zeal are suppressed
4. when it is believed that the church is to be founded , educated, equipped, and established in the doctrine, ethics and organization before it is to expand
5. when emerging leaders are restricted from ministering until they are fully trained and so learn the lesson of inactivity and dependency
6. when conversion is seen as the result of clever argument rather than the power of Christ

And spontaneous expansion is enhanced under these conditions:

1. when new converts immediately tell their story to others who know them
2. when, from the beginning, evangelism is the work of those within the culture
3. when true doctrine results from the true experience of the power of Christ rather than mere intellectual instruction. Heresies are not produced by ignorance but by the speculations of learned men.
4. when the church is self-supporting and provides for its own leaders and facilities
5. when new churches are given the freedom to learn by experience and are supported but not controlled. The great things of God are beyond human control (strong echoes of Newbigin here)

This section closes with a look at Ralph Moore and the Hope Chapel movement. I love this, “we’re not smart, we’re relentless.” I was also caught by the simple little formula employed in the mini churches of Hope Chapel while reviewing bible material:

What did you learn (head)
What did God say to you (heart)
What will you do (hands)

The final section, Adaptive Methods, opens with this great quote from Eric Hoffer (I had previously attributed to Al Rogers, so who knows?)

In times of drastic change, it is the learners
who inherit the future.
The learned find themselves well equipped
to live in a world that no longer exists.

Why are adaptive methods so important? Steve writes,

“A key to the success of Pentecostalism has been its ability to bring together supernaturalism and pragmatism in a curiously compatible marriage. The intense religious experiences that vie rise to new movements would remain fleeting unless they are embodied in some form of human organization. This presents every new movement with a dilemma – how to give the “charismatic moment” expression in social forms without extinguishing it.” (107)

This is the problem addressed in part by Howard Synder in The Problem of Wineskins, and later by Charles Hummel in Fire in the Fireplace. It is the ongoing tension between design and emergence, Word and Spirit. Steve points out that sustaining a dynamic movement requires that we live in the tension between passion and discipline. A little later he notes that the decline of movements is often due to the “failure of success.” It simply becomes too costly – too risky – for some organizations to adapt. There is too much to protect – position, rank, authority, etc.

On page 112 Steve offers a helpful chart that contrasts Unsustainable Church Planting Strategies with Sustainable ones. The first three are these:

Steve closes the book with a note on the Adaptive Methods of Jesus.

Overall it’s a good read, helpful and reflective, and includes some stories we can learn from. I particularly liked the last two chapters. Nicely done Steve!

1. when new converts immediately tell their story to others who know them

2. when evangelism is the work of those within the culture

3. when true doctrine results from the experience of Christ rather than only classroom instruction

4. when the church is self-supporting and provides for its own leaders and facilities

5. when new churches are given the freedom to learn by experience and are supported but not controlled. The great things of God are beyond human control (strong echoes of Newbigin here)

Addison’s approach is different enough from The Forgotten Ways that it is a nice complementary volume. He is working at integration of theory and practice and does an admirable job. Overall his work is both inspiring and convicting: we in the west are in deep trouble and the maps we used in the recent past do not show us the way forward. Will we relearn dependence on the Holy Spirit in this liminal place?

The last third consists of two sections: Rapid Mobilization and Adaptive Methods. He opens with a quote from a contractor who is less interested in the buildings than in building builders. This kind of vision and passion is the sort that forms dynamic movements. The chapter closes with a look at Ralph Moore and the Hope Chapel movement. I love this, “we’re not smart, we’re relentless.”

I was also struck again by the parallel between LTGs, Wesley’s bands and classes, and the triads being employed by groups like Life on the Vine. FORGE Canada will also use triads to anchor discipleship and formation on mission. I loved the simple little formula employed in the mini churches of Hope Chapel while reviewing bible material:
What did you learn (head)
What did God say to you (heart)
What will you do (hands)

Ok, more later..

1. when the church is dependent on paid leadership

2. when the spread of the gospel is controlled out of fear of error, and both error and godly zeal are suppressed

3.when it is believed that the church is to be founded , educated, equipped, and established in the doctrine, ethics and organization before it is to expand

4. when emerging leaders are restricted from ministering until they are fully trained and so learn the lesson of inactivity and dependency

5. when conversion is seen as the result of clever argument rather than the power of Christ

6. when professional clergy control the ministry and discourage the spontaneous zeal of non-professionals. They may protect the new believers from charlatans (Acts 8:9-24) but they also block unconventional leaders like Peter the fisherman