We gathered in the sanctuary of one of the oldest African American churches in the United States to talk theology. We dug into the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, humanity, Gospel, discipleship, mission, and more. We talked about theology. Why? Because we believed that we needed a theological alternative to both the neo-reformed and emerging church perspectives.

Missio Alliance worked hard to bring in diverse theological perspectives. While Scot McKnight and David Fitch provided solid presentations, lesser known practioners and thinkers like Cherith Fee Nordling, Howard-John Wesley, Jo Saxton, Amos Young, Todd Hunter, Mary Kate Morse, and Bruxy Cavey multiplied the perspectives.

My conference highlight was hearing from Missio’s women. Mary Kate Morse’s leadership in publically praying the Scriptures, along with Cherith Fee Nordling’s passionate plea for her listeners to hear the invitation of Jesus to participate in God’s mission were powerful. Jo Saxton’s stories of the interruptions of the Holy Spirit in the life of her community captured us.

This post is from my keynote address at the Wilberforce Weekend hosted by The Chuck Colson Center in Washington DC on April 26. My actual remarks may have differed slightly from this transcript. You can read Part 1 of the talk here.

PART TWO: FROM EXILE TO INCARNATION
So what is the solution? If the Exile model, derived from Jeremiah 29:7, is a sub-Christian model of cultural engagement, what is the alternative? Just as the church shifted from the Exodus to the Exile model 40 years ago, I believe we need to shift again. But this time we need more than a new strategy. We need new eyes to see the world in a fundamentally different way. If we don’t then our efforts to manifest the kingdom will remain flawed because we will still be driven by fear and control--by a vision of the world as an unsafe and dangerous place. But to see the world differently, to see with new eyes, requires a supernatural encounter with the grace of God.

In 1956, Martin Luther King Jr. was a young Baptist minister in Montgomery, Alabama. After Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, King found himself leading a bus boycott against the racist policies of the city. He lived under constant threat to his life. On Jan 27, he was woken in the middle of the night by a phone call. The voice said that if he wasn’t out of town in three days they were going to kill his family.

King couldn’t go back to sleep. With his wife and infant daughter in the next room, he made himself a cup of coffee and sat in the kitchen trying to figure out how to escape Montgomery. He later admitted that he was “scared to death” and “paralyzed by fear.” Like Thomas Aquinas’ city under siege, fear had caused King to turn inward in a posture of self-protection.

But then something happened, something unexpected. King felt something stirring within him--an inner voice that spoke to him. It said, “Stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth, and lo, I will be with you, even until the end of the world. ”The voice promised “never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No, never alone. He promised to never leave me, never, to leave me alone.”

That night King experienced the presence of Christ and it changed the way he saw the world. It took away his fear. He saw with new eyes. He saw a God-with-us world. After that encounter in his kitchen with God he said, “I can stand up without fear. I can face anything.” His new view of the world was about to be tested.

It started with this tweet by Dr. Anthony Bradley:

“Being a ‘radical,’ ‘missional’ Christian is slowly becoming the ‘new legalism.’ We need more ordinary God and people lovers (Matt 22:36-40).”

Needless to say, he had my attention. As I read the ensuing article the tweet inspired called “The ‘New Legalism’” (World Magazine), my curiosity quickly turned to confusion, then frustration and finally disappointment. Bradley so misses the mark with this piece that I felt it important to respond in some detail. Please read the original article first, as I don’t want you to rely entirely on my perspective.

Bradley starts by identifying a very real and prevalent problem:

“I continue to be amazed by the number of youth and young adults who are stressed and burnt out from the regular shaming and feelings of inadequacy if they happen to not be doing something unique and special. Today’s millennial generation is being fed the message that if they don’t do something extraordinary in this life they are wasting their gifts and potential.”

My reaction to this dynamic is somewhat conflicted. On one hand, I have seen the suffering he identifies and agree that not only do we need to address it compassionately, but also root out the underlying causes. On the other hand, in light of how most Christians around the world live, I have a hard time feeling too much sympathy for those who are almost entirely made up of the world’s most privileged few. It is in this sense of tension where I think the problem lies: there is certainly a problem that needs addressing, but the diagnoses of cause(s) and the remedies suggested are so off the mark that I fear they might very well cause more harm than they remedy.

This post is from my keynote address at the Wilberforce Weekend hosted by The Chuck Colson Center in Washington DC on April 26. My actual remarks may have differed slightly from this transcript. Part 2 will be posted in a few days.

INTRODUCTION
Most of you know that William Wilberforce’s pastor, John Newton, wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace.” There’s a lyric from that song that says, “I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.” That’s what I want to talk about this evening--what does it mean to not just have sight, but to truly see?

Consider Mother Teresa. In Calcutta, India, in her community, it was their custom to take ambulances every morning to the train station. There they would pick up the dying who had been abandoned there during the night. One morning they found a man in terrible condition. Rats were gnawing on him. Maggots had eaten his flesh down to the bone. He had only hours left to live.

Mother Teresa cared for him herself. She did all she could to comfort him and sat by him all morning in prayer. At the end, he briefly opened his eyes, said “Thank you,” and died. Later that day she said with a smile, “I had the privilege this morning of caring for the dying Christ.” A reference to Jesus’ words in Matthew 25.

Mother Teresa has been widely praised as one of the most important Christian leaders of the 20th Century. She has been celebrated for her efforts to make the invisible kingdom visible by both Protestants and Catholics, by Christians and secularists. She was a tiny Albanian nun with no wealth, no position of power or authority, no great education. And yet presidents and popes listened to her. Countless millions have been inspired by her. What was the secret behind her influence?

I suggest that what made her different was not merely what she did in the world, but how she saw the world.

For today's entry in the Friday Five interview series, we catch up with Samuel Rodriguez. Samuel is the public face of Hispanic evangelicals, serving as president of The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. He currently serves on the board of directors of some of America’s leading evangelical organizations such as: Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, National Association of Evangelicals, Empower 21, and Christianity Today. Rodriguez is also the recipient of the Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Award presented by the Congress of Racial Equality. We caught up with Samuel Rodriquez and asked him about immigration reform, racial reconciliation, and his new book, The Lamb’s Agenda.
-Daniel

You were the first Latino leader to give a commemorative address at Dr. Martin Luther King's annual commemorative event. Was that opportunity a dream come true?

Beyond a dream come true, the opportunity graciously rendered serves as a testimony to the purpose and promise of God for each of our lives. When I was 14 years of age, I saw a television special on Dr. King when a still small voice in my heart prompted me to write, "One day, God will enable me to connect with Dr. King's family as I serve our communities." With a commitment to holiness and humility, all things are possible.

You've said that Dr. King's vision will only happen through "the Lamb's agenda." What do you mean by that?

Whoever heard of a midwife as a literary heroine? Yet midwifery is the very stuff of drama. Every child is conceived either in love or lust, is born in pain, followed by joy or sometimes remorse. A midwife is in the thick of it, she sees it all.

-Jennifer Worth, The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

Pastor A.J. Swoboda shares what he's learned through the process of missionally engaging the local high school in this video from the BeUndivided initiative. He nails the need for quiet, persistent, and humble community presence.

-Paul

Via Tony Kriz

“We can’t support that?” the campus ministry leader informed us. “Not unless you include a tract or share the gospel in some way.” My college roommate Dave and I had requested some material and volunteer support from the parachurch organization for a new project Dave had initiated. He wanted to show God’s love on campus by raking leaves, cleaning frat houses, and providing hot chocolate on cold mornings. The ministry leader would have none of it. Showing kindness and love was not enough. For these acts to carry real value, he said, they had to be accompanied by something more.

That experience 20 years ago was my first encounter with the evangelical value of efficiency. One of the blessings of the evangelical tradition is it’s commitment to proclaiming the gospel--a call that many other streams of Christianity have abandoned. This missional focus, however, is often accompanied by a tyrannical urgency that results in the devaluing of every other call. If the direct missional value of an activity cannot be demonstrated it is often dismissed as useless or at most a distraction from the saving of souls. The result is what I call “evangelical austerity”--the shedding of all activities and investments deemed unnecessary for soul-saving.

Evangelical austerity not only explains the campus ministry’s refusal to help us rake leaves or clean up beer cans, but also the dreadful architecture of many evangelical buildings. A few weeks ago I was privileged to preach at the U.S. Naval Academy chapel in Annapolis, Maryland. The building is a soaring cathedral of stone and stained glass that seems out of place on this side of the Atlantic. The beauty of the space not only assists but also provokes worship. I can’t remember the last time I felt similarly inspired within an evangelical church dominated by screens and theater seating.

Beauty, whether in the form of actions or architecture, is not a high value for most evangelicals.

People are everywhere. You know what I mean? I can’t seem to get away from them. Take downtown Portland for instance. Downtown Portland is full of them. It is like walking through an anthill or living inside a pinball machine. Bodies everywhere.

Most of the bodies don’t even know I am there. They are content with the companionship of their agenda or their handheld mobile device, so I return the favor.

Okay, here’s the deal. I don’t even remember his name. Truth be told, I don’t think I ever took the time to learn his name. This is just the beginning of my sickness… I mean… well, more on that later.

I was downtown. It was maybe 8:30pm on a Thursday evening. I had managed to find street parking (score!) just a few blocks away from Jake’s Grill on Tenth Street (not to be confused with Jake’s Famous Crawfish, which is up on Twelfth). I was hurrying to meet my friend Wilson.

It was a lovely evening, warm, and the streets were hopping. I was on my cell phone chatting with an old roommate from college named James. We hadn’t spoken in years and we were getting caught up. I passed the culinary school and came to the corner just across from Jake’s. The grill is situated on the Northwest corner of the old Governor Hotel, a beautiful landmark just ten blocks from the Willamette River. As I strode onto the sidewalk, I could see Wilson through the window. I waved with my free hand and prepared to enter the brass and glass doorway.

Before I could reach the handle a tall figure suddenly blocked my path. He was a few inches taller than me with scraggly blonde hair and a soiled red flannel. His hand was extended and his eyes were pleading.

“Hold on a second,” I said to James.

“What do you want?” I asked tersely but politely to the gangly man.
“Do you have a dollar?” he replied.
“A what?”
“A dollar.”
“What do you want a dollar for?”
“I’m hungry.”

As many of you have heard, Native activist and theologian Richard Twiss died suddenly last Saturday. Twiss was a powerful leader, a challenging theologian, a pastor at heart, and one of the best men I’ve ever met.

Others closer to Richard have reflected on his contributions to indigenous peoples and to the church. If you’re not familiar with his life or work, you need to do some catch up—it’s well worth your time.

I knew him, but only as a dot in his peripheral vision: first as a pimply college student introduced to him in passing at a Portland university; then as a face in the crowd during speeches and community workshops; later as a handshake and a few jokes at a conference coffee station; finally, as a name in his email inbox asking him to tell his story for Leadership’s pastoral audience. Another email I sent (an hour before he collapsed in Washington, DC) asked for advice on how to connect pastors with their local Native communities in sensitive and empowering ways. I’m genuinely grieved that that message will never receive his reply.

Central to Richard’s life and ministry was the drive to walk in the path of Jesus as a proud and faithful Native man. He challenged the institutional church with his bold and joyful worship of triune Creator through his traditional dances and ceremonies, and with his sharp theology that refused to allow the “cowboys” to co-opt the gospel. He had a vision of a Christ-sprung justice that joyfully drummed down racial barriers. He was bold in speaking the truth, often blending cultural confrontation with a dark, hilarious sense of humor that lightened a room while twitching the truth just a little deeper into our ribs.

But there is so much left to do. The global church, for all its strides forward, is crippled by ignorance, by remnants of colonial folly and oppression that cling to the gospel and poison its truth in the mouths of indigenous peoples on every continent. Richard was right—the gospel we preach is far too often that “the old is gone, all things must become white.”

One of the best discussions I’ve had in a long time happened on Facebook over the weekend. It was a discussion about the ‘dreaded’ issue of Christianity, the church, and LGBTQ sexual relations. The discussion started with my statement which was something like:

To the question, “What is your position on LGBTQ?” I think the best answer (in these times) is “we have no position” The question itself misses the point of any other answer? Agree?

To which I got good fruitful pushback from all sides. I was “abnegating!” I was doing the equivalent of “standing aside and being silent during the civil rights movement.” “There is no neutral on this!” some said. From this discussion, I came away with four points that need clarifying as to how/why someone would say “I have no position.” These four points push us as Christians (no matter what sexual issues we are involved in at this time) toward a new posture regarding alternative sexualities that opens doors for mission and God’s Kingdom to break in.

1) TO DECLARE A “POSITION” (PUBLICLY) FORECLOSES THE MOST IMPORTANT POSITION.

By taking a non-position to this question, we are not feigning neutrality. We are refusing to either single out a particular person’s sexual brokenness as an issue above others, or act like there is no sexual brokenness at all in any of us. Instead, our position is that we are ALL in some way or another sexually broken and moving toward maturity in Christ, and this means that we all submit our brokenness to the healing and reconciling work of Christ in the context of Christian community?

When we take “positions,” we buy into anti-relational dynamics which thwart God’s Kingdom We see people as categories rather than individuals. Conceptualizing distances us from the people Christ loves. By refusing to make an aprior judgment against anyone, we are in essence saying the only prejudgment is that we are all sexually broken and we come seeking redemption. And if you are sexually whole and have no need for redemption, you are blessed. But we who are broken come as real people in real situations to submit together to what God is doing in and among us. This to me is the opening of space for God’s Kingdom to break in on any issue.

2) TO DECLARE A POSITION (PUBLICLY) REINFORCES SEXUALITY AS AN IDENTITY MARKER.

A recent Christianity Today article by Timothy Tennant profiles the growing number of “insider Christians” in Hindu and Muslim nations. These disciples worship Jesus while remaining engaged with their religious communities.

The piece joins an ongoing debate regarding these believers… and, tangentially, others who for one reason or another practice a form of “churchless Christianity.” At one point in the article, Tennant touches the heart of the argument by asking, “Can someone say ‘yes’ to Jesus and ‘no’ to the existing local expressions of the church?”

In tandem with Tennant’s piece, CT published a 2011 interview with “Abu Jaz,” a leader among a significant insider movement in eastern Africa that calls itself People of the Gospel. His testimony includes a powerful personal encounter with Christ, and is a compelling story of finding and following Jesus among the mosques and minarets of his culture.

These believers are understandably hesitant to call themselves “Christians”—a term often associated with cultural imperialism and historical conflict. Many would risk persecution if outed as “Christian,” and are reluctant to give up cultural and relational identities that are deeply enmeshed with their dominant culture’s faith.

Much of this seems to be only a matter of words. To butcher Shakespeare, a rose by any other name is still a rose, right? But there’s more than semantics involved here. Our theological and relational posture toward such insider movements will profoundly impact our thoughts and practice related to mission and the church, both globally and at home.

This week Christianity Today will be livestreaming the Global:Church Forum–a gathering allowing the Western church to hear what God is doing in the Global South and East and discover out how ministry is done in different cultures and economies. This gathering will create a context for you to hear what God is doing around the world, and then understand how this movement in the non-Western world affects movements, models and methodologies pursued by those in the West.

Hosted by Leadership Journal's own Skye Jethani, the event will be held October 16-18 at Park Community Church in Chicago. Most sessions will be streamed live on CT's website, and evening sessions will be open to the public and feature music by Sara Groves.

Hit the jump to read about who will be speaking from around the world.

It's one of the most hotly debated questions in the church today: What is the Gospel? We're starting a new series of videos from Christian leaders to hear how they answer that question. The diversity of answers you will hear is remarkable. Does that speak to the gospel having many facets, or to the confusion that exists in the church about the gospel itself? We begin with the evangelist/apologist Ravi Zacharias.

In honor of Labor Day, I thought this video was appropriate. Many pastors have answered God's call to serve his church and advance his good news. As a result, many of us have come to believe that any other calling is secondary to our own. Part of being a pastor, however, is helping all of God's sheep recognize the dignity and God-honoring nature of their callings whatever they may be. This simple video helps us see the challenge.

Megachurches are changing. For decades the popular model for church growth was predicated on large facilities hosting many excellent programs to attract the unchurched. But for a number of reasons, not the least being the prevalence of "missional" thinking, some megachurches are trying to adjust their model to be more community-focused. They're asking themselves, "How can we serve our community?" rather than "How can we serve our attenders?"

One example is Granger Community Church in Indiana. Pastor, author, and blogger Tim Stevens has written about Granger's shifting philosophy of ministry, and last week these shifts resulted in a name change for the church's property. Stevens writes:

In our recent revisioning project, we intentionally decided to activate the campus. That is, rather than have a church campus that is primarily focused on weekend services for the congregation–we decided to turn the purpose of the property toward reaching the community.... We realized one of the first things we needed to do was re-brand the entire church property. No longer will it be called Granger Community Church. Instead, we will call it the Granger Commons.

29-year-old Andrew Bowen became a Christian in high school, but says that he took "a nose dive into fundamentalism. It just ignited a furnace in me." His journey with God since then has been challenging. When his wife experienced a complicated pregnancy that ended tragically, Bowen says he plunged into a "two-year stint of just seething hatred toward God."

Last year he decided it was time to explore what he really believed. He began Project Conversion. With the aid of religious mentors, Bowen practiced 12 different religions each for one month including: Hinduism, Baha'i, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Buddhisim, agnosticism, Mormonism, Islam, Sikhism, Wicca, Jainism, and Catholicism.

His journey is reported by Amanda Green on the Religion News Service blog. It's well worth the time to read. Not only does Bowen's attitude toward religion reflect that of many younger people, but where he lands may surprise you.

"I have the opportunity to hang out with a number of younger evangelical influencers, and sometimes it's breathtaking how little we think about, talk about, or seem concerned with personal evangelism."

-Jonathan Merritt quoted in "Outlooks on Outreach" in the Winter 2012 issue of Leadership Journal. Check out the quote in context by subscribing to LJ in the left column.

Merritt is on the staff of Cross Pointe Church in Duluth, Georgia, and the author of the new book, A Faith of Our Own: Following Jesus Beyond the Culture Wars.

This video was produced by This Is Our City, a project of Christianity Today exploring how Christians are working for the flourishing of their cities. Here McKinley talks about the activism of Portland's culture and how the church can't just talk about activism, but vocation.

I visited a number of Asian countries in 2011 and was amazed at the dynamism and commitment of the young Jesus followers.

One network, in a country that I will not mention, stuck out to me as an outstanding example. They have started almost a thousand new communities, many of them multiplying into the second and third generation. And like many new movements in the non-Western world, a Sunday worship service as an evangelistic entry point for potential members, has not been part of their ministry portfolio. Which was the subject of my somewhat provocative post a few days ago, 9 Reasons NOT to plant a church in 2012.

So if they didn't start worship services, how did they start a replicating movement of Christian communities and how do they maintain such a high level of spiritual growth?

Of course it's hard and a little presumptuous to claim which elements of their ministry are the most important but . . . here are 11 practices that I think have contributed to their success:

"Church planting is the most effective form of evangelism under heaven," said C.Peter Wagner. I know he said that. I was there. I was a young [and good looking] Seminary student sitting in his classroom when he said it.

It was a welcomed idea, proven scientifically more effective than trying to expand older church structures. Back then, there was little argument against it and the idea was embraced by mission societies and church denominations who played it out in their strategies all through the 90's and also during the noughties when the thinking became mainstream rather than rebellious. I was part of that movement the whole time.

But now it's 2012 and while some young, enthusiastic people are out there planting churches like its 1997, others are focusing on launching more sustainable, more holistic, more measurably transformational Kingdom solutions.

One of the biggest trends in church planting that I observed in my recent 30+ country trek is the SHIFT AWAY FROM planting churches towards NOT planting a church at all but focusing on a wider range of transforming Kingdom activities. Some church planters are delaying the worship service piece of the pioneer missional ministry for as long as possible and sometimes indefinitely.

I choose to belong to a strange tribe. Goshen College, my alma mater, made national news last month when its board of directors decided that the “Star Spangled Banner” would not be played before athletic events.

As could be expected, the decision was met with confusion and contempt. Wasn’t this just another example of our traditional values being trampled by the unrelenting march of political correctness? What sort of ingrates object to our nation’s anthem, anyway? Fluffy-headed campus philosophers? Lazy latte-sipping liberals?

The decision not to play the national anthem reversed last year’s decision to play it for the first time in Goshen College’s 116-year history. That, too, caught the media’s attention.

It also caused widespread concern and confusion among the college’s students, professors, alumni, supporters and, yes, donors - many of whom felt like playing the anthem compromised the college’s Christian values.

Read Part One of Skye Jethani's article, "The Post-American Church."

OBSERVATION TWO: The American Church still has a vital role to play as the global church rises.

In 2008, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria wrote the best-selling book The Post-American World from which I borrowed the title for this blog post. In his book Zakaria refuses to join the “America is in decline” bandwagon. Instead he uses the term “Post-American” to describe the emergence of new economic super-powers into the zone previously occupied by America alone. China and India are the two most obvious nations in this category with Brazil increasingly being added to the conversation. To paraphrase Zakaria’s argument, it’s not about the decline of the West, but rather the rise of the rest.

Like the doomsday prophets that have nothing positive to say about the American economy, there seem to be no shortage of doomsday prophets surrounding the American church. (Remember the “Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America” released by James Dobson’s political group in 2008?) Reading too many of these dire predictions about the American church would lead one to believe that everyone under 30 has abandoned the faith, every pastor is a closeted bi-sexual, and Muslims are salivating at the chance to convert abandoned mega-churches into mosques.

Well, I hate to disappoint the “prophets” profiting from this fear-mongering, but the evidence suggests the American church is far from dead. Sure, we have problems and many of them are significant, but the Christian religion in America is actually more robust today than it was two centuries ago. (Only between 10 and 20 percent of Americans belonged to a church in 1776. See more here.) And the idea that the U.S. is just one generation behind the secular and Islamic forces influencing Europe is like comparing Lady Bird with Lady Gaga.

I’m seated at the front of a university lecture hall with representatives of five other religious traditions. Listening intently to the brief descriptions of our faiths are seventy undergraduate and graduate students, many hailing from other countries. Two weeks later I’m attending a global theology conference at Wheaton College. Presenters describe the theological landscapes in their countries, and it is apparent how significantly these contexts are shaping how evangelical theology is articulated.

Many questions were asked in both of these settings. Good and challenging questions. One question I never heard raised: “Do you believe in hell?” Another one that didn’t come up: “What do you think about Rob Bell?”

I am being a bit snarky; surely Christians around the world ask questions about hell, judgment, eternity and… Rob Bell. However, it was unmistakably clear in both environments that the questions American Christians so passionately debate are not always asked by those who don’t share our cultural context.

When, as I recently read, a prominent Christian claims that the questions raised by Rob Bell and his critics are the questions being asked by Christians, I wonder which Christians we have in mind. I fear our debates sound myopic to those outside the American evangelical subculture. I wonder too whether our ignorance of the questions and concerns of the larger church—down the street and across the globe—limits our opportunities for robust fellowship and mission.

It can be daunting for those of us raised within American Evangelicalism to venture outside of our cultural comfort zone. Fortunately, Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom have written a collection of biographies that provides an excellent starting point. Clouds of Witnesses: Christian Voices from Africa and Asia (IVP, 2011) features the lives of seventeen Christians from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

A week ago I returned from a trip to Spain where I was speaking with a team of missionaries working in different regions of the country. Yes, I was suffering for the Lord on a Mediterranean beach. Apart from the breathtaking beauty of Peñíscola, Spain, I was blessed to share time with some spectacular people engaged in very good work.

When many Americans think about missionaries they picture a team of Western, Anglo, people doing evangelism and church planting among dark-skinned “natives.” Perhaps that image was true at one time, but it’s definitely not anymore. As someone has recently remarked, missions today is “from everywhere to everywhere.”

The team of missionaries I spoke with in Spain included people from the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and the Netherlands. And they were serving among Spaniards, Portuguese, Chinese, Moroccans, Latin Americans, and Arabs. In many cases they reported greater receptivity to the gospel among immigrant populations in Spain rather than among native Spaniards. It was a striking example of how globalization has radically “flattened” our planet.

And the nature of the ministries engaged by these workers was just as diverse as their passports. Some were planting churches, others had started a mission to rescue women from human trafficking, another team was doing marriage and family counseling, and others were helping immigrants from North Africa learn Spanish and find jobs. In other words, despite having a shared denominational background this team was not limited to a single missions playbook.

I came way from my time in Spain with two observations that may have some relevancy to the church on this side of “the pond.”

OBSERVATION ONE: The future leadership of the church belongs to “third culture” kids.

Read Part 1 of “Redefining Radical.”

Consider who is celebrated in most churches. Typically it is the person who is engaged in “full time Christian work”--the pastor or missionary, or people who pursue social causes that result in a big and measurable impact. (Who isn’t talking about William Wilberforce these days?) Similarly, those who behave like pastors or missionaries periodically in their workplace, neighborhood, or perhaps on a short-term trip overseas are praised for these actions. But a church will rarely, if ever, celebrate a person’s “ordinary” life and work.

For example, Andy Crouch tells about a pastor he met in Boston. The pastor recounted the story of a woman in his congregation who was a lawyer for the Environmental Protection Agency. She played a vital role in the clean up of Boston Harbor--one of the most polluted waterways in the country. But the pastor said, “The only time we have ever recognized her in church was for her role in teaching second grade Sunday school. And of course we absolutely should celebrate Sunday school teachers, but why did we never celebrate her incredible contribution to our whole city as a Christian, taking care of God's creation?”

Here’s the problem--when we call people to radical Christian activism, we tend to define what qualifies as “radical” very narrowly. Radical is moving overseas to rescue orphans. Radical is not being an attorney for the EPA. Radical is leaving your medical practice to vaccinate refugees in Sudan. Radical is not taking care of young children at home in the suburbs. Radical is planting a church in Detroit. Radical is not working on an assembly line.

What we communicate, either explicitly or implicitly, by this call to radical activism is that experiencing the fullness of the Christian life depends upon one’s circumstances and actions. Sure, the man working on an assembly line for 50 years can be a faithful Christian, but he’s not going to experience the same sense of fulfillment and significance as the one who does something extreme--who cashes in his 401k and relocates to Madagascar to rescue slaves.

“How radical do I have to be?” the suburban mom asked. She had recently read a number of Christian books decrying the self-centered nature of much of the American church. The authors had apparently had enough of the consumer orientation of their congregations. As a remedy, each of the books calls readers to live a counter-cultural life of radical sacrifice and mission. The books, while inspiring, left this woman feeling “exhausted.”

“I totally agree with the their assessment of the church. We are too self- centered,” she explained. “But how radical is enough? Should I sell my house and car? It is wrong for my kids to be attending a private school? Do I need to move oversees and work with orphans? I want to really experience the Christian life, but now I’m wondering if that’s even possible here in the suburbs.” She was looking for my pastoral advice. What I told her is not what I would have said 5 years ago.

I agreed with her that consumer culture has impacted the way many Christians view their faith. As sociologist Christian Smith has remarked, many Americans view God as a combination divine butler and cosmic therapist. And the church is often seen as a dispenser of religious goods and services for the enjoyment of those who put money in the offering plate. My unease about Consumer Christianity reached a crescendo a few years ago, so I actually wrote a whole book about the epidemic.

But what exactly are we to do about consumer Christians? The solution I hear in many ministry settings, and the one I would have given 5 years ago, is to transform people from consumer Christians into activist Christians.

Still confused about what "missional" means? In this video Alan Hirsch helps define the term and what it means for how we operate in the world.

Nearly everyone who attended the Lausanne Congress in Cape Town, South Africa, last month agreed that the testimony of the young North Korean woman was one of the emotional high points of the gathering.

Her story of sacrifice, anger, salvation, and courage must be seen by every church leader. Not only is she inspiring, but her story reveals the undeniable fact that Jesus Christ is building his church even in the most repressive and hostile places on earth.

Watch her full 9 minute testimony on the 12 Cities | 12 Conversations site.

In the last two days of the Lausanne Congress in Cape Town, we have heard the stories and seen irrefutable evidence of God's presence in the world. On Monday night we heard from an 18-year-old woman who fled North Korea with her family. She came to China where her father found Jesus Christ. She told about the hardships of being discovered and her parents' deportation back to North Korea. Her mother died, and her father was imprisoned.

After escaping a second time to China, her father decided to return to North Korea to take the gospel to his suffering countrymen. He was never heard from again. The young woman was adopted by a Chinese pastor's family, but she still had not come to believe in Christ herself. Understandably, as a teenager she was filled with grief and anger. But in a dream Christ came to her, made his love for her unambiguous, and promised to be her father. With tears she shared her determination to serve Christ for the rest of her life and, like her father, see Good News brought to North Korea.

The 5,000 delegates here in Cape Town cried with her. It was powerful and beautiful. One friend said the Congress could have ended at that moment and would have all been worth it.

On Tuesday the Congress focused on the issue of reconciliation and the movement of the gospel in the Middle East. In more than one session, we saw what many in our world believe is impossible--Palestinians and Israelis embracing, blessing, and calling one another "brother" or "sister."

In late April 2010, more than 50 pastors crowded into a hotel conference room in Hampton Roads, Virginia. The event organizers, a small group of pastors from Chicagoland, were expecting 25 colleagues to turn out for the meeting. But when news got out about their visit, area pastors got excited. Scott Chapman, pastor of a multi-site church called The Chapel in Chicago's northern suburbs and president of the Christ Together network, shared with the Virginia pastors how Christ Together is helping churches across denominational and ethnic lines unite in service and evangelism to carry the gospel into their neighborhoods. He described a "sustained Christ awakening" that includes churches working together as the One Body of Christ to restore the reputation of Jesus in their area.

After the meeting, Scott Gifford, national director of Christ Together, attended two worship services that convinced him that this vision was taking root in Virginia.

The first was a Saturday night worship event in a predominately African-American Cornerstone Assembly of God in Hampton, Virginia. During the service, Pastor Gerard Duff preached from the Christ Together brochure.

In the final installment of Skye Jethani's interview with Jim Wallis and Mark Dever, they discuss the role of local congregations in God's mission of reconciliation. Dever and Wallis agree that Americans are too individualistic and that Scripture calls for a communal witness of God's power and love. The two leaders disagree, however, on whether or not evangelicals should partner with mainline liberal churches.

Being justified by Christ leads a person to engage acts of justice. And the Christian witness of justice leads more people to be justified. But Wallis and Dever continue to disagree about whether justice is an "implication" of the gospel or "integral" to it.

Is feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick, and welcoming the stranger "gospel ministry"? In part 3 of the conversation about justice and the gospel, Mark Dever and Jim Wallis disagree about what can and cannot be legitimately called a gospel ministry. What do you think? If the gospel is not verbally proclaimed are we doing gospel work?

Pick up the Summer issue of Leadership Journal to read more from Dever, Wallis, and others on the intersection of justice and evangelism.

In part two of the conversation between Mark Dever, Jim Wallis, and Skye Jethani, they talk about the judgment passage in Matthew 25. Was Jesus saying that our just and compassionate actions toward "the least of these" is central to our faith, or are they evidence of our faith? Is justice a gospel imperative or a gospel implication?

Pick up the Summer issue of Leadership Journal to read more from Dever, Wallis, and others on the intersection of justice and evangelism.

Ninety-five percent African American, five percent other. These are the demographics of the Chicago neighborhood where our three-month-old church has been planted. I am “other.” White. One hundred percent white. As the pastor of this young church plant, I have lost sleep over these percentages.

Most of the church planting models and examples I’ve been exposed to are very different from my current cross-cultural experience. In the recent past, the Homogeneous Unit Principle (HUP) was viewed positively as the rationale for starting churches of demographically similar people. This principle states that it is easier for people to become Christians when they must cross few or no racial, linguistic, or class barriers. Ideally, then, these new churches were led by pastors whose culture, class, and skin color closely matched those of their flocks.

The HUP is seen less favorably these days, but it remains common for church planters to target culturally similar people. Categories such as cultural elites, the creative class, or young professionals may sound exotic but are often used to describe people most like the church planter.

Take the recent urban church-planting trend. Like me, many of these church-planters are not native to the city. So why are they leaving suburbia to start urban churches? In a recent blog post, Tim Keller identifies what I think is the primary motivation for many of these church plants:

“For the last twenty years, since 1990, American cities have experienced an amazing renaissance. People began moving back into cities in droves, and downtown/center cities began to regenerate at their cores.”

In other words, the children who grew up in homogeneous suburban churches are moving into America’s cities, followed closely by the next generation of church planters. The result? Young, urban, and homogeneous churches.

The summer issue of Leadership features an interview with Mark Dever and Jim Wallis about the role justice ought to have in our gospel ministry. Over the coming weeks we'll be posting video segments of the interview hosted by Leadership's managing editor, Skye Jethani. In part 1, Dever and Wallis focus on whether or not tackling racism is part of the church's call or a distraction from its core mission.

We want to hear your reaction. Which perspective do you believe aligns best with Scripture and the church's mission? Stay tuned for more video from the interview in the days ahead.

Last week Dr. Metzger wrote on Ur about the novelty of multi-ethnic efforts in the church today. He asked whether justice was really taking root in our hearts, or is it just a trend. In this follow-up post he exposes our general blindness to injustice by referencing Mark Driscoll's comments about the film Avatar. If you recall, earlier this year Driscoll called the James Cameron film "the most satanic movie I've ever seen." A video with his full rant against the film can be viewed below.

Some friends drew my attention to the YouTube post of Pastor Mark Driscoll’s sermon where he critiques the movie Avatar. I don’t know Pastor Driscoll, but I have watched the movie. There were two things that struck me about his remarks: his rightful concern for orthodoxy coupled with his desire for Christians to think critically about the worldviews that films present such as pagan spirituality; and his conviction that the movie attacks cultural progress.

Whether or not the director, James Cameron, intended to promote a pantheistic perspective (everything is God), I do concur with Driscoll that a pantheistic or monistic view of reality proves problematic for consideration of sin and evil—if we are one with the divine in our creaturely state, how can we be sinners? It also proves problematic for consideration of the need for a Savior—if we are ultimately one with God, why do we need a Savior to remove the separation? From a pantheistic or monistic perspective, separation is not moral or ontological; it is basically mental. According to this model, our sinful state is one of illusion. We fail to see things as they truly are, and we must cease living the lie and get in touch with our true selves which is not beyond us, but rather within us (what Driscoll refers to as the spark of divinity). I should also add that it is ultimately impossible to differentiate good from evil in a pantheistic or monistic framework: good and evil proceed from one ultimate reality, which is beyond good and evil.

So, I commend Pastor Driscoll for his biblical and theological convictions regarding pantheism. And yet I don’t find his brief statements on Avatar orthodox enough. Here I have in mind Pastor Driscoll’s statement that the movie attacks cultural progress.

On June 10, Leadership's managing editor Skye Jethani will be moderating a conversation at Saddleback Church on the future of the global church. The gathering is part of the 12 Cities | 12 Conversations tour in advance of the 3rd Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Cape Town, South Africa, in October.

(You'll want to watch Rick Warren's video invitation for the psychedelic video effect of his shirt alone. Goodbye Hawaiian shirts. Hello Houston, we have a problem.)

Saddleback Conversation Video Invite from ConversationGatherings on Vimeo.

Even if you cannot attend the gathering you can still participate. Saddleback will be hosting a live video broadcast of the gathering on their website. Sign up for the event here. The panelists for the event include:

What a day. I woke at 4am this morning to catch a flight from Chicago to Washington DC. The purpose of the trip was to conduct an interview that we’ll feature in the summer issue of Leadership Journal (which hits mailboxes and screens in July). The focus of the issue is on the intersection of justice and evangelism. It’s going to be a fantastic issue with articles from Eugene Cho, Mark Labberton, Bethany Hoang, Jim Belcher, and others. But the main attraction is the interview I just wrapped at a coffee shop on Capitol Hill.

I spent two hours in conversation with Jim Wallis and Mark Dever on their understanding of the gospel, justice, and the local church. For those who don’t know Wallis and Dever and can’t grasp why having those two interacting on this issue is a big deal, let me fill you in.

Jim Wallis is the editor and founder of Sojourners—a magazine and community of evangelicals committed to social action. Wallis has been engaged in justice issues since the civil rights movement of the 60s, and proudly shares that he’s been arrested 22 times. He’s an outspoken critic of linking the church to either a politically conservative or liberal agenda, but has been an advocate for the poor, the unborn, the marginalized, and the oppressed. For decades he’s been reintroducing the justice teachings of the NT to Christians who’ve neglected them.

Mark Dever is pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church and one of the founders of the Together for the Gospel network. He’s big on Reformed theology and one of the visible leaders of the New Reformed movement that seems to be sprouting everywhere in the church. Dever has been a leading voice against expanding (and thereby losing) our definition of the gospel.

The Q gathering kicked off in Chicago today. 600 Christian leaders in the church, business, social sector, education, government, and the arts assembled at the Civic Opera House to hear some very stimulating talks and engage in more conversations themselves. One of the highlights from day one was Tim Keller.

Keller used his 18 minutes (all Q talks are 18, 9, or 3 minutes...there’s a predominately displayed countdown clock the audience can see to hold the speaker accountable...clearly not invented by a preacher) to talk about the polarization in the church between the “justification people” and the “justice people.”

As Keller describes them, the justification people are all about justification by faith alone. Only after being justified can a person live as he/she ought to live. While Keller was in full agreement with this doctrine, he said the unfortunate implication for many of the justification people is the belief that “we are mainly here to do evangelism” and they view “justice as a distraction.”

In the current issue of our digizine, Catalyst Leadership, there is a video of Chris Seay talking about his ministry among transvestite prostitutes in Houston.

"If Jesus were in Houston, Texas, today this is where he would be," says Seay, "and his focus would not begin with morality."

Do you agree? Check out the full video and sign up for a free subscription at CatalystLeadershipDigital.com.

In October 2010 the Lausanne Movement will convene the Third Congress on World Evangelization in Cape Town, South Africa. In preparation for that gathering, Lausanne and Christianity Today are developing a "Global Conversation" around the issue to be discussed in Cape Town.

In February 2010 the Global Conversation tackles truth—and the reluctance of post-Christian societies in the West to trust claims of absolute truth. We asked residents of a secular university city whether there was anything they were still absolutely sure of. Their answers suggest bridges as well as barriers for dialogue between Christian and secular neighbors.

Read more about evangelism and relativism on the Global Conversations website.

Common Ground from The Global Conversation on Vimeo.

The difference between a fad and a movement is that a movement produces long term enduring change. A fad, on the other hand, feeds off something that already exists: a cultural awareness, a disenchantment, or even a novel idea and expands on it. Through media, publishing, and viral exchange, it becomes a sensation that sells books, creates a lot of activity, makes people feel something exciting—but in the end it doesn’t produce enough substance to sustain lasting change in history.

Often, in the midst of something new, we can not tell the difference. Whether it is a fad or a movement won’t be known for many years. I am sure many thought John Wesley and what was derisively called “Methodism” was just a fad. It turned out to change the landscape of protestant Christianity (especially in North America) for all time. Anyone who is an evangelical lives beneath its shadow to this day.

In the last 10 to 15 years there have been a few tidal waves of reaction to North American evangelical Christianity: Emerging Church and its founding Emergent Village, the Organic (or Simple or House) Church movement, and of course Missional Church. There has been a lot of blog commotion recently over their demise or decline of these expressions. In each case I suggest we are worrying too much.

With everyone writing obituaries for the Emerging Church movement, I feel the need to take a timeout to remember some positives about the movement. Although the Emerging Church has been mixed, and in many ways lost momentum and splintered, it was a significant part of my journey. Here are five things I loved about the Emerging Church.

1. On a personal level: My initial intro to the Emerging Church movement came in a seminar with (yes, believe it or not) Doug Pagitt and Mark Driscoll…together. At a low point in my life and faith, feeling burned and burned out, they talked about a postmodern (hey! remember that word??) approach to faith that was more about Jesus than institution; more about life in the way of Jesus that made a difference in the world, and less about getting people over the goal-line of decision and their rears into heaven. All of that resonated with me deeply.

I was working through all sorts of things that threatened to shipwreck me. But during that time books like Brian McLaren's The Church on the Other Side and More Ready Than You Realize, Len Sweet's Postmodern Pilgrims, an Origins conference with Erwin McManus (and many of his books), all of these kept my vision and heart for faith and the church from falling apart. And even though I now find myself pushing back against both Driscoll and Pagitt from my tiny speck of ground in the middle, I'm eternally grateful that at just the right time God allowed our paths to cross.

The organic church has been a frequent topic of discussion on this blog. And Leadership journal has featured articles and interviews from Alan Hirsch, Neil Cole, and Frank Viola. Like us, Mark Galli has an appreciation for the efforts and perspective of this movement. But what happens when the organic church starts to wilt? Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today, wrote the following article to encourage and caution the movement. The full text can be read on CT's website. Along with responses from Neil Cole and Frank Viola.

I love the work that Neil Cole is doing—and Alan Hirsch (The Forgotten Ways), Bob Roberts (Transformation: How Glocal Churches Transform Lives and the World), Frank Viola (Finding Organic Church), and many, many others.

In one form or another, they are champions of "organic church." The term is fluid, but it contains at least three ingredients: Frustration with the-church-as-we-know-it, a focus on people (vs. programs) and mission (vs. institutional maintenance), and a vision to transform the world.

As Neil Cole put it in his book Organic Church, "It is not enough to fill our churches; we must transform our world." He puts it similarly in his latest effort, Church 3.0. The book is ostensibly about how to shift from program-driven and clergy-led institutions to churches that are "relational, simple, intimate, and viral." Still, says Cole, "Changing the church is not the idea of this book … . The only reason to shift from Church 2.0 to Church 3.0 is to change the world."

I love the passion. And the prophetic word to institutionalism (believe me, I know the evils of institutionalism: I'm an Anglican!). And the vision to make Christ's love and grace known to the four corners of the planet.

What I worry about is the coming crash of organic church.

Everyone is for "justice," but as soon as anyone tries to make things more just, trouble follows. I came to this lab to hear from a panel of innovative activists who are working for justice.

Reggie McNeal, missional specialist for Leadership Network, spoke about his new book, Missional Renaissance (Wiley):

The situations in Iran and North Korea continue to concern us and our government, but where is the most dangerous place in America?

New York City? Detroit? Baltimore? Chicago? Los Angeles?

Large cities such as these have received a lot of attention as havens of crime, disorder, and mayhem. Violent crimes and societal concerns seem common in our concrete jungles.

But what about cities like Irvine, California; Lake Forest, Illinois; Plano, Texas; and Ellicott City, Maryland?

Irvine, California, was given the title, "Safest City in America" (over 100,000 people) by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on June 1, 2009. I would like to submit that suburbs just like this may actually be the most dangerous places in America.

I was a guest speaker at a church, waiting for my time to go up to the platform. That's when I saw something curious. The staff person responsible for coordinating the worship service was busy typing away on her laptop. Perhaps a last minute change to the PowerPoint, I thought. But as I walked behind her, I saw that she was consumed with typing a message on someone's Facebook wall. It felt out of place to me, given that she was the person responsible for leading God's people in worship but she seemed mentally someplace else.

I had a similar experience while visiting a Christian college. Sitting in the back of the classroom, I noticed that about a third of the students were surfing Facebook or MySpace while the professor was passionately teaching the New Testament. He probably assumed they were busy taking notes.

Our partner at Shapevine.com, Lance Ford, interviews Mike Breen and Eddie Gibbs about the blessings and challenges of mission as the world moves beyond the familiar trappings of Western Christianity.

Sarah Pulliam at Christianity Today has just posted her interview with Rick Warren. He talks about the controversy surrounding his invocation at President Obama's inauguration, the uproar over his support of Proposition 8 in California banning same-sex marriage, and the thousands being baptized at his church. Here's an excerpt:

I know a lot has been happening recently at your church. Just a few weeks ago, you baptized 800 in one day.

I was in the water for over five hours. I had webbed feet. It had to be a record. You know, it says in Acts that at the day of Pentecost, 3,000 were baptized and added to the church that day. We had 2,400 added to the church that day. The world belongs to Saddleback. When we started Saddleback, it was a white suburban church. We speak 65 different languages. It's the United Nations. I baptized an Egyptian General; I baptized probably 50 or 60 nationalities.

After you posted an invitation to the baptism and membership, some bloggers criticized the promotion. In the promotion, you said new members could have their photo with Pastor Rick and get a free one-year subscription to The Purpose Driven Connection. Why did you advertise the event that way?

In the first place, I think every person should take a picture with the pastor who baptizes them. That's a memento, that's a spiritual hallmark. That's not anything new. It wasn't like, oh, this is something we've never done that's going to attract people. In the past 10 years, Saddleback has baptized over 20,000 new believers. We are, without a doubt, the most evangelistic church in America. There are churches that are bigger than Saddleback, but there are no churches that reach more people for Christ than Saddleback. There are no churches that send as many people into the missions field. There's not a church that has sent 8,000 people into the missions field.

Read the entire interview here.

The following is an excerpt from Dave Gibbons' new book The Monkey and the Fish (Zondervan, 2009).

The church is called to be a third-culture community. Third culture is about the two purposes of life for every Christ follower: loving God and loving your neighbor.

Without question, there are a lot of effective strategies and fruitful ideas being used in the church and in ministry today. Third culture is not simply a strategy but the way we are to live. One may not be naturally third culture, but we are called to move toward this vision. It seems that more than ever the world is open to such leadership. I say this simply because we have experienced it in communities where we seriously pursued a third-culture lifestyle in diverse cultural contexts spanning several continents and saw how people gravitate toward this adaptive, liquid-type leader.

When my brother and I were teenagers, we were bottomless pits. We could consume massive quantities of food. My poor mom. She found really only one place she could take us that would satisfy us: the Royal Fork, an all-you-can-eat buffet where we ate for three to four hours at a sitting.

I can still picture the luscious spread. For my brother and me, nothing was more glorious than checking out every nook and cranny of that steamy buffet table and then consuming everything in sight. Buffets were our little heaven on earth. Nothing brings people together like good food!

On my bookshelf here at my Leadership office is a growing collection of books about intentional living--about new friars and new monastics and communes made up of multiple families under one roof. As with all such things, we wanted to get some perspective on the issue. So I spent an afternoon not long ago visiting with Jon Trott, a 30-year member of Jesus People USA (JPUSA) in Chicago. Since Jon has been living the communal life for three decades now, I asked him a few questions about life in community and for his perspective on the "new monasticism."

To hear more from Jon, check out the Winter 2009 issue of Leadership.

To download this episode of Audio Ur, click here.

by Url Scaramanga & Andy Rowell

The debate continues. For the last two weeks, opinions have been fast and furious on the definition and validity of "missional" churches. It all began with Dan Kimball's post about his missional misgivings. He observed that many of the larger, attractional churches being criticized by pro-missional people were actually doing a pretty good job of reaching non-Christians.

While there may be attractional megachurches reaching into our post-Christian culture, others contend that the effectiveness of these churches, as a whole, is in decline. Alan Hirsch and David Fitch both responded by arguing that North America is sliding toward uber-secularism. In such an environment attractional churches will lose traction, and more indigenous missional expressions of church are advantageous.

Scot McKnight, scholar/theologian/blogger/and Urthling, jumped into the debate to ask for data - hard research to back up Hirsch's claim that the attractional model "has appeal to a shrinking segment of the population."

Andy Rowell has hit the books to chime in with some research. Here's what he's found:

There are not stats about "attractional" or "missional" churches but there are some statistics about the number of people "converting" through megachurches. First, note that only 21.5 percent of Americans do not claim a Christian affiliation, according to the 2004 GSS; (20.8 according to the 2005 Baylor Religion Survey). Far less would claim that they had never before attended a church. Therefore, it is difficult to find true "new converts." Most are "switchers."
See American Piety 2005

Dan,

As someone who comes out clearly for the missional reframing of church, I do share some concerns about reproduction (fruitfulness). Anyone concerned with Jesus' commission should be.

The comments so far are excellent and so I will just add a few more.

* I certainly don't believe that attractional is not working. What I have said is that it has appeal to a shrinking segment of the population, and that persistence with a church growth style, attractionalism, is in the long run a counsel of despair. Are you suggesting that we simply stay with what we have got? Surely not bro?

* If we persist with our standard measurements for mission, we will miss the point. The issue is what idea of church is more faithful to the Scriptures. Genuine fruitfulness, surely, cannot simply be measured by numbers but by 'making disciples.' How does one measure that? By all accounts, current churches are made up largely of admirers of Jesus but few genuine disciples/followers - this is not a biblical idea of fruitfulness!

* Besides, the early church would not measure up to the current metrics!! If Rodney Stark is right, there were only 25,000 believers by year 100AD. Not exactly mind boggling church growth. Some attractional churches are larger.

* If we stick with the prevailing measures, we will miss the level of incarnational engagement with quantitative measures alone. How do we measure that? Incarnation takes time and loving presence (witness) among a people. Working with post-Christian folks ain't easy because we have lost our credibility and have to work darn hard to regain it. I think there is much work to do here.

The only other thing I will say is that we as believers, live by a vision of what can be...we cannot allow ourselves to be constrained by pragmatics alone. Vision precludes that and is driven by holy discontent to see a greater manifestation of the Kingdom.

With love and respect.
AH

Read Dan Kimball's original post here.

Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, has offered his two cents on the missional v. attractional conversation. You can find his comments on David Fitch's blog. I've also included a few videos in which Keller discusses his understanding of "missional" in more detail.

Tim Keller on Missional vs. Seeker Churches:

Tim Keller on being Missional vs. Evangelistic:

Everyone's debating what exactly being "missional" means. There are a number of really interesting articles floating around the web on the subject, and Alan Hirsch includes his definition in the latest issue of Leadership. Here's Michael Frost (co-author of The Shaping of Things to Come and ReJesus with Alan Hirsch) with his definition:

There are no studies that compare "seeker sensitive" megachurches to small "missional" churches, but I think Dan Kimball is right to question the self-described "missional" advocate who declares that "younger people in the city will not be drawn to larger, attractional churches dominated by preaching and music."

The evidence shows that more and more people are attending large churches. Duke sociologist Mark Chaves writes, "In every denomination on which we have data, people are increasingly concentrated in the very largest churches, and this is true for small and large denominations, for conservative and liberal denominations, for growing and declining denominations. This trend began rather abruptly in the 1970s, with no sign of tapering off."

Furthermore, the 1,250 megachurches in the US in 2007 show remarkable strength across a range of indicators, according to Hartford Seminary sociologist Scott Thumma and Dave Travis's Beyond Megachurch Myths. Thumma and Travis take seriously the stereotypes of megachurches as impersonal, selfish, shallow, homogenous, individualistic and dying but they do not find the accusations match the data.

Even Baylor sociologist Rodney Stark's What Americans Really Believe lauds the strengths of megachurches as compared to small churches. "Those who belong to megachurches display as high a level of personal commitment as do those who attend small congregations" (p.48). This is significant because some of Stark's earlier work claimed growth dilutes commitment. In 2000, he declared, "Congregational size is inversely related to the average level of member commitment . . . In all instances, rates of participation decline with congregational size, and the sharpest declines occur when congregations exceed 50 members."

I hope I am wrong. For the past few years, I have been observing, listening, and asking questions about the missional movement. I have a suspicion that the missional model has not yet proven itself beyond the level of theory. Again, I hope I am wrong.

We all agree with the theory of being a community of God that defines and organizes itself around the purpose of being an agent of God's mission in the world. But the missional conversation often goes a step further by dismissing the "attractional" model of church as ineffective. Some say that creating better programs, preaching, and worship services so people "come to us" isn't going to cut it anymore. But here's my dilemma - I see no evidence to verify this claim.

Not long ago I was on a panel with other church leaders in a large city. One missional advocate in the group stated that younger people in the city will not be drawn to larger, attractional churches dominated by preaching and music. What this leader failed to recognize, however, was that young people were coming to an architecturally cool megachurch in the city - in droves. Its worship services drew thousands with pop/rock music and solid preaching. The church estimates half the young people were not Christians before attending.

The Fall 2008 issue of Leadership contains a new feature: The Golden Canon book award. One of our finalists was Andy Crouch's Culture Making: Recovering our creative calling (IVP), the much-praised contribution to the ongoing conversation about the relationship between Christianity and culture. Here's a taste of Andy's prose, a tidbit to spark conversation.

The postures of the artist and the gardener have a lot in common. Both begin with contemplation, paying close attention to what is already there. The gardener looks carefully at the landscape; the existing plants, both flowers and weeds; the way the sun fall on the land. The artist regards her subject, her canvas, her paints with care to discern what she can make with them.

And then, after contemplation, the artist and the gardener both adopt a posture of purposeful work. They bring creativity and effort to their calling...They are creaturely creators, tending and shaping the world that original Creator made.

I wonder what we Christians are known for in the world outside our churches. Are we known as critics, consumers, copiers, condemners of culture? I'm afraid so. Why aren't we known as cultivators--people who tend and nourish what is best in human culture, who do the harsh and painstaking work to preserve the best of what people before us have done? Why aren't we known as creators--people who dare to think and do something that has never been thought or done before, something that makes the world more welcoming and thrilling and beautiful?

There is another life beyond this one: a realm where one's role on earth is a distant memory, where inhabitants have new bodies and can fly anywhere they like. It sounds a bit like heaven. But it's not. It's cyberspace.

Second Life is - well, for the uninitiated, it is hard to explain. Some call it a game, but in reality it is ultimate virtuality: a virtual, 3D, online world that is continually created and updated by its residents. Originally introduced to the public in 2003 by the company Linden Lab, Second Life now boasts over a million members from around the world.

These members, 50,000 or more of whom are online and "in-world" at any given time, create their own names and "avatars" (virtual identities with infinite combinations of customizable human and nonhuman "looks") that can own merchandise and property (bought with real U.S. dollars) and interact with any anyone else in-world via Second Life chat or instant messenger. Residents can walk, fly, or teleport to various destinations, including lush beaches, raucous dance clubs, trendy restaurants, seedy strip joints, bustling malls - and churches.

A few weeks ago Skye Jethani had the opportunity to speak with Alan Hirsch about the definition of "missional." Hirsch expressed concern that the word was being redefined and its true meaning lost. This week Skye sat down with Dan Kimball, pastor of Vintage Faith Church and a regular contributor to Leadership and Out of Ur. Kimball had a slightly different take on the word, and he believes a more traditional, attractional, model of church can also be missional. This podcast jumps right into the conversation between Jethani and Kimball.

To download this episode of Audio Ur, click here.

In his first post, David Fitch argued that all converts are not necessarily the same in terms of time and context, and that emerging/emergent, neo-monastic communities, and megachurches each minister in different contexts and, in some cases, with different purposes. In this post, David responds to a few of the many comments his post inspired.

From Leonard: If missional churches don't last for more than three years, then someone needs to rethink how they are planted, who is planting them, and exactly what their mission is. If churches are not making converts in this culture then we need to ask hard questions about boldness, methods, and not being distracted from the truth that brings grace.

DF: Leonard, I think we agree. I think it is the expectations placed upon missional planters from exterior sources that inhibit their success. We need to prepare missional church plant leaders to set entirely different expectations (including being bi-occupational, indeed self supporting). Your second point reverts back to my suggestion that converts take more time in post-Christendom.

From Mike h: 1) One of the beauties of the organic church is not how difficult it is, but how simple. I don't see how developing a complex megachurch is easier than starting an organic missional community. One difficulty may be getting the community large enough to support the "planter." Is that the goal?

2) The author states "The conversion of a post-Christendom "pagan," who has had little to no exposure to the language and story of Christ in Scripture, may require five years of relational immersion before a decision would even make sense." Would it take any less time for a megachurch to reach them than for a missional community?

The word "missional" is everywhere. But what does it mean? Is it another way of saying "seeker-focused" or "purpose-driven"? Not according to Alan Hirsch, author of The Forgotten Ways and The Shaping of Things to Come. In this edition of Audio Ur the insightful, yet soft-spoken, man from Down Under talks with Skye Jethani and Marshall Shelley about what it truly means to be a missional church.

To download this episode of Audio Ur, click here.

Last year at the Convergent Conference at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Mark Driscoll made the following remark:

And all the nonsense of emerging, and Emergent, and new monastic communities, and, you know, all of these various kinds of ridiculous conversations--I'll tell you as one on the inside, they don't have converts. The silly little myth, the naked emperor is this: they will tell you it's all about being in culture to reach lost people, and they're not.

I often hear this in places where I speak. It usually goes something like this: "We love missional theology, but does it work? How many converts have you had in your missional church?" Once again, the modernist drive to measure success raises its ugly head. Yet it does not offend me because these are important questions. I believe if we are not seeing people transformed by the gospel then "missional" in the end means very little.

So here is my response to Driscoll and others who question the evangelistic impact of missional churches:

The final session of Shift 2008 featured Dan Kimball, pastor of Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, California, and regular contributor to Leadership and Out of Ur. Kimball shared some insights from this book, They Like Jesus But Not the Church.

He began with the good news - our culture is very interested in Jesus. He pulled a number of items from a bag: a Jesus bobble head figure, Jesus band-aids, a Jesus eraser, and then showed images from a Madonna concert where the queen of pop hung on a cross with scripture verses above to highlight the 12 million kids dying from Aids in Africa. Kimball says there is no doubt that people in our culture are curious about Jesus - and many find him very attractive.

Now the bad news - popular perceptions of the church and Christians are very different. Kimball showed a video of college students in his town describing Christians as judgmental, homophobic, and hypocritical. He humorously recounted the response of a girl at the health club when she discovered Dan was a pastor. She said, "Pastors are creepy" but admitted she didn't know any personally.

The second day of Shift 2008 ended with the Thursday Night Experiences, aimed at having the conference extend beyond just what happens in main sessions and breakouts.

To start the night, everybody began together in the main auditorium for a Q&A session with the band Switchfoot. The conversation covered everything from Switchfoot's "strategic touring" of good surf destinations, to the motivation and inspiration behind their music. Lead singer Jon Foreman and fellow band members discussed their desire to avoid the narrow labeling of sacred and secular, and instead create "music for thinking people," helping listeners question and think about the larger issues of life.

After Q&A, lead singer Jon Foreman played a short acoustic set of Switchfoot songs, as well as material from his new solo effort, and a new song written for the soundtrack of the upcoming Prince Caspian film.

We've got our second podcast from the conference. Mark Miller is an author and pastor at Life Church in Wheaton, Illinois. He's speaking at a breakout sesssion at SHIFT on the topic of "Engaging Students in Global Justice." In it, he discusses his own journey of discovering global justice being much more than a political issue; it's a deeply spiritual one. He also discussed the excitement about a new generation of students who are passionate about following the way of Jesus by serving the needs of the world. Click below to hear the podcast.

Kara Powell spoke during the final session at Shift this afternoon. Powell is the director of the Center for Youth and Family Ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary. She began by bursting a pretty big bubble. Many churches have gotten involved in short term missions trips (STMs) that often involve a service project in a developing country. But are these trips making any real difference?

The research isn't encouraging. Powell shared about how those being served by North American church groups often feel demoralized by our service, and how many wished these churches would simply send the funds so they could do the work themselves. On the flip side, evidence suggests these trips are having a minimal impact on students as well. In an article she wrote called "If We Send Them, Will They Grow?" she concluded that students who go on STMs are not more likely to become long-term missionaries, and it doesn't impact their materialistic lifestyles.

Powell said a lot of our local and international efforts toward the poor are really a placebo effect. They make us feel better about ourselves, but they're not really impacting people the way we'd like to believe. What's the answer? She believes we need to shift from shallow service to "deep justice."

I'm sitting at Ebenezer's - a coffee shop in Washington DC. That may not seem particularly remarkable, but this trendy meeting place represents the convergence of three social pillars - government, business, and church.

Ebenezer's is owned and operated by National Community Church. Often referred to as "The Theater Church," NCC meets at theaters located at three Metro stops around Washington. But the coffee shop serves as the church's headquarters. The upper floors are occupied by NCC's staff offices, and the basement of Ebenezer's is a multi-media venue where worship services are conducted as well as concerts.

The connection between the coffee shop and the church represents a growing trend of churches advancing their mission through for-profit businesses. Ebenezer's has been very successful for National Community Church. The business is thriving; it was even ranked among the city's best coffee shops. (Right now the place is quite busy.)

Mark Batterson, pastor of NCC, said the experiment with Ebenezer's has been so positive that they're considering expanding to other locations and even franchising the operation to help other churches launch coffee shops to function as "3rd places" and missional outposts.

"I guarantee there isn't a homeless person in Portland who couldn't tell you the gospel verbatim. They've had to listen to it three times a day to get a sandwich. They've heard about Christ, but they haven't seen Christ. Who will sit next to them while they panhandle, who will enter their world? I've had friends doing that for 15 years. That is seeing the gospel."

-Rick McKinley serves as pastor of the Imago Dei Community in Portland, Oregon. Taken from "Dei Laborers" in the Fall 2007 issue of Leadership journal. To see the quote IN context, you'll need to see the print version of Leadership. To subscribe, click on the cover of Leadership on this page.

David Fitch is back with part 2 of his critique of the emerging response to evangelicalism. In part 1 he noted the "we're in, you're out" mentality in much of the evangelical church, and the anemic emerging reaction to this black and white theology. Here, Fitch takes on our over emphasis of having a "personal relationship" with Christ while ignoring the social component of the gospel.

A second weakness I see emerging churches responding to is the individualizing tendencies of evangelical ways of being Christ's church. Our churches are organized to meet the spiritual needs of individuals, and our salvation is incredibly individualistic. Calling Jesus "a personal Savior" sounds like Jesus is in the same category as my personal barber, personal trainer, or personal dental hygenist (BTW, I don't have a personal trainer). The danger is making salvation all about me.

I know it didn't start out this way in evangelicalism, but it was latent in the structure of our soteriology. And so we have almost romanticized our relationship with God; created a narcissistic experience of it. And churches become all about preserving, maintaining, and nurturing this experience in their parishioners.

But the gospel is not about getting something, it is about participating in something - God's work of reconciling the whole world to Himself. And yes, we do have a relationship with God which becomes personal but it is inseparable from His mission.

Friend of Ur, David Fitch, is back with a few thoughts about the deficiencies in evangelicalism and the emerging movement’s reaction. But he’s not exactly enamored with the emerging church solution either. Fitch is a pastor at Life on the Vine Christian Community in Long Grove, Illinois, and a professor at Northern Seminary.

Evangelicals of all types are taking notice of the emerging church/missional church and its variations. Its rise to prominence is owed in part to the rejection of the evangelical church by many sons and daughters of Boomer evangelicals. At a recent Up-Rooted gathering, we talked about the real or perceived shortcomings in evangelicalism the emerging church is responding to, and the strengths and weaknesses of that response. Scot McKnight and Wayne Johnson were a part of that discussion, but here is part of my response to the question.

I believe one weakness in evangelicalism that the emerging church is responding to is evangelicalism's excessively rationalist approach to truth and salvation that birthed a stubborn "we're in/you're out" mentality. There has been an impulse in evangelical fundamentalism towards (a) an intolerant judgmental exclusivism, (b) an arrogant, even violent, certainty about what we do know, and (c) a hyper-cognitive gospel that takes the mystery out of everything.

In part one of our interview with Dan Kimball he talked about the intersection of the emerging church with missional theology. Simply changing the church's worship style isn't enough, he says. Becoming truly missional requires "an ecclesiological change." In part two, Kimball address the role aging congregations can play in helping to reach the younger generation. And, once again, the answer is more about having a missional mindset rather than a cutting edge worship style.

You've been at this conference for a couple of days now. Are you sensing that leaders are asking the deeper philosophical questions? What kind of questions are you hearing? It's been refreshing to see the interest in the future of the church by mostly middle aged and older pastors. They are really concerned about younger people. It's refreshing and very sincere. I think this is happening because churches recognize younger people are disappearing. A woman talked to me just this morning about her daughter disconnecting from the church. She was very emotional. She wanted to know what her church could possibly do. So the refreshing part is seeing real passion from leaders saying we must do something. And the sad part is I suspect existing churches won't be willing or able to make the necessary changes. I really, really hope they can. But it will take a sense of humility and passion.

And what do you say to people when they are looking to you for the answer?
This sounds clich?, but there isn't a single answer. So much depends on the church.

Dan Kimball is a recognized authority on the emerging church. After all, he did write the book on the subject. At a recent conference we sat down to talk with Kimball about the future he sees for the emerging church, and how it relates to the growing popularity of all things "missional."

There has been a lot of talk at this conference about the emerging church. Looking into your crystal ball, where do you see this going? Do you think this conversation has legs, or will it morph into something else?
It is totally hard to say. The term "emerging church" now means so many different things depending on who you are asking. So it all depends on what stream of the emerging church we are talking about. For me, the term means churches that are being missional in our emerging culture. That part of the conversation certainly seems to be gaining steam and interest from churches of all types. So I really hope the missional outward thinking is something that grows stronger and lasts. But what that looks like may be constantly changing as culture changes. But I hope we keep gaining a passion for being sent by Jesus into the world. I hope that stream of the emerging church grows and lasts.

I've heard that the church is like a family. We've all been told the church is like a business. Now Leadership contributor, Chad Hall, explains that a missional church is like an ice cream truck. He may be on to something, but there will still be arguments about what kind of music to play.

My kids (6, 3, and 2 years old) LOVE the ice cream truck, and so do I. What's not to love? There we are, outside on a hot day playing in the yard or riding a bike or washing the car and out of nowhere we hear the faint melody of the ice cream truck. Like an unexpected friend dropping by, the ice cream truck rounds the corner and delivers delicious desserts in the middle of an otherwise humdrum day. It's a beautiful thing.

The ice cream truck reminds me of what it means to be a missional disciple. The ice cream truck driver has a wonderful gift he wants to bestow (okay, he's selling it ? every metaphor has its flaws, so let's ignore the mismatches, okay?). The driver also seeks out the very kinds of people who are ready and in want of the gifts he has. The driver does not sit in the parking lot of the old folks' home and wait for my family to drop what we are doing and come to him and get our cool treats. No, he comes to us. And we delight in what he brings.
Missional disciples also have a wonderful gift (Jesus), best offered to those who are in want.

We caught up with Dan Kimball, pastor of Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, California, and author of They Like Jesus but Not the Church (Zondervan, 2007), at a conference where he was talking to other leaders about consumerism and the church. Kimball says the size of a church isn't what makes it consumer driven, but how the leaders define success.

You've been talking to other pastors about consumerism in the church and the impact it's had on our theology. How do you begin to recognize that impact?
You hear a lot of the complaints and valid criticism about the church being "a provider of religious goods and services," as Darrell Guder says in the Missional Church. I started thinking about my own church and asking could the leadership be the ones who are really guilty of this? How did that happen?

I began to think about our meeting spaces. The early church met in homes where it is easier to participate, people can contribute, can be more vocal, make a meal, whatever. And then worship moved to the Roman basilicas and the format changed. People became more passive, but they still walked around and engaged. After the Reformation pews were brought in and people began to understand church different because they become passive. Expectations of a pastor and a leader become different. People expected us to do things for them.

So how has that translated into the church today?
We've been taught that this is how church goes. This is what you're supposed to do. But now we're making it better and bigger - better seating, better lighting, better sermons, better parking, better children's ministry, better youth ministry. We're simply fueling the whole thing.

One Sunday Pastor Bob Roberts asked everyone in the congregation at NorthWood Church in Keller, Texas, to invert the collar of the person in front of them, find the label, and call out the nation where the shirt was made. China, India, Vietnam, Mexico, Chile, Kenya, Dominican Republic, and Spain were all mentioned before someone finally said "USA."

The shirts on their backs came from all over the world. It was Bob's way of reinforcing his recurring theme of glocalization, synonymous with Thomas Friedman's "the earth is flat." It describes today's seamless integration between the local and global, a comprehensive connectedness produced by travel, business, and communications.

"Glocal is as important a term to the 21st century as postmodern and seeker were to the 20th century," says Roberts, who has written two books, Transformation: How Glocal Churches Transform Lives and the World (Zondervan, 2006) and Glocalization: How Followers of Jesus Engage a Flat World (Zondervan, 2007).

He has applied the concept in quiet but effective ways at NorthWood, a church of 2,000 in suburban Fort Worth that has helped plant some 89 other churches in the last 15 years. The focus of NorthWood and all the daughter churches is not gathering people inside the sanctuary; it's clearly missional.

"We aren't about weekends," Bob says. "We aren't just trying to get people into church. It's 'kingdom in, kingdom out.'"

David Swanson, associate pastor of Parkview Community Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, is back with his second report from Park City, Utah. In this post he questions our assumptions about church and culture, and asks leaders to consider a new posture toward films.

It's day 4 of the Windrider Film Forum at the Sundance Film Festival and so far I've seen 4 dramatic features, 4 documentaries, and a set of short experimental music videos. I find this funny since I don't generally watch this many films in a year! Some of the films we've seen have been purchased by production companies and will soon be coming to a theatre near you. Others will be seen by very few people after this festival ends in a few days.

Our days at the Windrider Film Forum begin each morning with a teaching session at Mountain Vineyard Christian Fellowship facilitated by Fuller professor, Craig Detweiler. Craig has asked us to view each film with an open mind, expecting to catch glimpses of the Kingdom of God. This quote from C.S. Lewis has served as one of our starting points:

We sit down before the picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things with it. The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. There is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.

The upcoming winter issue of Leadership will wrestle with the meaning of a very popular word - missional. Tim Conder, pastor of Emmaus Way in Durham, North Carolina, says, "So many fellowships that once boldly self-identified as cell churches, meta-churches, house churches, seeker-style, or purpose-driven now claim to be missional. It's such a buzzword that it's fair to ask, ?Is there really any such thing as a missional church?' Tim's full article on the subject is featured in Leadership's theme section, "Going Missional." Here is a preview.

The game show To Tell the Truth pitted three guests (two imposters plus the day's mystery guest who had some unusual occupation or accomplishment) against a panel of celebrities. The panelists asked questions of the guests, trying to identify which one actually had that occupation or accomplishment. The show ended dramatically when the truth was revealed: "Will the real ____________ stand up!"

Today, it would be almost impossible for "the real missional church" to stand up. Yes, there are plenty of imposters, but there's no one true example to play the day's mystery guest. And any panel of celebrities probably wouldn't accept the outcome.
So many fellowships that once boldly self-identified as cell churches, meta-churches, house churches, seeker-style, or purpose-driven now claim to be missional. It's such a buzzword that it's fair to ask, "Is there really any such thing as a missional church?" Although some use the term glibly, I believe the answer is "yes."

I took a bit of morning time to watch President Ford's funeral service as it was televised from the National Cathedral. There was music (Christian hymns which have buoyed the heart for many generations) sung and played with a beauty, a grandeur, and an artistic excellence that made the soul soar. There were scriptures-so appropriately selected-read with great dignity. There were eulogies (marked with affection, historical reminiscence and humor) that reminded one that Gerald Ford was a very good man. Words like decent, nice, and principled were used more than once to describe his character. All in all, it was a cleansing experience to watch that funeral.

Then later in the day, my wife, Gail, called me down from my study to watch a few minutes of Oprah Winfrey who has brought into being a school in South Africa which will train hundreds of girls who come from the deepest poverty, from abuse and molestation and AIDS-dominated circumstances. The gleaming smiles on the girls' faces, their alertness in responding to questions, and their simple girlish beauty was stirring, arousing tears. All in all it was an inspirational experience to see what Ms Winfrey has accomplished through her compassion and determination to help others avoid the kind of background out of which she came.

Then in the evening on the national news came the report that Pat Robertson was informing our nation of a word he has received from God to wit that several million Americans (who knows where or how) would perish in some unspeakable disaster in 2007.

Eight centuries ago St. Francis of Assisi famously told his followers to "Preach the gospel always. And use words if necessary." Like Francis, Rick Richardson's new book Reimagining Evangelism: Inviting Friends on a Spiritual Journey (Intervarsity, 2006) challenges our popular assumptions about outreach. To jumpstart our discussion of Richardson's ideas we've invited David Robinson, pastor of Harvest Fellowship Church in Manhattan, Kansas, to review his book.

Rick Richardson opens his book, Reimagining Evangelism, with this statement?"Over the years, evangelism has gotten a bad name. It is sales, manipulation, TV preachers, big hair, pushing people to convert and going door to door. It elicits feelings similar to the intrusive practice of telemarketing." People are repelled by clich? images of evangelism and the church's tendency to reduce the dynamic work of God into an easy to read, streamlined, impersonal message. After our recent barrage of political ads, it's frightening to consider their similarities with certain methods of evangelism.

Reimagining proposes a fundamental shift in our current image of evangelism. If we are to engage people in this consumer culture with the gospel message, Richardson believes we first need to rid ourselves of this unhealthy image of evangelism as "closing the deal" on some impersonal spiritual sales call. He proposes the image of a travel guide who encourages those around them to recognize what is already going on and invite them to take part in God's much bigger story.

A few years ago churches that were serious about their work were "purpose-driven." Today those same churches might call themselves "missional." The upcoming winter issue of Leadership will ask what exactly it means to be missional. David Fitch is a regular contributor to Out of Ur, pastor of Life on the Vine, a missional community in Long Grove, Illinois, and the author of The Great Giveaway. In this post Fitch asks if owning a building is contrary to missional church values.

Is buying a building always contra being missional? Upon first instinct, the answer would be yes. Certainly missional gatherings would hesitate to invest in a traditional church building. But are there times when inhabiting a building might itself be incarnational according to missional logic?

One positive thing about the end of modernity is that truth cannot be held captive by the rational, the strictly representational, or the logocentric. It must be embodied. So we who live in these times naturally resist any attempts to strip truth of its embodiment. Missional living, we say, must be incarnational.

But if truth is to be embodied, if we are not going to be limited to only words, then we must embody ourselves as a physical presence in the community. This might include inhabiting a building.

Last March, the conversation on Ur heated up when Greg Boyd posted excerpts from his book The Myth of a Christian Nation (Zondervan, 2006). Boyd believes the mission of the gospel is jeopardized when we confuse God's mission with our nation's mission. Wading into the turbulent political waters this time is Wes Haddaway, pastor of evangelism at Harmony Bible Church in Danville, Iowa. Haddaway sees an urgent need to create Christian communities that transcend the Blue State/Red State divide.

Two years ago our church was growing at the rate of about a hundred people per year and we were all very excited about what God was doing. As the pastor responsible for evangelism and assimilation, I had a unique perspective. One night after visiting a family that was new to our church, it occurred to me that no matter what walk of life a person came from to our church, there was one thing that I could be sure of; they had all watched the O'Reilly Factor on Fox News within the last week. They all voted for the same candidates and had conservative social views.

This bothered me because while I was very excited about what God was doing at our church, it was puzzling to me as to why God would do this. "Why would God build the church of people who all thought the same?" The fact is that there are a lot of people in our community that will never come to our church, and it isn't because of Jesus - it's because of us. Somehow we've mixed politics, ideology, and our vision for our country, with who we are as Christians. This is a barrier that causes many people who are not Christians to not even want to be around us.

In recent posts we have debated the importance of "image" in advancing the ministry of the Gospel. Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz and other books seeking to build a bridge between Christianity and those raised in a post-Christian context, was interviewed by Leadership last year. Miller is unimpressed by attempts to spin the faith as "cool" and how our culture has turned love into a commodity.

How do you react to ministries that try to present Christianity as being cool and hip?

Miller: There are many problems with trying to market the gospel of Jesus, not the least of which is that, in itself, it is not a cool or fashionable idea. It isn't supposed to be. It is supposed to be revolutionary. It's for people who are tired of trying to be cool, tired of trying to get the world to redeem them.

I attended the Dove Awards and was brokenhearted. I saw all these beautiful Christians, wonderful people, with this wonderful, revolutionary message of Jesus, who, instead of saying, "Look, fashion doesn't matter, hip doesn't matter," were saying "World, please accept us, we can be just as hip as you, just as fashionable, only in a religious way."

A surge of new books have hit store shelves about the challenges facing followers of Christ who live in the suburbs. Many voices are beginning to say that the lifestyle of the affluent suburbanite, while heralded for 50 years as the fulfillment of the American dream, may actually be detrimental to the Christian life and mission. In this post David Fitch, a pastor and professor in suburban Chicago, and a regular contributor to Out of Ur, addresses the difficulty of practicing the biblical discipline of hospitality in the isolation of the 'burbs.

My church is very much in the suburbs. Specifically, the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Strangely as these suburbs have become more diverse (conspicuously more Hispanic, Asian, as well as other ethnicities) they have become more starkly spatialized. Each family unit is isolated in its own house with fenced in yard and automatically-opening garage that can be driven into permitting all contact with the outside world to be avoided.

David Matzko McCarthy in his wonderful book, Sex and Love in the Home, describes the myth of this suburbia:

The dream of the suburbs is a self-sufficient home, inhabited by affable kin and grace with plenty of yard to provide a buffer between neighbors. The aim of suburban life is to choose a home and neighborhood where we can be happy, where people work hard and respect the ways of others, and where families get along on their own and come together for recreation and leisure?.The great pleasure of home ownership is freedom and autonomy.

Jesus' image can now be found on every imaginable commodity from t-shirts to poker chips. But has our material culture made Jesus' invitation to "new life" itself into a consumable product? Jonathan Yarboro, a church planter from Boone, North Carolina, explores the influence of consumerism on our understanding of the gospel and conversion.

I was standing before 200 people at church when I said it: "Salvation is not a walk down the aisle, a prayer, and wham bam, thank you ma'am, you're done." Jaws dropped; some faces turned white; some turned red. I was clueless, so I just kept teaching. It turns out that the phrase, "wham bam, thank you ma'am," meant something different to me than it did to the rest of the world. Afterward some of my listeners enlightened me. I was embarrassed. I didn't intend to equate one's conversion experience to some sort of sexual encounter in the red light district.

Over the last few years, I have pondered the statement, and despite the fact that I originally meant nothing so profound, I believe the statement to be true - we are tempted to turn conversion into something of an act of prostitution. We are the consumers, and we might as well say it - we've turned Jesus' invitation into a seductive, greasy, trick-turning lifestyle. Doesn't that make your blood boil?

Islam has its five pillars. Buddhism has its eight-fold path. Evangelicalism has its four spiritual laws. And now the Emerging Church has its seven layers of conversation.

Last month I was part of a small gathering of church leaders that hosted an evening with Brian McLaren. And the conversation turned as hot as the chutney. A number of participants were eager to discuss the criticisms that have been levied against the emerging church in recent months. The hijacking of the emergent movement by those merely interested in new worship trends rather than more substantive issues aggravated others. Everyone was looking to McLaren to chime in.

Always more likely to defuse than to detonate, McLaren entered the spicy conversation casually while slouched into the sofa with beverage in hand. He cautioned us against judging where others were in the "emergent conversation." Leaning forward, he outlined what he saw as the seven layers of the emergent conversation. "We all enter at a different layer," he said, "but everyone should be welcomed into the conversation no matter where they may be."

Based on McLaren's description, I've outlined the seven layers below.