(**I was recently asked to speak at my church network’s national retreat, and this is the paper I presented. It will be presented here in a few posts.)
THE CURRENT SITUATION
The Evangelical church is drowning in a post-Christian, politically driven, and post-covid world. Unless you live under a rock, you are aware of this deep crisis. And as one surveys the American landscape, they may not find much hope. However, there is a silver lining; namely, the church is aware of the crisis. Hendrik Kramer states, “Strictly speaking, one ought to say that the church is always in a state of crisis and that its greatest shortcoming is that it is only occasionally aware of it.”1 The church, especially the leadership within the church, is acutely aware of the trouble it is in. However, being aware of and knowing what to do in a crisis are very different things.
The church has dealt with the crisis in at least three broad ways. Some have bunkered down and believe that what has worked in the past will work today. The church, therefore, should not change its methods or message. The problem with the church, according to this first view, is that the church has adapted too much to the world. Secondly, some have sought to go with the attractional model. This second approach attempts to attract outsiders to the church building through various means to help make the church palatable for people. They contend that people find the church boring and outdated, and the answer is to make church relevant once again. The final way is the missional model. Rather than do what has always been done (Bunker Down), and rather than attract people to a worship gathering (Attractional), this approach aims to push people to be the church outside the walls of the church building. The church should be the church in their neighborhoods, cities, and places of marginalization.
Even though how a church structures itself is crucial because it inherently teaches the people what the church is, and even though I believe the missional model is the most effective way (definitely not the only way) to be the church, the way out of the current crisis will not be found in methodological structures. Therefore, the answer will not be found in returning to old forms of doing church or instituting new ones. Evangelicalism is no stranger to new methodological forms to save the church. It progresses through movements like Henry VIII did wives. It has gone from the church growth movement and all of its iterations started by Donald McGavran in the 1970s and 80s to the “Purpose-driven” church led by Rick Warren in the 1990s, to the Emerging/Emergent church leading into the new millennium, and to the present day missional church with all of its fractures.2 At the risk of oversimplification, each of these movements primarily concerned themselves with methodological structures. They became cool and fadish, and churches would seek to ‘cash in’ by joining in on the reindeer games. Moreover, the cultural winds of the times often informed these methods, and the present form of the missional movement may not be much different. For most missional churches, the old ways of being and doing the church no longer work, so we needed a fresh expression or, better yet, a return to the forgotten ‘ways.’ However, we do not need a return to the forgotten ways as much as we need a return to the forgotten theology.
The root of the crisis is theological; therefore, theology, specifically missional theology, must inform how we navigate through the storm. Darrell Guder said as much in 1998, and it is more than true now than then. He states,
“The answer to the crisis of the North American church will not be found at the level of method and problem solving. We share the conviction of a growing consensus of Christians in North America that the problem is much more deeply rooted. It has to do with who we are and what we are for. The real issues in the current crisis of the Christian church are spiritual and theological.”3
Because the church is theologically anemic, it cannot adequately respond to the challenges we face today in our culture. Therefore, the cultural winds of the day take the church captive, and we always seek something new that will ‘work.’
Within the missional movement, the theology that sprung it has either been pushed aside by those within it or never learned by those upon entering. We need a return to this forgotten missional theology. Yet, in my estimation, the present form of the missional church, first and foremost, concerns itself with missional praxis over against a missional theology. It has abandoned its theological foundations for neat charts and hip structures. How can I say that? First, the most often asked questions by present and future leaders who desire to become a missional church center on methodology. Church leaders regularly ask me about how to form missional communities. They want to know how to make their church become ‘missional.’ I do not know about you, but I have never been asked, “What theological foundations do I need to teach my church so they can become God’s missional people?” Questions of method are certainly not wrong, but everyone wants to know the ‘how,’ not the ‘why,’ and without the ‘why,’ the missional church lacks depth and sustainability.
Second, a survey of popular missional literature deals primarily with orthopraxy. Many of us are aware of missional practitioners who have published great resources for the church. This vast literature addresses important issues such as contemporary social theories, the demise of the post-Christian West and its impact on the church, and exploratory methods to make your church “better,” to name a few. They (1) inform us how to become a church for the neighborhood, (2) demonstrate how we must go to the people because they are no longer coming to the church, or (3) implement an APEST structure in the church, whether at the level of leadership or the entire body. Although these books are methodologically helpful, my experience informs me that these books often lack a robust missional theology. Many excel at deconstructing the American church, which appeals to the disgruntled church audience. However, deconstruction is the easy part; reconstruction is the problematic part. And their reconstruction is a whole other story that, ironically, fails to incorporate the actual story (more on this later). Without grounding the missional church in deep theological structures, we are producing churches that, when the storms come, and they will, will be swept away into a new methodological fad. (And we are already seeing this as the micro church and contemplative church models are becoming more popular.) All of this shows, to me at least, that the missional church grew more out of the changing cultural environment of the post-Christendom Western world rather than a deep theological conviction.
This is unfortunate because, for over a century, missional theology has produced a rich, robust history of theological interpretation. Its genesis occurred in continental Europe in the 1930s, specifically in Germany, and began to grow due to a conference in Willingen, Germany, in 1952 (Karl Hartenstein). From there, it started to blossom in England (Lesslie Newbigin) and South Africa (David Bosch) until it finally began to gain traction in the States in the late 1990s (Darrell L. Guder). Contemporary missional theologians have built on this foundation, such as George Hunsberger, the UK Wright brothers (Christopher and N.T.), John Flett, Michael Goheen, Dean Flemming, and Michael Gorman, to name a few. Missional church leaders need to become more aware of the history and writings of individuals who have laid a foundation for the Missio Dei. They need to learn, embody, and further develop it, for it was out of these thinkers that the missional church was birthed. The present missional church has slowly abandoned the theological foundations for practical missional living; missional orthodoxy has been traded for missional orthopraxy. The early leaders of the missional movement within the USA were aware of the historical situations that led to the Missio Dei theology, yet this is less and less the case. Consequently, the missional church is beginning to fade into a fad. For the missional church to continue to thrive, its rich theological underpinnings, both past and future, must be recovered and discovered.
**The next post will address the first of two theological axioms to which the missional church must return, namely God is a missionary God.
Hendrik Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World. (London: Edinburgh House Press, 1947).
For a more detailed overview of the historical movements see: https://www.churchgrowthnetwork.com/freebies2/2015/3/13/church-movements-of-the-last-fifty-years-in-the-usa.
Darrell L. Guder, Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 3.
Excellent read!