The Shaping of Things to Come

It is easy to forget how central the church was to Western culture from the time of Constantine until recently. As Rodney Stark has pointed out in The Rise of Christianity, the church grew from a few hundred to several million in the first three centuries after Christ by growing at roughly 40 percent per decade. Therefore, when Constantine declared Christianity to be the state religion of the Roman Empire in 325 A.D., he was recognizing a fait accompli more than he was changing the status quo. With the collapse of the Roman Empire, the church became the "custodian" of western culture for a thousand years. The "Holy Roman Empire," despite Voltaire's gibe that it was neither Roman, nor holy, nor an empire, was a euphemism for the domination of Europe by the church. European history and church history overlap significantly for the period from 325 A.D. to at least the 18th century.

On the other hand, many of the founding fathers of the United States were committed Christians, and America has been a part of Christendom until very recently. Since the authors are working in Australia, which is arguably one of the most secularized countries in the world, they are in a position to see the demise of Christendom before those living in less secularized countries. Living in France for 16 years had the same effect on me, and I don't think that many would argue with the proposition that France is a clear example of a post-Christendom culture. America is headed in the same direction, in my view, and the only difference is that there are still large numbers of evangelical Christians in America. Nevertheless, I would hazard a guess that 50 percent of Americans are as secularized as 90 percent of Frenchmen. In any event, Frost and Hirsch have an important message for the church in America, because they have seen where we are heading "up close and personal."

The authors argue, therefore, that what is needed is a missional church, as opposed to a "parish" church which assumes that "If you build it, they will come." By "missional," they mean a church that is incarnational, messianic, and apostolic. These are three terms that are open to misinterpretation, and the bulk of the book is devoted to expounding on these three themes. In a nutshell:

"The missional church is incarnational, not attractional, in its ecclesiology. By incarnational, we mean it does not create sanctified spaces into which unbelievers must come to encounter the gospel. Rather the missional church disassembles itself and seeps into the cracks and crevices of a society in order to be Christ to those who don't yet know Him."

"The missional church is messianic, not dualistic in its spirituality. That is, it adopts the worldview of Jesus the Messiah, rather than that of the Greco-Roman empire. Instead of seeing the world as divided between the sacred (religious) and profane (irreligious), like Christ it sees the world and God's place in it as more holistic and integrated."

"The missional church adopts an apostolic rather than a hierarchical, mode of leadership. By apostolic, we mean a mode of leadership that recognizes the fivefold model detailed by Paul in Ephesians 4. It abandons the triangular hierarchies of the traditional church and embraces a Biblical, flat-leadership community that unleashes the gifts of evangelism, apostleship, and prophecy, as well as the currently popular pastoral and teaching gifts."

In his book Ancient/Future Evangelism, Robert Webber has made a similar case that Christendom is dead or dying and that we should look to the last century before Christendom for inspiration. This need not be dramatic, however, since most historians agree that the "golden age" of church history was the first three centuries of the church, before Christendom was established. Frost and Hirsch believe that the best hope for the church is to establish new missional churches, similar to the small, non-establishment churches of the first three centuries. They write:

"As much as we wish to address existing churches, it is really for such emerging missional communities and their leadership that we've written this book. It is our attempt to give further missiological legitimacy and a working vocabulary to the emerging church. We hope to base discipleship and life in our postmodern world around a vital Christology and to reframe our ecclesiology entirely on missional grounds. And while the reader will find some practical approaches to mission in this book, what we offer here is not so much a how-to but more of a why-to book written as something of a guidebook for the emerging missional church. . . . It is very hard to change the DNA of a church once it has a rhythm and life of its own. A template quickly develops. The shift from the attractional to the incarnational mode is enormous, we understand. And we don't commend it lightly. But as we've pointed out, the death of Christendom and emergence of postmodernism and the new global culture have highlighted the bankruptcy of the existing church and its inability to have a positive effect on Western society."

Since the three characteristics of the missional church recommended by the authors are somewhat controversial and subject to a wide range of interpretation, the book is largely devoted to exploring these three concepts.

1. Incarnational

This characteristic of the missional church is based on the assumption that we can no longer expect not-yet-Christians to come to us; we are going to have to go to them. Frost and Hirsch write:

"We propose that the web of relationships, friendships, and acquaintances that Christians normally have makes up the net into which not-yet-Christians will swim. We believe the missional-incarnational church will spend more time on building friendships than it will on developing religious programs."

Their argument is not only pragmatic, however. They conclude that we should follow the example of Jesus Christ, who incarnated God: "But the greatest argument for the case of incarnational mission in the end is the undeniable fact that it was the missional mode in which God Himself engaged the world; it should be no less ours!"

The authors use the analogy of wells and fences to illustrate bounded-set versus centered-set thinking. In the Australian Outback, it is impractical to build fences around ranches because the distances are so vast. Since water is rare, however, it isn't necessary to build fences. Instead, ranchers dig wells which provide water, a precious commodity in the desert or semi-desert. The sheep and cattle are therefore "contained" by their attraction to the center rather than by clearly established boundaries. In the same way, an incarnational approach to ministry is "centered-set," with Jesus and the Gospel being central, rather than bounded-set, which seeks to define "Who's in and who's out." They conclude:

"If we're living holy lives, praying for not-yet-Christian friends, socializing regularly and building friendships with them, and introducing them to our evangelist friends, we will be creating the fertile soil for God to do his exclusive work, giving people the gift of faith. This is the incarnational approach to outreach."

2. Messianic

The authors are not suggesting that the church should have a messiah complex! What they want to suggest is that the missional church should be Christ-centered, that is, focused on the Messiah. Christology should shape missiology which should shape ecclesiology. We tend to get it the other way around and thus tend to plant churches based on a blueprint drawn up in the context of Christendom. They write:

"Our Christology informs our missiology, which in turn determines our ecclesiology. If we get this the wrong way around and allow our notions of the church to qualify our sense of purpose and mission, we can never be disciples of Jesus, and we will never be an authentic missional church. Churches that have got this basic formula wrong will never really engage in mission and so lose touch with Jesus."

Frost and Hirsch argue that Jesus should be our primary model of mission and the Gospels our primary texts. That might sound obvious, but the church has often tended to focus on the historic debates about the nature of Christ, thus obscuring the primary historical portrait of Jesus as found in the Gospels.

3. Apostolic

The authors argue that the mission of the church is suffering from the suppression of three of the five functions mentioned in Ephesians 4:11-12, namely the apostle, prophet and evangelist, and an over-emphasis on two of the functions: pastor and teacher. These two functions were well-suited to Christendom, but the missional church in a post-Christendom world will require apostles, prophets and evangelists.

The authors use the word "apostle" in the sense of "missional," based on the Greek words apostello (to send) and apostolos (an envoy, one sent on a mission). They do not use it in the sense of any special apostolic authority stemming from the original 12 apostles. In fact, the New Testament uses the term to refer to other than the 12 original apostles and Paul in Acts 14:4, 14 (Barnabas), Romans 16:7 (Andronicus and Junias), and I Thessalonians 2:6 (Paul, Silas, and Timothy).

Because the term has been used in connection with the concept of apostolic succession, it has become controversial and many theologians have concluded that it should be applied only to the original apostles who saw the Lord after His resurrection. Frost and Hirsch obviously consider it still to be a valid term, but we need not digress into a quarrel over semantics to recognize that the more "mobile" functions mentioned in Ephesians 4:11-12 (apostle, prophet and evangelist) have suffered, and the "local" functions of pastor and teacher have prospered. They write:

"The church's current emphasis on pastors and teachers means that the cross-cultural missionary heart of the apostles and prophets is always quenched by the concerns for good teaching and pastoral care . . . We began this chapter by indicating that a missional-apostolic church will only flourish under ADEPT leadership. And again we have to emphasize that we believe it will take the mergence of the pioneering-missional type of leader to accomplish this. Sadly, the Western church simply does not have enough of the apostolic, prophetic and evangelistic leadership types at present to get the job of mission done."

This has enormous ramifications for missions in general and church planting in particular. The authors believe that planting churches that are "clones" of Christendom-era churches does not have a bright future. What is needed is to plant missional churches, which requires what they call apostolic leadership. "We believe apostolic leadership works more effectively when the church rediscovers itself as a missionary movement; when it organizes itself as a centered set; when it builds organic structures, gears for metabolic growth, and develops a missional leadership training system." They conclude:

"Also, we are questioning the common assumption that church planting would always aim at founding the new church on a large church model. There is increasing diversity in the way church is being conceived and done in the emerging missional churches, and there is a definite trend to smaller, more rhythmic, organic communities."

The authors believe that the future of the missional church rests in the hands of the next generation. They conclude:

"Much of our future lies in the precarious hands and hearts of a generation that finds it difficult to decide and commit. Our heartfelt prayer is that our youth will find the necessary courage to break with the enslaving power of the habitual and familiar. There are signs that this is indeed happening all over the world, and in this we rejoice."

This is a very thought-provoking book and worthy of being read by all who are interested in planting the Gospel and planting churches that are relevant to the culture in which they are planted. Specifically, Frost and Hirsch have done a monumental service for those who are seeking to advance the Gospel and plant churches in post-Christendom cultures. In effect, they have taken Robert Webber's thesis in Ancient/Future Evangelism that we are in the same situation as the third century (the last pre-Christendom century) and updated it for our post-Christendom context. This is because they are practitioners and well acquainted with the vagaries of a post-Christendom culture.

On the other hand, there are limits to their approach. In the African-American context, for example, the church is still perceived as central to society and the surrounding culture. Some of their novel approaches might therefore be considered irrelevant and unnecessary. Also, much of the world is still pre-Christian, and one can argue that the Gospel is advancing the most rapidly in areas where it has been for less than 200 years, such as Korea, China, and sub-Saharan Africa. As one missiologist noted, one is reminded of the book of Acts in Africa, because much of the church in Africa is in its first century!

Nevertheless, much mission work in the world is seeking to plant churches based on blueprints drawn up in Christendom, which is often counter-productive. I once heard a native of Central America suggest to a group of missionaries that it would be more helpful if "we" would plant the Gospel in Central America and let "them" plant the church there. The genius of this suggestion is that the natives of a country will instinctively know what will fit in the culture and what will not. Missionaries, on the other hand, are inevitably influenced by their own culture, and their "blueprint" for the church they are planting was probably drawn up in their home country. A truly missional church, on the other hand, would be based on a blueprint to which the people for whom the church was intended had made a significant contribution.

Frost, Michael & Hirsch, Alan; The Shaping of Things to Come; Hendrickson Publishers; Peabody, MA; 2003; ISBN 1-56563-659-7