Curtis A. Bronzan

The study and practice of evangelistic mission and ministry in postmodern, postcolonial, post-Christian contexts has resulted in a great deal of resources throughout the past decade, including both the emerging and missional church conversations. While such publications, conventions, podcasts, and blogs may be helpful in examining the macro effects of major shifts in Western cultural perceptions, they can also – rather ironically – undermine their purpose, since such resources seek to “point the way forward” while asserting the dissolution of a homogeneous culture and uncovering the reality of our deeply fragmented society.

When this occurs, it reveals that these well-meaning leaders have fallen into the trap of those who seek to provide a modernist, catchall solution to particular situations, many of whom are deeply informed by “the McDonaldization process which finds its home in Purpose-Driven and Seeker-Oriented churches.” (Gibbs, Eddie and Ryan K. Bolger. Postmodern Forms of the Church in Krabill, Sawatsky, and Van Engen, Evangelical, Ecumenical, and Anabaptist Missiologies in Conversation, 188)

Gibbs and Bolger go on to define this problem as linearity:

[t]he problem with linearity is that it is but one perspective on reality and has the potential for oppression by the one voice or one structure. In contrast, with nonlinearity, multiple messages are communicated through appropriate media. As more voices are heard in multiple ways, the probability for oppression decreases.

In the following posts, then, I will seek to outline postmodernity, pluralism, anthropology, Scripture, and ecclesiology in their relationship to missiology in contemporary culture. (Photo credit: Jonny Baker)

At the outset of the third and final portion of our study, we remind ourselves of Jesus’ proclamation in the first century Temple, which informs our ongoing thesis:

And as [Jesus] taught them, he said, “Is it not written:
‘My house will be called
a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’” (Mark 11.17)

Jesus’ statement, it should be noted, is a joint quotation of Isaiah 56.7, which features YHWH looking forward to the day when eunuchs and foreigners would worship in the temple; “these I will bring to my holy mountain, and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations” and Jeremiah 7.9-11, where YHWH questions, “‘Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe” – safe to do all these detestable things? Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the LORD.”

Central to Jesus’ proclamation – as well as his counter-cultural ministry – is the assertion that the Kingdom of God is now at hand, and as such, those previously excluded from the Temple system are now included in this new eschatological movement of God’s people. This is seen from the outset of Mark’s gospel, as seen in the first chapter of Mark: “After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!’” (Mark 1.15) Though it seems entirely obvious at this point in our study, we must remind ourselves that the heart of Jesus’ mission and ministry centered not upon a program or personality (even His own!), but rather the worship of YHWH.

This reality forms the primary church practice for renewing the Western church toward an increased missiological engagement. As we turn our attention toward renewing church practices, we should be careful to note that the difficulties of deconstructing church hierarchies looks different in each setting. As Van Gelder states, “it is hard to read the materials of the New Testament on their own terms and come to any clarity of how to proceed with matters of leadership practices and organizational structures. Power gets institutionalized within structure, and once structure is in place it is quite difficult to reform.” (The Ministry of the Missional Church, 124) Thus, this concluding post will, at best, hope to broadly sketch some possibilities for renewing the church in the West.

Though we have previously recognized the difficulty of relying upon the preached Word as the primary means of communication inherent in Quitting Church and Essential Church?, their authors rightly recognize it as a means by which congregations are able to commune with God. Duin states that pastors who rely upon “[t]ime alone, time spent with God, time spent in the Bible… [and] fight for this time manage not only to produce better sermons but also to keep their personality centered on God. When they slip off that center, that’s when the worst problems arise.” (Duin, Quitting Church, 133) Of course, this cannot simply be the focus of the pastor, but must become the focus of the entire congregation. And in light of our study, this must become the focus of the congregation’s communal gatherings, even reshaping the structure of our gatherings. In his study of nominality, Gibbs rightly recognizes the role of worship in the life of a community;

Religion becomes secondhand when a generation arises which refuses to hear from God or to whom God has become silent… The important issue is to recognize that as soon as the second generation becomes the dominant group in the life of the church, nominality becomes a growing problem, unless that generation has its own authentic experience of God.” (In Name Only, 44)

Instead of allowing worship services to remain in an attractional role, truly missional communities should begin seeing such gatherings as opportunities to incarnationally translate the gospel into a particular culture. Darrell Guder puts it this way:

What we have received from our traditions must be empowered by God’s Spirit so that it can be “passed on” (traducere – tradition), and we are to be the agents of that translation. This becomes very concrete: the language we use, the forms of communication we adopt the music and symbolism, the liturgies – all of this can and must be translated for the sake of the witness we are to be and to do. Our worship services are to be missionary events, invitations to follow Christ. (Guder, The Continuing Conversion of the Church, 46)

Gibbs agrees: “The worship of missional and emerging churches is God-focused, rather than seeking to enhance the celebrity status of the preacher or worship leaders – it is “the central act by which the community celebrates with joy and thanksgiving both God’s presence and God’s promised future.” The Gospel and Our Culture Network, “Empirical Indicators of a ‘Missional Church,’” The Gospel and Our Culture 10, no. 3, in Gibbs, ChurchMorph, 45-46)

Indeed, this realization is a necessary step toward renewing church practices, as worship is not a mere program, but is central to the heart of a faithful community, as proclaimed by Jesus in the first century temple. Without reforming the theology and structure of church gatherings, increased missiological engagement thus runs the risk of becoming another program to do for church, instead of a way to more fully be church. Craig Van Gelder writes,

Interestingly, the missional church conversation has introduced a new dimension into the discussion of the identity of the church. At the center of this conversation is the relationship of the church to its context in light of a different understanding of the nature of essence of the church. In this conversation, mission is no longer understood primarily in functional terms as something the church does, as is the case for the corporate church. Rather it is understood primarily in terms of something the church is, as something that is related to its nature. (The Ministry of the Missional Church, 85-86)

Central to the desire to reform our worship gatherings is to recognize the churches calling to engage faithfully within their particular cultural setting. We have previously noted the mid-century reconception of the local church as a community center which features basketball courts, swimming pools and fellowship halls, thus becoming “the centralized, hierarchical, and stabilizing organization, the life-giving replacement for, and integration of, all that had been lost when urbanization and automotive mobility ripped us away from a common imagination.” (Tickle, The Great Emergence, 90)

Though it is easy to criticize these offerings as a misstep, we must also recognize these churches inherent desire to engage with their neighborhoods. A more faithful way of engaging, however, is explicated by Van Gelder, who notes that congregations led by the Spirit have a dynamic relationship with their surrounding communities, as they seek to join God in what He is doing, instead of imparting their own vision. Thus, there are elements of relying upon the community’s resources and elements of seeking to serve the community in needs not yet met. He asserts:

The primary way of theorizing this relationship is from the perspective of “resource dependence theory.” Congregations must be aware of the resources they need to draw from their environment in order to carry our their purpose and accomplish their vision. The types of information that a Spirit-led congregation should be interested in gathering about its community include such things as population trends, demographic profiles, transportation patterns, residential location of membership, organizations serving the community, business development and employment, and so on. It is important not just to gather such information, but… to read this information from a theological perspective. (Van Gelder, The Ministry of the Missional Church, 85-86)

Gaining such information allows an increasingly mission-minded congregation toward engaging with the realistic needs of their community, instead of building gyms and swimming pools in hopes of attracting more giving units. (We are further reminded of the missiological orientation of Jesus’ temple act by Matthew, who highlights his prophetic judgment in light of those who came to him immediately following; “The blind and the lame came to [Jesus] at the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple area, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David,’ they were indignant. ‘Do you hear what these children are saying?’ they asked him. ‘Yes,’ replied Jesus, ‘have you never read, ‘From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise’?’” (Matthew 21.14-16)

Previously in our study we alluded to the research of Donald McGavran, who discussed the “homogenous units” principle, which – due to misappropriations of his writing by the church growth movement – has led to increasingly ethnically segregated churches in the West. Without oversimplifying, we should recall Solomon’s prayer that foreigners would be drawn to the temple because of God’s holy name and Jesus’ assertion that the holy place was to be “a house of prayer for all nations.” (Mark 11.17) Thus, while we can recognize and appreciate McGavran’s findings, we must question any church growth strategy that would purposefully exclude others, due to their “otherness.” On the contrary, Van Gelder asserts that

a Spirit-led congregation is reminded that they also were once strangers and foreigners and that they can actually grow into a deeper understanding of the reconciling powers of the gospel as they become relationally connected to the other. The biblical and theological issues is that cultural diversity needs to be understood as a gift from God to be celebrated rather than as a problem to be solved. (Van Gelder, The Ministry of the Missional Church, 51)

It is not only for “our” sake that we include the “other,” however. Van Gelder later notes “it is often through contact with the other that new insights into how to participate in God’s mission in the world come into focus.” (157)

Therefore, instead of ignoring our differences, an increasingly mission-minded church must seek to become a place where our diversity is an opportunity whereby we can more fully represent the worldwide Body of Christ and more beautifully serve those in our community, looking forward to the day where all tribes and tongues will join together in glory. Van Gelder, again; “The church is therefore a sign to the world that the now is already present, a foretaste for the world of the eschatological future that has already begun and an instrument to share this good news with everyone everywhere.” (The Ministry of the Missional Church, 111)

We have thus asserted that to renew church practices in the West, ecclesiological leaders must recognize the importance of the congregation as a worshipping community who engages with their surrounding community, purposefully including the “other,” in hopes of meeting God in His missio Dei. Though our study has focused upon the perspective of those in leadership, these changes must also reform the institutional implications of each congregation, especially in light of the upside-down Kingdom Jesus sought to inaugurate in His ministry and prophetic temple action. Greene and Robinson similarly assert that Western culture presently offers “the ability to effect dramatic change from the bottom up, rather than (as the privileged custodians of the knowledge industry had previously opined was necessary) from the top down.” (Green and Robinson, Metavista, 52)

Though this will, as aforementioned, look different in every congregational setting, recognizing – and living into – this reality is central to any congregation embodying faith in a postmodern, post-Christian culture. While there are those who mourn this as a loss, (See, for instance, Rainer, Thom S. and Sam S. Rainer III. Essential Church? Reclaiming a Generation of Dropouts, 2008) we should instead recognize that our 2.0 culture presents us with an opportunity by which we can reform our respective congregational lives to more closely mirror the intentions of Jesus. Notice, for instance, Matthew 23.8-12:

But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

We began this series by noting the new conversation taking place in contemporary ecclesiology, which has shifted away from church growth into a renewed understanding regarding the church’s purpose. We then noted the issues at the heart of Jesus’ prophetic temple action, ways in which those issues are mirrored in modern, institutional faith structures, and church practices that could help renew local congregations toward increased missiological engagement. We conclude by recognizing the importance of this ongoing conversation, albeit recognizing that our words must now become flesh:

The presence of the Spirit and the Spirit’s teaching and leading the church give birth to a church that is missionary by nature. The Spirit-led church’s very existence in the world has to be understood in missionary terms. The church cannot help but participate in God’s mission in the world. This is part of what it means to be the church. To do less would be contrary to its nature [though] the Spirit’s presence in the church means that this reality is always there to be cultivated and lived into. (Van Gelder, The Ministry of the Missional Church, 41)

Alongside Jesus’ critique of the first century Temple, our contention is that the Western church has, to use David Fitch’s terminology, “given away” what it means to be church. Fitch boldly states,

it is our own modernism that has allowed us to individualize, commodify, and package Christianity so much that the evangelical church is often barely distinguishable from other goods and service providers, self-help groups, and social organizations that make up the landscape of modern American life. (The Great Giveaway, 13-14)

One glaring element of this complicity is the contemporary church’s over-reliance upon a capitalist framework, in many ways similar to the “buying and selling” encountered by Jesus in the first century Temple. (see, for instance, Mark 11.15) We ought to be careful, however, not to imply that all such buying and selling was in error, even in light of Jesus’ overturning of the tables, as the first century Temple was much more than a place of worship, but also market place. Jesus’ frustration with those buying and selling was instead due to the ways in which it had overtaken the Temple system, thus distracting others from the centripetal gathering for the worship of the God of Israel in response to their interaction with God’s chosen people.

Capitalism, however – and the consumerism it can engender – has become an integral element of Western culture, especially on this side of the Atlantic, causing a commotion that continues to distract those who would seek to gather in worship. In his recent work ChurchMorph: How Megatrends Are Reshapring Christian Communities, Eddie Gibbs reveals how this has been true since the start of the colonies. He states that

[t]he entrepreneurship of capitalism found its most dynamic expression in North America. This dynamism was not confined to the business and industrial worlds. It also created a “can-do” climate in the church that witnessed the birth of scores of denominations and hundreds of independent religious movements. These continue to proliferate even today. Thus Protestantism in general and evangelicalism in particular were shaped and stimulated by the spirit of competitive capitalism. They were the religious equivalent of “big business” operating with the same hierarchical structures and controlling leadership style. (ChurchMorph, 22. Interestingly, later in his study Gibbs devotes an entire chapter to examining the current role of megachurches, including significant time discussing the self-survey done by Willow Creek Community Church, Reveal: Where Are You?, see 87)

Of course, what Gibbs refers to as a “‘can-do’ climate” has led not only to births of denominations and independent religious movements, but countless work in and for the Kingdom of God, which should not be so easily dismissed. What is of concern to our study, however, is not capitalism per se, but rather how the hierarchical structures and controlling leadership styles so prevalent in a capitalist culture have and continue to negatively influence the Body of Christ.

The height of such a business-oriented approach is most noticeable in America’s megachurch movement, which informs its attractional model of ministry. Gibbs rightly notes,

the megachurch movement is largely a Boomer-generated phenomenon… [though] younger generations are looking for a different kind of church that is less program-oriented and event-focused, and more relational, empowering, incarnational, and community engaged. They challenge the attractional model of ministry as being the last hurrah of modernity, a throwback to the Christendom mentality.” (Churchmorph, 91)

In The Great Giveaway, David Fitch asserts that the megachurch concentration upon numbers and institution size is “rooted in two of America’s sacred cows: the autonomy of the individual and the necessity to organize for economic efficiency.” (Fitch, 33) He elsewhere asserts,

Numbers miss measuring how well as church is functioning as the body of Christ. Numbers often miss measuring the progress of discipleship in a church. Numbers do not reveal how a church group is functioning internally, whether people are building up each other, ministering to each other, and ministering in the outside community as the body of Christ. In short, numbers, on their own, say nothing qualitative about what is going on in the church when viewed as the body of Christ. (Fitch, 29)

By engaging with Alasdair MacIntyre, Fitch reveals how the project of modernity has influenced these aspirations in the church;

Choosing to manage for efficiency is a choice with moral implications. It presents values and purposes all on its own that may conflict with what it is we are trying to organize for. Such organizational efficiency relies on its own social scientific narratives for its legitimacy, and can in fact be used to masquerade as social control. (Ibid, 38-39.)

As is perceived in the above quote, inherent to this critique is the understanding that the church exists not only to gather for Sunday services but rather to facilitate a community wherein the Body of Christ may be continually built up.

Instead of being viewed as a gathering of people wherein the many members build up one another through the use of their spiritual gifts, contemporary church life has become an institution whereby passive participants consume spiritual goods and services. In his book The Ministry of the Missional Church, Craig Van Gelder insightfully addresses this development by discussing the role of the Established and Corporate Churches. The “established church,” he argues, is one where the church’s “self-understanding is that it serves as the primary location of God’s presence and activity in the world.” (72) This, it could be argued, was the primary means by which the first-century temple system viewed itself and may in fact continue to influence the self-understanding of many mainline American churches. Others, however, function as “corporate churches”:

At the core of their identity, what might be labeled as part of their genetic code, is an organizational self-understanding related to purposive intent. This tends to lead to a functional or instrumental view of the church where a congregation’s primary identity is related to it being responsible to accomplish something. (Ibid, 72)

What concerns us at this juncture, however, is not whether contemporary ecclesiologies seem primarily established or corporate, but rather the way each have been adapted into a capitalist, consumer-driven culture, led by highly hierarchical, controlling structure. Greene and Robinson state,

The goal of all this activity is movement – not for its own sake but for the sake of the world. Movements require flat structures and are genuinely lay in their driving force. They tend to emphasize relationships, especially among leaders, and, rather like a virus, a successful movement will mutuate many times to meet the local conditions that it finds. (Metavista, 193)

A while back I began a new series regarding contemporary ecclesiology in light of Jesus’ temple action. We concluded that first post by noting Solomon’s prayer that those of other nationalities would gather in the Temple, as well as his appeal that YHWH would “hear from heaven, [His] dwelling place.” Taken on its own account, then, this prayer thus recognizes that the function of the holy place is to be a gathering point for all peoples to respond to the God whose name they have heard. Furthermore, in it, Solomon clearly recognizes that the Temple is not God’s dwelling place, which is Heaven.

Alongside Solomon and the Apostle Paul, we should note [t]he God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. (Acts 17.24, contra Greene and Robinson, Metavista, 124) Though presently the term is practically viewed as profane, numerous scholars have asserted the inevitability of “institution.” Julia Duin, for instance, notes,

[t]he problem seems to be the church itself. Survey after survey says many Americans continue their private religious practices, such as reading the Bible, praying to God, and even sharing their faith in Jesus Christ. But they have given up on the institution. (Quitting Church, 18)

Note also Rainer and Rainer, Essential Church?, 76:

Christ and the church are bonded like the joining of a husband and wife in one flesh. Breaking this bond is serious. Yet droves of students are divorcing the church, and they do not cite irreconcilable differences… They leave quietly, and the church continues on as usual.”

Regarding the inevitability of institution, Eddie Gibbs, asserts, “[m]ost movements and organizations go through a life cycle if events are left to take their own course… The movement which the founder launched degenerates into a machine and ends up a monument.” (In Name Only: Tackling the Problem of Nominal Christianity, 19) Note also, Guder, Continuing Conversion, 187:

Movements do not remain movements: they either become institutions or they disappear. This is a sociological axiom. When a group of people gathers a second time to continue doing what they did when they gathered the first time, they have become an institution… Movements that claim that they are not institutions are practicing self-delusion.

Gibbs further notes the ways in which succeeding generations are further distanced from the intentions of the founder by time and space, which explicates why the “lifespan of a given organization is between sixty and eighty years… unless intervention strategies are in place.” (In Name Only, 20) In light of Gibbs’ research, then, we should recognize that the temple – as a function of the holy place in ancient Israel – had been thoroughly institutionalized, in modern parlance.

This perspective can be seen throughout Jesus’ ministry, as he continually speaks with and heals “others” without regard to the Temple system, which may help explain his continual request for secrecy (Again, we are thinking primarily of Mark’s account, which regularly depicts Jesus requesting silence, even from the demonic, since they know “who He is.” N.T. Wright thus asserts that Jesus’

deepest belief regarding the Temple was eschatological: the time had come for God to judge the entire institution. It had come to symbolize the injustice that characterized the society on the inside and on the outside, the rejection of the vocation to be the light of the world, the city set on a hill that would draw unto itself all the peoples of the world. (The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is, 54)

Thus, in judging the “entire institution,” Jesus’ prophetic action both points to the eschatological end of the Temple system, as well as its replacement by an holistic community of equal members. Historically speaking, of course, it could be argued that Jesus’ prophetic action was fulfilled by the Romans in 70 AD, though our continual focus here will be upon the theological and missiological implications of this event. It is our contention, then, that the role of institutional Christianity in the West is in many ways analogous to the holy place in first century Israel:

[i]n a postmodern society power no longer resides in old institutions such as the monarchy, the judiciary, the church, or, indeed, parliament. Just where power is actually institutionalized and maintained is not easy to discern, because the dispersal of power, as Foucault contended, is going on all the time. (Greene and Robinson, Metavista, 59)

Gibbs similarly notes,

Churches shaped by the big-business models of the industrial age, with their centralization of power and dependent and accountable branch offices, struggled to interpret the different entrepreneurial climate of the information age… The challenges they face parallel those of major corporations when their markets became increasingly diversified and subject to sudden changes in customer demands. Whereas denominational executives find themselves too removed from the frontline and overwhelmed by institutional challenges, preoccupied with “firefighting” flare-ups and with downsizing strategies, it is those church leaders at ground level grappling with the challenges of ministry and mission in their local contexts, who are most aware of the changes taking place. (ChurchMorph: How Megatrends Are Reshaping Christian Communities, 22-23)

After having thus explicated Jesus’ temple action in light of the Temple’s original purpose, we now turn our attention to the ways in which contemporary ecclesiology has begun to mirror the problems inherent in the first century temple system.

I stopped by the Fuller Bookstore before a class I’m taking / TAing with my ThM advisor, Ryan Bolger to pick up In Name Only: Tackling the Problem of Nominal Christianity upon which the course, Evangelizing Nominal Christians, was originally based. The material for the course has since shifted toward engaging the emerging / missional conversation, though I wanted to become acquainted with In Name Only as well, since Gibbs’ other works – including his recent ChurchMorph – are epic.

Stopping by the Fuller Bookstore is extremely helpful, but also exceedingly problematic – at least for my bank account.

Today, before even finding Gibbs’ In Name Only, I encountered James K.A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formation (which, along with Derrida and Theology, was on the same Amazon order as In Name Only, that wasn’t due to ship for another couple of weeks!). But I also ran across Graham Ward’s The Politics of Discipleship: Becoming Postmaterial Christians and Merold Westphal’s Whose Community, Which Interpretation?: Philosophical Hermeneutics for the Church, both of which aren’t due out until October 1st!

Needless to say, I picked both up, as well as Hegel and Theology.