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Someone Finally Said It
By jason | June 5, 2008
Yesterday I read a post over at Out of Ur concerning Driscoll’s claim last year at the Convergent Conference (?) that emerging churches aren’t typically reaching people with the gospel. The post was David Fitch’s response to the critique.
Here’s the statement from Driscoll:
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 have a few questions from Fitch’s article that you might have thoughts concerning.
2. Regarding missional churches, it is incredibly difficult to develop a sustainable missional church (as opposed to your standard Driscollesque megachurch). Missional church ecclesiology is organic and incarnational. It does not fit easily with denominational expectations. This creates economic pressures for missional leaders. In my experience it takes 5 - 10 years to nourish a missional community into a sustainable church. This doesn’t fit with established denominational models of church planting (especially evangelical).
I have missed how we went from the description of “missional” in Guder, et al to a specific methodology. It seems like Fitch is contending that “missional,” while certainly missiological, is somehow tied to certain missiological methods. Am I missing something there? In some ways it seems he is using “missional” as a sort of house church methodology, or at least a methodology that starts there. May I ask why this is the case?
3. Regarding emerging churches/Emergent Village, I don’t believe they intend to plant churches that would lead to converts. Instead they are promoting conversations. They seek to foster critique and “reform” within Christianity. I am not denying that there are vibrant emerging churches out there in the many different streams (our church has been accused of being an emerging church). But this is not their thrust. My observation has been that Emergent/emerging people don’t posses a soteriology and church/culture commitment emphasizing the idea of conversion.
First off I want to know if this is true. I think Fitch is pretty well respected and I tend to agree with him but would “big hitters” agree with him on this point? If so, then I think we need to say “thank you” for someone finally owning up to this reality. While he would say, “Once again, the modernist drive to measure success raises its ugly head,” I think it is significant to note if conversions are taking place. Isn’t this the most significant part of God’s mission in our world?
Question: If a church is not seeking to bring people to repentance and faith in Christ, 1) what are they doing? and 2) are they really a church?
4. Having said all this, I think that the missional communities that do persist probably have a higher conversion rate than the Drsicollesque mega churches. Missional churches are much smaller, so 6 conversions from a group of 25 over ten years would match (or exceed) the percentage growth of a typical mega church. I think it would be interesting to measure how many dollars per conversion are spent in missional churches versus mega churches. It makes me smile knowing missional churches are probably more cost effective when it comes to conversions because we resist spending money on buildings, programs, and “the show.”
This is a notable observation and important. I’m not a numbers guy but 6 conversions from a group of 25 over a 10 year period seems quite negligible. And I don’t think that is as high of a percentage as many megachurches (I can only understand his statement to mean 6 total conversions in 10 years, that is how the sentence seems to read). But, the cost per conversion is significant. And every church should consider this I’d think.
5. We must recognize that “missionary conversions” take longer than megachurch conversions. 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. If you do not have this immersion/context, any decision that is made is prone to be little more than a consumerist decision—it is made based on the perceived immediate benefit. It lasts as long as this perceived benefit remains important. It does not lead to discipleship.
Doesn’t this assume that megachurches aren’t reaching “post-Christendom ‘pagan[s]‘?” Is this a fair assumption? Surely not all megachurches are, but aren’t some?
So a true missionary conversions, which I believe missional churches are after, takes a much longer period of time than the kind of conversions most often generated through a megachurch. The megachurch is largely appealing to people who grew up in old forms of church and know the Story but quit going to church many years ago. These “unchurched people” require the old messages to be made more relevant. They need to be “revived” or called back into a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. There’s nothing wrong with that, but we should recognize there are less and less of these kinds of people left.
First off I wonder what relationship he sees between “missional” and “emerging” churches. Seems to differentiate the two since above he said emerging/emergent churches aren’t seeking conversions.
Secondly, while his contention about the kinds of people connecting with megachurches may be true (not saying it’s not) I would love to see the data substantiating it. Again, not denying this truth claim, I’m really just intrigued by the idea and wonder if anyone knows of data that would tell us one way or the other.
His conclusion:
I know Seattle is considered post-Christendom territory, but could the majority of converts at Mars Hill be coming from the remains of Christendom like many of the megachurch conversion I described above? This is certainly valid work for the Kingdom. But missional missiology is aimed at those lost in societies of post-Christendom with no understanding of Christ whatsoever. And this kind of mission takes longer. Failure to understand the difference is why Driscoll misses the point.
What do you think?
Topics: Church Planting, Missional Movements, Theology |
June 5th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
[...] up by the likes of Hirsch, Timmis, Chester, Fitch, etc.? Jason Allen provides some insight here and here, although I think it bears some fleshing out. Jason is a friend, so I feel like I can play [...]
June 5th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
“If a church is not seeking to bring people to repentance and faith in Christ, 1) what are they doing? and 2) are they really a church?”
Answer: No I don’t think they are.
To be honest I think Driscoll is really just going after the Emergent types and I think Fitch is inadvertantly proving his point for him.
June 5th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
These are good points and questions. I’ll try to give my thoughts in order.
1) I think the ideas of being organic and incarnational are more theological than methodological. If a church were to described to me in these terms it would tell me more about the values of the church than its practices. I’m not sure I see a necessary draw towards a house church methodology intrinsic in those terms.
2) I know of several big hitters who openly admit to not “seeking converts.” Tim Keel in Intuitive Leadership (wish I knew html) blatantly claims it. Doug Pagitt has said it, very specifically in his new book, A Christianity Worth Believing, and also in Church Re-imagined (if I remember correctly). Tony Jones has pointed it out in The New Christians also.
While a couple of these men are sometimes considered liars and heretics, they are also “big hitters” in emerging/Emergent.
As to the church’s primary mission, perhaps it is not totally and one hundred percent to bring “outsiders” to the realm of the insiders. Allen Wakabayashi outlines (in a very introductory way) a kingdom theology in Kingdom Come that does not consider the substitutionary atonement of Christ as the sole agenda of the church, but rather that the advancing of the Kingdom, which includes evangelism but is not limited to it. Citing authors such as N.T. Wright and George Ladd, he challenges the reader to think that the bringing of the Kingdom includes evangelism, social justice and a desire to see the whole world operate how it would “if God were in charge,” to quote Wright.
Is an institution that doesn’t focus on making converts still a church? I believe so, because Jesus commissioned us to “make disciples.” I fear that we have sometimes found that command to be solely focused outward, ignoring the faith of those in our church. I know that Tim Keel and Jacob’s Well, for instance, have forgone a radical conversionism for the sake of simply falling more in love with Jesus themselves, which they claim has led to genuine and authentic conversions, almost by accident (though Keel would call them “by-products”).
3) To the 6 in ten years, I (very hesitantly) agree that it sounds “negligible.” But I just don’t know for certain all the facts, and will have to officially “plead the fifth.”
4)I think that it implies that “post-Christendom pagan[s]” tend to be more involved in a missional community than a megachurch. But this statement does reveal Fitch’s bias.
Good thoughts. Thanks for posting them.
June 6th, 2008 at 3:44 am
hmmmm…can you be a disciple without being converted? Are we just trying to get people to follow Jesus’ ethic or is there more to it? I think there’s a whole lot more…
June 6th, 2008 at 4:26 am
Hey Jason, just ran across the blog via google alerts. Looks like you are in KC as well. Is Life Connection on the MO side?
June 7th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Stephen -
This blog post is several days old, and you may never see this comment, but I would raise the question: What is conversion without following Jesus’s ethic, so to speak? Isn’t true conversion the getting-up and leaving-behind of an old life to following-in and walking-with Jesus? This, in my humble opinion, requires a reformation of ethic (though I would specify that I don’t mean “ethic” in a Hauerwasian-the-evil-that-privatizes-religion-and-therefore-makes-it-irrelevant kind of way). I certainly don’t believe that it boils down to a mental assent to a set of propositions or “spiritual laws.” In fact, I would gather that a following of Jesus’ ethics is “a whole lot more” than a traditional, evangelical approach. After all, was Jesus out to start a church or change the very way his own people lived?
June 11th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
[...] contention that emergent flavored churches are not seeing conversions actually taking place. (Here is my short interaction with the [...]