Book Review, The Road to Missional, by Michael Frost

One of the things that I am having the hardest time balancing in the midst of this transition is finding time to read.  With the pressure of providing for a family in the midst of trying to find a more consistent job (t-shirts are great, but intermittent), the thing that gets pushed aside is the reading.  But I am realizing that, as we embark on this missional journey, the only way that I am going to get answers for our little community is by reading about what people much smarter than me are thinking and doing.  And since I suck at retaining information from the things that I read, I thought it would make sense for me to do a “book review” of what I am reading for this blog.  That way I can let you in on what I’m learning while, at the same time, helping my own retention.

This past weekend I did a wedding in the Dallas Metroplex, which means I got a chance to go and buy books at bookstores that I usually can’t frequent.  While at one of these, I found another copy of The Road to Missional: Journey to the Center of the Church by Michael Frost (co-author of The Forgotten Ways with Alan Hirsch).  This book was recently placed on a list of the top 40 books for a thorough understanding of the missional church conversation by a missional organization called Sentralized (check them out at www.sentralizedgathering.com).  Anyway, I bought this book a few weeks before I moved out of my office, so I have no idea where my original copy is.  But, since I saw this one, I bought it and began reading it on the flight home.  Here’s a brief, somewhat haphazard review of the book:

This book is one of the Shapevine Missional Series (www.shapevine.com) designed to further the conversation on missional church.  Frost begins by defending the continued use of the M-word (missional) to describe the wholesale changes that he deems are necessary for the church to thrive in these changing times.  His premise is that, while missional has become a buzzword for churches around the globe, very few understand just what this entails.  Missional isn’t a trend to attract more people to church; it is the wholesale reorientation of the church around mission.  As he says on page 21: “Missional leaders don’t see changing the church as central to their cause; they want to change the whole world.”  He then brings up six examples of what this looks like in the six chapters that make up the book.  I’ll look at them chapter by chapter with some relevant quotes interspersed.

1. The Missio Dei - Seeing Mission as Bigger than Evangelism

This is rightly the best place to start.  In my conversations with people about what in the world I am doing, this becomes a sticking point almost immediately.  Those of us steeped in Christendom have a hard time understanding what the big difference is between mission and evangelism.  While I can’t do it justice in these few words, I’ll hit some high points about what this means.  Frost quotes NT Wright extensively in this book, and quotes David Bosch extensively in this chapter.  A few of their quotes may help me communicate the thoughts of this chapter.  First, Wright: “Despite what people think, within the Christian family and outside it, the point of Christianity isn’t ‘to go to heaven when you die’”(p. 23).  This has probably been the hardest thing that I have had to learn, that our efforts to “save souls” are in vain if we are not “transforming people.”  Bosch writes, “[Mission] is alerting people to the universal reign of God through Christ” (p.24).  This changes how we do things when we make the transfer from being primarily concerned about “there and then” and set our focus on “here and now.”  As Wright says elsewhere, it’s about life AFTER life after death – what things look like on a redeemed and restored new heavens and new earth.  The primary image that Frost plays off of in this chapter is the idea of a movie trailer.  Our lives as Christ-followers are to serve the role that a movie trailer plays.  We are to portray enough of what is to go on in the redeemed creation that people become drawn to it and “want to see the movie” themselves.  Frost also plays on an image that Wright uses in Simply Christian, where he talks about the Celtic concept of “thin places” – places where the veil between heaven and earth become so thin that the light of heaven shines clearly through into this world.  I love that image and will blog later in the week about a “thin place” that I saw this past weekend at a wedding.

2.  Slow Evangelism – Moving Beyond the Four Spiritual Laws

On the heels of his discussion that the purpose of the church is so much bigger than evangelism as it has been traditionally interpreted, Frost talks about what evangelism should look like in a missional community.  Unlike many of the postmodern church thinkers who deny the importance of the proclamation of Biblical truth, Frost acknowledges that the announcement of good news is an important aspect of mission.  As he points out, the St. Francis quote that many love to quote about preaching the gospel at all times DOES include the important point that, when necessary, USE WORDS!  He does contend with Hauerwas and Willimon that “The only way for the world to know it is being redeemed is for the church to point to the Redeemer by being a redeemed people” (p. 56).  But there has to be a balance between announcement and demonstration.  His missional indicators for the church on pp. 62-63 are worth looking over to get a better handle on what this chapter means for the church.

3.  A Market-Shaped Church – How Membership Has Trumped Mission

This is one of the concepts that I absolutely believe with everything that is in me – that the church has become so infected with a consumer virus that we don’t even realize that we have it.  I would guess that over half of the institutional church leaders across the country would agree as well.  The problem becomes, how do we change it?  This is where so much of my mindspace goes these days.  How do we change a church culture when that culture is so intertwined with capitalism and “American values” that we can’t untangle them?  As Frost says on p. 76, “What we require today is a radical rethink about the degree to which our churches have unwittingly embraced what Bryan Stone calls the logic of production, and an uncoupling from that paradigm, setting churches free to embrace the alternative paradigm presented by Jesus, a paradigm of truthfulness, love, and incarnation.”  This might be the biggest challenge for the church moving forward.  While Frost identifies the problem well, I am not sure that he provides great and clear solutions about where we go from here.

4.  Triumphant Humiliation – The Cross as a Missional Paradigm for Holiness

In this chapter, Frost points out that the cross needs to be “not only the means by which our sins are forgiven, but also the template for all subsequent Christian living” (p. 87).  He advocates a cruciform model of discipleship, including a mentor who is willing to give his life for an apprentice.  I loved how he put it on page 85 – “Discerning what Jesus would do in any given situation, especially when we live our lives among the poor and the marginalized, is actually hard work.”  We have often reduced discipleship to a set of rules and regulations and in so doing have robbed the cross of its power.  Frost spends most of the chapter contrasting piety and discipleship.  Piety (rule-following) is easy and leads to an offensive self-righteousness; discipleship (Spirit-following) is difficult and leads to attractive humility.

5.  Breathing Shalom – Bringing Reconciliation, Justice, and Beauty to a Broken World

One of the hallmarks of the missional movement is the emphasis on Shalom, the Hebrew word that is usually translated “peace.”  Shalom is a much richer concept than our view of peace, which we usually use to communicate a personal calm or a lack of conflict.  Shalom might be better translated “wholeness,” that idea of things being “as they should be.”  Our task as Christ-followers is to recognize shalom when we see it and to do everything in our power to foster shalom in our world.  The three primary areas that Frost points to are restored relationship, reestablished justice, and recognition of beauty.  As Wright says, “We are called to be part of God’s new creation, called to be agents of that new creation here and now.  We are called to model and display that new creation in symphonies and family life, in restorative justice and poetry, in holiness and service to the poor, in politics and painting” (p. 115).  This chapter created many life-giving thoughts and dreams for what our new missional community should look like.

6.  Moving into the Neighborhood – Living Out Incarnational Mission

I love that even recognized authors such as Michael Frost have to put up with stupid/smart people.  He tells the story of his argument with a seminary student about his “misuse” of the Incarnation as the model for mission, since clearly the Incarnation of Christ was a once-in-a-history kind of event.  Yet, we are called to live the life of Christ among the people we are called to live near.  I loved Frost’s example of how many church people live in one neighborhood yet church in another.  (Yes, I just turned “church” into a verb.  Deal with it.)  The examples of this chapter stretched me and challenged me to rethink what it means to live in a neighborhood.  It caused me to rethink what my calling is in the midst of that neighborhood.  I especially loved the parting quote from Alan Roxburgh – “And until we build transformed communities, there is no hope for a broken world” (p. 140).

I know that I have not done an adequate job of conveying Michael Frost’s great work in this book.  As I re-read this “book review,” I have completely missed the overarching role that Jesus plays in this whole matter.  Frost does a much better job keeping us focused on Jesus.  What I greatly appreciated about this book was the variety of authors quoted.  He quotes Wright and Bosch and Newbigin extensively, but also spends some time quoting Piper and Keller and McLaren.  He even introduced me to some new people, like Kristin Jack and Marilynne Robinson.  I am going to pass my two copies of this book (once I find my other one) around to my little community to read.  I would recommend that you read it if you’re wanting a clearer picture of where the missional conversation came from and why it’s not done yet.

All quotes are from The Road to Missional by Michael Frost, ©2011 by Michael Frost, published by Baker Books (www.bakerbooks.com).

Bringing Resurrection, Easter 2012

Today in the place in which I live, good Christian people gathered all over the city in beautiful buildings to celebrate a risen Savior.  Songs of resurrection were sung and prayers of thanksgiving were prayed.  Sermons were preached extolling the significant, world-altering event that took place 1985 (or so) years ago and the importance that it still has today.  Thousands of dollars were spent on new dresses and ties and suits.  Twitter and Facebook feeds blew up with pictures and Scriptures and praises and celebrations.  My cousin participated in one of the 35 Easter services that his church put together.  (He doesn't live in Lubbock, by the way, in case you were racking your brain to think of a Lubbock church big enough to pull THAT off.)

Also today in the place in which I live, good people gathered at major intersections to sell Sunday papers to try to earn some meager money for their massive needs.  Others sat at hospital beds weeping over parents who were slipping away.  Good families hunkered down in rooms waiting to hear news about the health implications of complications from a child's surgery.  Brokenhearted people sat in desperate need of having their hearts bound up.  Poor people waited desperately for someone to come and preach them some good news.  Captives wondered who would come to them and proclaim freedom.  Prisoners sat again in darkness, wondering where all the light had gone.  Mourners looked around for someone to bring them comfort.

Maybe it is because today was the first Easter in my life that I didn't darken the door of a church building.  Maybe it's because the things that God has been stirring in me are moving me toward action of a different kind.  Maybe it's because I have surrounded myself with people who have challenged me to see the world as broken and in need of redemption.  Whatever the reason, the dichotomy of the first two paragraphs that I wrote above hit me hard this Sunday.  Today, churches across our country gathered for their high holy day -- Resurrection Sunday.  Churches beefed up their greeter force and rocked out their worship.  Churches spruced up their signage and weedeated (weed-ate???) their parking lots.  Churches spent dollars on egg hunts and advertising.  They gathered in their places of worship, counted their people and offerings.  Compared this Easter's attendance with the year-to-date (and with the ghost of Easters past).  Felt really good about what they did today.

And redemption happened.  I have read tweets and posts about all of the good things that happened this morning.  My friends at Ecclesia Houston had an overwhelmingly blessed Easter gathering in the heart of that city.  My friends in Lexington, KY, brought hope and redemption to the lives of hundreds.  My friends at Experience Life here in Lubbock lived up to their name and helped a packed house at their downtown campus experience that life.  And while I haven't heard much from my family at Raintree, I know that it was a weekend of blessing and being blessed.  There is no doubt that redemption took place in the midst of these gatherings that took place.

But just in the relatively modest city that we live in, there were so many missed opportunities to live out the Isaiah 61 reference alluded to above.  God-followers would have had their pick of places to bring redemption to Lubbock today.  Almost all the social organizations had opportunities to serve today -- Christians were busy gathering in their houses of worship and forgetting just what the Savior that they were celebrating spent most of his time doing.  I am not saying this to minimize the amount of redemption that took place in those gatherings.  I am saying that to try to get us to think about where God is already working and to get in line behind him.

One of my favorite authors, Leonard Sweet, made the contention SEVERAL years ago that God might just be more active in the world these days than he is in the church.  When I first read that, I almost went ahead and dismissed him as a heretic.  Seemed like an appropriate thing to do.  But the more that I reflected on it, the more truth it seemed to hold.  If God is a God of the oppressed and broken-hearted, then wouldn't it make more sense that He was doing His thing right in the midst of an oppressed and broken world?

I hesitate to tell you our story from today, because the last thing that I would want to convey is that I have it all figured out.  That this is the only way.  That I'm right and others are wrong.  I merely tell you our story to try to get you to see that there just might be another way -- a more redemptive way.  Today we loaded up our family at 6:40 am and headed to the Ronald McDonald House in Lubbock.  For those of you unfamiliar with RMH, it partners with local children's hospitals to provide a place to stay for out-of-town families who find their children sick and in the hospital.  A group of us went to cook breakfast burritos for the families that were staying there.  And to bring them Easter baskets with games and activities designed to restore some sense of normalcy in their lives.  And to generally let them know that, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, Jesus loves them.  Dearly.  And their sick children.  Especially their sick children.

The lady in charge said that we would probably see parts of two or three of the ten families staying there.  Most would prefer to stay in their rooms, hunkered down for the fight that they were in.  I think we ended up meeting 7 or 8 of the families.  Their stories were absolutely heart-breaking.  A one-year-old experiencing complications from a second heart surgery.  A 17-year-old on life support.  A 17-week-premature baby fighting in NICU.  A 7-week-premature baby that mom and dad are hoping to take home this week.  And a kitchen-full of breakfast burritos gave us the opportunity to hear these stories.  To encourage these families.  To pray for these children.  To bring life and hope and resurrection and redemption into a culture of hurt and brokenness and pain.

I feel like it was the first time I have ever really celebrated Easter.

A Place at the Table, day 38, 39, 40

So here we are.  In what seems like an unbelievable turn of events, I have survived the 40 day "A Place at the Table" fast with a minimal amount of damage.  As a matter of fact, there have been several positive things that have come out of this fast, just from a physical perspective.  We'll start this blog post with the two big advantages of this fast for me physically and we'll see where the blog goes from there.

Advantage #1: I learned to like beans.
I know this seems like such a minor detail, but for those of you who know how dadgum picky I am, this is a pretty huge deal.  This is going to be of extra significance to me because of where I currently live.  Every other restaurant in Lubbock is a Mexican restaurant, and my ability to get meaningful sides with my quesadillas, tacos, and fajitas is going to greatly increase my opportunities to leave a restaurant full.  I should no longer have to keep my main course separated from the sides, lest the thing that I like get "infected" by the things that I don't.  I could legitimately go to Abuelo's and eat a meal that included no meat and still walk out full.  The implications of this are life-changing.  I hope.

Advantage #2: I lost a bunch of weight.
This is the easiest advantage to behold.  Over the last few weeks especially I have gotten comments on how much weight I have lost.  My insurance guy caught me in the grocery store today and commented on it.  I've actually been losing weight since November (there's a story to it -- you should ask me some time!), and have only lost about 10-12 pounds on this fast.  But I guess it was the kind of weight loss that shows up in my face, which has led to the increase of comments.  I am now (at least according to my scale) at the weight that I should max out at for my age and height.  It's pretty sad that it takes a 40-day fast to get me down to where I should have been maxed out.  But it does feel good to be here.

Now, as far as the other advantages, I feel like I have only just begun to reap benefits in other areas of my life.  There have been days in the past several years when I have wondered if I was disciplined enough to do anything for a week, let alone 40 days.  This experience has shown me that I do, indeed, have that level of discipline.  And I just can't get away from the linguistic tie between "discipline" and "disciple."  Maybe I do have what it takes to be a disciple of Jesus after all.

The camaraderie that has been formed in our little group during this 40 days has been unreal, even for those who weren't able to participate in the fast.  I don't really understand where this level of community came from or how we got there, but it has been phenomenal for us.  It was the absolute BEST way to begin a journey together, and I even feel like this fast is going to inform where our community goes from here.

Even though the blog will change from being focused on the fast to being more holistic, I feel like the topics and discussions and conclusions that I come to in these writings will be informed by what went down during this fast.  So thanks, Chris Seay (like he reads this!) for having the courage to experience this fast yourself a year ago and for writing it down for others of us to be a part of.  Thanks to those of you who stuck with this blog and encouraged me along the way to keep writing.  And thanks to this little community that enacted this fast together and was there to whine and complain about it with me.  I am so excited about where we go from here.  I mean, after Feaster!!!!!

A Place at the Table, day 35, 36 & 37

It has been an interesting first week away from "ministry."  I really don't know how I had time to do ministry with all the opportunities out there.  I spent the morning on Monday having coffee with a friend who had somehow missed my announcement that I was moving on.  Monday evening was a chance to connect with 12 different families through coaching Faith's softball team.  Tuesday was a coffee appointment, a lunch appointment, another opportunity to minister through softball, an impromptu check-in with two friends who were grabbing a cup of coffee and some conversation, and a late-night, 3-hour conversation with a friend who is having a rough time right now.  Wednesday was working from a coffeeshop and finding opportunities to meet some neat people who are doing some pretty amazing ministry at Tech.  After lunch was another coffee appointment with a friend who is dealing with some of life's crap.  Then we went to a baseball game of one of our little friends (and his family) before I ended the night with an appointment with some new friends about doing their wedding in a couple of weeks.  Whew!

Ministry opportunities are all around us.  If Jesus is to be believed (and I tend to believe He IS), God is always working.  We spend so much time in church work trying to plan and prepare so that everything is in place for the Spirit to move among us.  What if we've got the paradigm all jacked up?  What if we were to spend our time seeing where God is working and getting in line behind Him?  What if we didn't spend so much time trying to make the conditions optimal for God's movement and instead spent the time looking for the opportunities God is placing in front of us?  Opportunities to bring redemption and healing and wholeness?  You don't have to be a paid minister to do that.  This week's been proof of that.

Where is God working around you, and what would it look like if you got in line behind Him?

A Place at the Table, feast day 5/an ending

It's going to be hard to sum up yesterday in one blog post.  I'll either ramble on for paragraph after paragraph or I'll cut things too short and leave way too much out.  But it was an important day, and as such I feel like I ought to devote a whole blog post to it.  So here we go . . .

Yesterday marked the end of an ebb-and-flow 10-year ministry with Raintree Christian Church here in Lubbock.  I have officially been on staff since January 1, 2003, but I began leading worship on a consistent basis almost the moment that I stepped out of the moving van from Martha's Vineyard, MA.  I've seen some unbelievable things in my 10 years here -- both ministerially and personally.  We as a church have absolutely been through the highs and lows of life together.  I have connected with some of the most amazing people I have ever met.  I have grown from a punk 27-year-old youth minister into a punk 37-year-old associate minister.  I have started two new and distinctly different services -- the River and raintree pm -- and led countless others.  I have preached sermons, taught lessons, sung songs, written articles, made CDs and DVDs, made copies, moved offices (I ended up having 5 different offices in that building).  I spent years as the youth minister, the college minister, the worship minister, and even a few days as the children's minister (not our brightest idea).  I have seen marriages stay together that I thought were doomed, and I've seen marriages that had no reason to end head that way.  I've run sound for funerals and weddings and even performed a wedding or two.  I have welcomed two beautiful girls into the world (Gracie was born in MV), and I have placed a precious son in the ground.  It has been quite a ride!

Often in the midst of the busyness of ministry, people get lost.  We become about running around doing programs and lose sight of the fact that ministry is, first and foremost, about people and connecting people to Jesus and one another.  In my worst days, that has been me.  I was reminded of the fact that I almost alienated one of my best friends, Dusty Milner, before our friendship ever got started because of my flaw of putting programs over people.  I've had my moments of greatness and many more moments of humanness.

For our last Sunday, the leadership of Raintree encouraged the people to write out for us their memories of our family.  The responses were varied, but I saw one theme emerging as what people remembered about me.  More than anything else, people appreciated how real I was.  Not how well I sang; not how well I preached; not how well I ministered; not how well I . . .  And what was amazing to me was that many of the notes referenced what were the lowlights of my 10 years.  Those of us who follow Christ spend so much time worrying about how this will appear or what people will think of that action.  All that people want is for us to be real in our relationship with Jesus -- good, bad, and ugly.  Especially the ugly.

I want to share something from an unnamed friend that challenged me to continue to be very intentional about living out the Jesus way in the midst of the stuff of life.  I share this, not because I want to puff myself up, but because I want to challenge you to live out the life of Christ in your own context.  I think this person has some rose-colored glasses when it comes to my failings, but it challenges me to live like Jesus did.

"I can count on one hand the people who I have truly seen God in, and you are one of those people.  You are an example of Christ's love and He shines through you.  You will be missed and loved always.  Go shine."

Friends, whether in this church or that, in this place or that, in this way or that, let's go shine.  That's when kingdom breaks out among us, within us, and around us.