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).