Tuesday
Nov012005
A day with Mike Frost
Tuesday, November 1, 2005 at 4:35PM
I spent the day listening to Mike Frost, coauthor of The Shaping of Things to Come. He's in Peterborough speaking to some pastors and youth workers. Mike's been a strong influence on me. A few of pastor friends of mine are currently working through Shaping. His coauthor, Alan Hirsch, also commented on this site before as I wrestled with some of the issues raised in the book. I've posted the notes online (here and also in PDF). Here's a summary of what he talked about: Session One: Mike rooted his thinking in theology, the missio Dei. God is at heart missional. He cannot be caged. The church has lost its missional understanding and separated the sacred and secular within Christendom. The way back is to relearn the stories of Jesus. Jesus did not attract people to sacred places. Instead, he showed us it is possible to live faithfully as a servant of God in secular space. This completely subverts our religious system because we have become more like the Pharisees than we have Jesus. We have become offensive to the people for whom Jesus was fragrant, and fragrant to the people for whom Jesus was offensive. Session Two: We have put all of our eggs in the "come to us" attractional model. We are dealing with a demographic of 80% of people who are at best blasé and at worst hostile to us. We are in deep trouble in the next twenty years, because we only have 10% of the market and most of them are elderly. The solution is not for them to come, because they won't. We need to move to mission, to going. Going requires some lifestyle commitments. We need to discover holiness as mission - not about what we don't do, but about living deeply and fully. We need to rediscover prayer. We need to learn to socialize with unbelievers and enjoy it. We need to resource mission. Session Three: We need to take steps toward mission. We need to ask the people group to which God is calling us, because we can't reach every people group. We need to join them, because attractional approaches won't work. Issue: proximity. Don't ever go alone; find someone to go with you. Change your metaphors of leadership from top-down ones to angler, midwife, gardener. They manipulate the conditions to bring out what is already there. Your job is to draw out all the latent missional potential that is already there. Your people are full of missional potential. There is a role for a central church: to send groups of people out to bars, clubs, leagues, etc. and to resource and protect them. Your church can spin out lots of missional projects. There is still a market for the central church: it will always have 20% of the market. As for the final session, I didn't hear it because I had to drive back to Toronto. The CDs are on the way. Notes here and also in PDF Update: MP3s of talks by Mike from a previous visit are on the YFC website on the right hand side of the page
Reader Comments (19)
Darryl, for us simpletons, what's the bottom line point there?
George: I don't know if I can accurately summarize a whole day in a sentence. If I could do it would be something along the lines of "The church needs to recapture what it means to be sent into the world as Jesus was."
Darryl, It sounds like the conference was great. I've read your notes. The politics of all this is going to be the tricky part. How do you balance 'Attractional' model for those who require that model of church; and the 'Incarnational' model for the emerging generation. It will be a true task for the leaders of the Church. Rob
Thanks for posting those notes, Darryl. Lot's to think about, even for my ministry here in the DR.
Rob: "It will be a true task for the leaders of the Church." Mike mentioned that this is going to be threatening for a lot of leaders because it threatens their security. There will always be room for reaching the 20% of people that are church-friendly, so keep churches as they exist now. (We probably already have enough pastors to run these churches as well!) I love the idea of devoting greater energy to incarnational living among the 80%.
Yea but why do you follow Jesus for how to do church? Why not the Apostles since there's more emphasis on building up the believers for ministry work?
Kim: I think Jesus gave us a pretty good model for what it means to be a disciple. All the apostles did was what Jesus showed them to do.
ok, but the Apostles got extra and fuller jobs to do and a commission to build the church. Like Jesus never planted a church. It feels like your seperating Jesus from the Apostles is all.
"It feels like your seperating Jesus from the Apostles is all." In a way, I think that is the problem. I think the apostles would be aghast that we even think of their ministries as different from what Jesus did. As one of my smart friends said yesterday, we tend to see the Gospel primarily through Romans and Galatians. I think Frost is right, and the apostles would agree, that we have to get back to Jesus. Acts concludes with this verse about Paul: "he preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ." I don't know if it's really possible to separate the teaching and example of Paul and the teaching and example of Jesus.
Love your blog - LOVE the stuff you wrote up for Mike Frost...frankly, I'm envious. I would have loved to hang with him!
one more question Darryl, does Mike have a blog?? Let me know..OK? robin
Hi Robin: Thanks; great to hear from you. No, I don't think Mike has a blog, but I sure wish he did.
"I love the idea of devoting greater energy to incarnational living among the 80%." Me too! Not quite sure how it's all going to work out, but it seems like an exciting adventure. Rob
great post. I missed the days following his Sunday night meeting. Is there are way you can share the CD content when it arrives? Is that even legal? Just wondering... if you find a way I have the Sunday night talk coming to me. I'd be more than happy to share that stuff.
great post. I missed the days following his Sunday night meeting. Is there are way you can share the CD content when it arrives? Is that even legal? Just wondering... if you find a way I have the Sunday night talk coming to me. I'd be more than happy to share that stuff.
Jared: Sure, I'd be happy to share the CDs when they arrive.
Gasp! Whoosh! That is the fresh air I am finally breathing from reading this! I am hungrily making lists of these goldbits to read from your blog, can you post where to order the CDs when they come in? I am resonating so much with the the general outlines of these sessions that I am having trouble typing this response!
Sure, I'll post when I get them. You can listen to last year's lectures at this page: http://yfccanada.com/Newsroom/NMC2004" rel="nofollow">http://yfccanada.com/Newsroom/NMC2004 Look on the right hand side.
Darryl, Thanks for the short, but accurate, summaries of my presentations in Peterborough. It always surprises me when my talks get summarised so much they don't seem to resemble the original presentations. Einstein said, "We should make everything as simple as possible, but not more so." You're obviously very Einsteinian. Nice site. Keep the conversations going.