Series recap: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
In the last post, we looked at the first stream that was propelling a new ecclesiological-centered missional movement within evangelicalism in the 80’s and 90’s: its key early thinkers in Francis Dubose, Charles Van Engan, and Darrell Guder and their works. Today we look at the second stream: the “megatrends” or better, the crises of in North America in the late 20th century, necessitating a need for the ecclesiological-missional discussion, and subsequently, the surfacing of a missional church.
MEGATRENDS
Dr. David Dunbar, president of Biblical Seminary, has elucidated three developments that influence ecclesiologal-missional thinking in the latter part of the 20th century. First, Dunbar noted that we are seeing the evaporation of a “churched” society. [1] Particularly, that Christianity in North America has moved away from its place of supremacy as it has encountered the loss of not only numbers but of sway within society. [2] Second is the existence of a post-Christian context. This involves first, the loss of Christian memory and secondly, people who don’t know about the Christian faith presuppose that they do. [3] Third, the Western church is laboring under a conception of mission(s) as an movement that takes place “over there and far away”; as the activity of a smattering of the church specially “called” to this charge. [4]
Guder continues with this logic in Missional Church, by also outlining the postmodern threshold that many feel we have penetrated. Elements rising from within the emerging postmodern milieu include: loss of collective experiences, ephemeral relationships, personal spirituality without organized religion, relative truth, a decentered self, and a pluralist society. [5]
Also in Missional Church, Guder delineated yet another ailment of the late 20th century. One section in particular, entitled “A People or a Place?” in the chapter, “Missional Vocation: Called and Sent to Represent the Reign of God.” He illustrated that the syntax regularly used to refer to or inquire about the church still carries the weighty baggage of being a “place where certain things happen” [6] and in turn, where other things do not. Guder points out that even when not referring to a material building, Christians tend to associate “church” to a “meeting or activity, a set of programs, or an organizational structure.” [7] So over time, this thought narrowed the church’s definition of itself toward a “place where” idea, not so much expressed but presumed. Guder says, “This perception of the church gives little attention to the communal entity or presence, and it stresses even less the community’s role as the bearer of missional responsibility throughout the world, both near and far away.” [8]
Finally, the last crisis of the late 20th century was the malady of the modern “seeker-sensitive” worship service and the postmodern’s apathy towards it. According to David Fitch, chair of Evangelical Theology at Northern Seminary, he says that the postmodern, “seeks community over anonymity and is overdosed on consumer appeals to felt needs.” [9]
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1) David Dunbar, “Getting a Handle on Missional,” Missional Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2 (March 2007); available from http://www.biblical.edu/images/belong/PDFs/vol1no1.pdf; Internet: accessed 12 May 2008.
2) Darrell Guder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), 1.
3) Dunbar, “Getting a Handle on Mission,” Missional Journal; Internet: accessed 12 May 2008.
4) Ibid.
5) Guder, Missional Church, 40-43.
6) Ibid., 83.
7) Ibid., 83-84.
8) Ibid., 80.
9) David Fitch, The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from Big Business, Parachurch Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism, and Other Modern Maladies (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2005), 55.
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