Author: Jonathan Dodson

Training Elders (or Centrist Masculinity)

Posted on November 19, 2010

As I’m training our current elder candidates, I’ve been significantly encouraged and sharpened by their response to the calling and qualifications of godly eldership. We’re using Strauch’s Biblical Eldership and Bob Thune’s adapted, gospel influenced Study Guide (forthcoming) as a general guide to our training. While these tools are certainly helpful, what has been most significant is gathering with men who care about the deep things of life. As we meet, we’re collectively cultivating a centrist manliness that is neither hyper-masculine nor hyper-feminine but deeply biblical and Jesus-shaped. I sense a “third view” of evangelical manliness emerging from our discussions. Here are few highlights from our time so far.

Gravity and Joy in the Call

Our very first meeting was marked with a gravity and earnestness about being deep men, husbands, and fathers. We went around the table and shared our fears and hopes about the call of elder. I was struck by how seriously these men weighed the call and how personally they embraced the process. Regardless of the outcome, we all agreed that this process would make us better human beings, men, and leaders for our families and church. This really set the tone for a training that is deeply relational not merely theological. This tone has carried over into all our discussions. We leave each 6-7:30am time challenged, inspired, and often changed. I take notes throughout.

Centrist Masculinity Clears Away the Cultural Noise

Our most recent discussion revolved around male eldership and essential masculinity. While we debated both liberal and conservative readings of a host of biblical texts, the real traction began when we considered what an elder who treats (not just sees) women and dignified equals. What would it look like in a church for men to not just affirm masculinity in theory but for them to lead and care for women and children around them? How would it change social interaction, leadership, teaching, City Groups, Fight Clubs, and family life? We are challenging one another to a centrist manliness that flows from a deep conviction about how God has made us and a personal commitment to relate to others out of profound love, grace, and godliness.

Before this can truly happen, we observed that men need to clear away a lot of confusing cultural noise regarding how we interact with women so that we can relate to them as people made in God’s image who deserve godly, genuine attention not social disinterest or general disregard. We identified a few ways forward in cultivating deep, centrist masculinity.

  • Men need to toss aside the inequality of women depicted in objectified advertising, internet porn, and sex-saturated film.
  • Men need to cultivate a deep manliness that overflows in love and care for women through godly deportment and dignifying social interaction.
  • Men need to be dependently prayerful, profoundly Scripture saturated, Jesus formed, and others oriented.

Transitioning to Missional Church (Pt 2)

Posted on November 17, 2010

See Part 1 of the series Transitioning to Missional Church.

In Part 1 of this series, we established the difference between a church with a mission and church as mission. A Missional Church is church as mission not church with a mission. Missional is its nature not just its vocation.

Why Mission is the Nature of the Church

Why is missional the nature of the church? Because it is the nature God. Mission is not only an action of God; it is an attribute of God. God is a missionary God. That’s what the term Missio Dei means “the Sent God.” God has always been on a mission for his glory, that self-glorifying mission breaks out into creation, thru the fall, in redemption unto New Creation. In particular, we see the missionary nature of God in his sentness. Father sends the Son, Son sends the Spirit, Spirit sends the Church. The church is cut from the cloth of the missionary God. We have a family resemblance. We have a missionary nature because we have a missionary Father.

In other words, mission is the breath of the missional church. Mission is not a tack-on to your life; it is your life. You exhale mission because you inhale gospel. The gospel flows through you, pulsing at various strengths but pulsing, in order to pump the blood of Jesus through the body of Christ so that it can exhale the hope of mission. This missional breath affects everything—how we check the mail, how we structure our week, how we relate to neighbors, how we do our work, how we read the Bible, where we live, how we live, how we make your everyday decisions. Missional is radical, like taking up your cross and following Jesus. Missional church is a gathering of cross-bearing, Jesus-following disciples who are committed to his mission.

Missional church requires nothing less than a rethinking of our identity and our practice, of who we are and what we do. Therefore, in order to effectively embrace the challenge of moving from church with a mission to church as mission, new ecclesiastical structures are absolutely essential. The old church structures support mission as a task but not as an identity. They promote mission as an event but not as disciple-making, reducing mission to an option for the elite not essential for everyone.

Challenges in Transitioning to Missional

One of the greatest challenges in transitioning to a true missional church is syncretistic missional ecclesiology (SME). Syncretistic Missional Ecclesiology is the fusion of missional church values with institutional church structures. Many churches that attempt to make this transition, try to insert missional values into non-missional church structures. Leadership, decision-making, community structures all remain somewhat the same, while the leaders beat the drum of mission. At best, this will create more mission works but will fail to make missional disciples.

The nature of missional church requires more than cosmetic adjustments to our inherited forms of church. Missional ecclesiology requires an entirely new way of thinking about church, from the bottom up. Church plants and established churches have failed to recognize this important point. As a result, they have blended institutional church with missional church. This syncretism is both theologically and practically defective.

  • Institutional mission relies on preaching, teaching, and writing to implement missional ecclesiology. Missional Church relies not only on a Sunday ministry of Word, but promotes a rest of week ministry of the word that is carried out by a speaking-the-truth-in-love community.
  • Institutional mission adopts a program of mission during a set season of the year to implement missional ecclesiology. Missional Church does not see mission as a tack-on to your life; it is your life. You inhale gospel and exhale mission through ordinary rhythms of life.
  • Institutional mission sees mission as the responsibility of a select group of people not the whole church including staff. Missional Church requires pastors and staff to live a missional life making disciples and redeeming social ill. It equips ordinary people to do ordinary things with gospel intentionality.

Transitioning to Missional Church (Pt 1)

Posted on November 16, 2010

Missional Church has been quite the buzz in the evangelical church world. As with any buzz, it has a polarizing effect. People often adopt or reject the concept before they have properly understood it. This creates a bandwagon effect, uncritical early adopters who adopt an idea, jump on the bandwagon, without depth of understanding of what they have committed themselves to. Alternatively, there are the hypercritical naysayers, who naysay missional church as a fading fad. Ironically, the hypercritical naysayers commit the same error as the uncritical early adopters. Both responses fail to adequately investigate just what “missional church” is. This three part series will address the dangers in transitioning to missional church, either as a new church plant or an existing church.

Clarifying Missional Church

The missional church is not a church with a mission. All churches have a mission. Stated or unstated, all churches practice some kind of mission. It may be keep to the immoral out, to keep sound doctrine in, to pray for revival, or to send missionaries to the nations. Each of these churches is an example of church with a mission. The missional church, however is church as mission. In the words of Darrell Guder, the challenge “is to move from a church with mission to a missional church.”[1]
 In light of this important distinction, it is critical that transitioning churches understand the difference between church with a mission versus church as mission. To clarify the difference, consider the following chart:

Church WITH a Mission                                                Church AS a Mission

What You Do         (Task) Who You Are       (Identity)
Optional                  (Elective) Essential               (Core)
Extraordinary       (Elitist) Ordinary               (Everyone)
Project Focus        (Event) People Focus       (Disciple)

Traditional churches view the church as a church with a mission, at best. This mission may be sending missionaries to the nations, transforming the church neighborhood, or guarding and promoting sound doctrine. While all worthy missions, these are all examples of church with a mission. They focus on a task to be performed not and identity of the church. As a result, the mission of the church becomes optional not essential, creating a first and second tier Christianity comprised of ordinary and extraordinary Christians who do mission. At best, this accomplishes some mission but often remains very project focused not disciple-making driven.

What then is a missional church? Guder writes: “With the term missional we emphasize the essential vocation and nature of the church as God’s called and sent people.”[2] Missional churches are missional in nature and vocation. Missional is who they are, and as a result, mission is what they do. It is not simply a both/and. If mission as nature does not precede mission as vocation, mission-as-identity before mission-as-task, then churches that attempt to become or transition into missional church will either fail or fall into syncretistic missional ecclesiology. A depth of understanding that mission is what we are before it is what we do will be absolutely essential to planting or transitioning a missional church.

This post is adapted from my recent talk Why Missional Church Doesn’t Have a Shelf Life

[1] Darrell Guder ed., The Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, 6. This was a landmark book for the missional church movement in North America. Many missional leaders and organizations can trace their roots to Guder’s seminal influence on American ecclesiology.

[2] Guder, The Missional Church, 11.

How Cities Shape Us

Posted on November 13, 2010

Cities aren’t just socially dense; they are also culturally influential. Joel Kotkin in his almost classic work, The City: A Global History, describes cities as places that are sacred, safe, and busy. They are centers of spirituality (sacred), commerce (busy), and security (safe).

The strength of a city depends on the strength of these three forces—the spiritual, social, and commercial. These three forces also combine to produce culture in a city—a mix of ideas, behaviors, and products. How do these culturally influential cities shape us?