Envisioning the Congregation, Practicing the Gospel

A Guide for Pastors and Lay Leaders

John W. Stewart

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9780802871640
• eBook ISBN:
  9781467443241
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

This accessible and instructive book is designed to equip lay leaders of Protestant churches to better envision and practice gospel-driven ministry and mission in contemporary society.
Seasoned pastor and practical theologian John Stewart presents and explains five biblically mandated, foundational practices for being and nurturing the church: fellowship, discipleship, witness, service, and worship. Stewart argues that these five practices are normative, indispensable, and doable for congregations that seek to remain faithful to their risen Lord, and he offers memorable, achievable models of ways they are already being used in current mainline congregations.

Chapter 1

Reimagining the Future of Protestant Congregations

Then the Lord . . . said: “Write the vision; make it plain . . . so that a runner may read it.”

— Habakkuk 2:2

Why This Book?

Nearly two decades ago, while serving as a pastor in a western Michigan city, I searched for a book — or any resource! — that would provide thoughtful lay colleagues a clear, theologically concise, and biblically informed explanation of the distinctive vocation and mission practices of ordinary American Protestant congregations.

Later, while helping to prepare seminarians for their vocations as pastors, I searched in vain for one volume that would integrate three pivotal perspectives on contemporary Protestant congregations: an explanation of why the Christian gospel serves as a congregation’s normative conviction; a description of how biblically-­generated practices of discipleship can be nurtured through Christian communities; and analyses of values in American culture that infiltrate and often disorient Christian communities.

In both settings I knew that I was after what theologians call ecclesiology — that is, an exposition of the biblical origins, distinctive marks, essential practices, and Kingdom-­inspired mission of Christian churches. During this same period, however, I came across the writings of the late Peter Drucker, renowned authority on contemporary American organizations and their management. Drucker once insisted that most nonprofit organizations in America could not answer three questions: What business are you in? How is business? and What business ought you to be in? We now know that Drucker meant to include American congregations when he put forward those barbed, metaphor-­laced questions. I remain haunted by them.

This book’s classification rests somewhere between a textbook and a testimony. As a textbook about ecclesiology, it focuses only on traditional, ecumenical Protestant congregations in contemporary American society — what we usually call mainline churches. They are the kinds of Christian communities I study and with whom I consult.1 As a testimony, this book is an affirmation (apologia!) of the mission and ministries of congregations seeking to be faithful in a culture that competes for Christians’ loyalties.

The line between description and prescription is very thin here. Both textbook-­like research and testimonial affirmations point to urgent leadership tasks if these congregations are to thrive in the twenty-­first century. Obviously, no congregation, past or present, can live outside its socio-­cultural context. But any congregation can learn to name and critique the intrusions of the secular values that jeopardize its divine calling.

That is no easy assignment when congregations in rural North Dakota or Mississippi are so obviously different from those in Manhattan or central Los Angeles. Yet every congregation is called to be the “salt of the earth” and a “light of the world” in its own social setting. At the same time, leaders in every Christian community ought to be able to explain why and how their identity and mission is grounded in the affirmation that, “here is one body and one Spirit, [we] were called to the one hope . . . one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:4-5).

In short, this book addresses a continual challenge: how can Christian communities remain faithful to our risen Lord and his mission while being in the world but not captive to it?

For Whom Is It Written?

The following pages address lay leaders and pastors of established Protestant congregations, especially those who belong to the Baby Boomer generation and their immediate successors, Generation X or Gen Xers. Currently, these are the folks who usually lead and shape the futures of today’s North American mainline congregations.2 Boomers, born between 1946 and 1965, came of age during the Vietnam era. The Gen Xers, born between 1965 and 1983, came of age in the last third of the twentieth century. Thus the ages of current mainline leaders are, in rounded figures, between fifty and seventy-­five. Both groups have lived and worked in eras of significant social and cultural changes: shifts in patterns of work and family, high enrollment in higher education, assassinations of prominent leaders, two controversial wars, a growing gap between the economically endowed and the economically deprived, and a “new morality,” often called “expressive individualism.”

Sociologists such as Robert Wuthnow and Wade Clark Roof have probed deeply into the religious attitudes and faith practices of these cohorts of Americans and charted the “restructuring of American religion” as the twentieth century wound down. In my encounters across this nation, most of these Boomer and Gen-­Xer leaders are able, faithful, and well-­intentioned. Yet many oversee their congregations’ ministries within a frame of reference that seems out of sync with basic Christian convictions and the practices of Christian discipleship.

Furthermore, most of these leaders, who are well educated, typically appear unaware of the current research and abundant resources that can better illumine a congregation’s purpose, practices, and contexts. One primary intent of this book, therefore, is to broker the findings of some of these studies for these congregational leaders. I have tried to ensure that the studies — biblical, theological, sociological, and organizational — referenced herein are readily comprehensible for any inquisitive and patient lay leader.

At the same time, I am fully aware that most scholarly publications about congregations are probably inaccessible to lay leaders. To help compensate for that dilemma, I have incorporated summaries and lengthier quotations. As will become apparent, the publications in the newer academic field of “congregational studies” are especially insightful and relevant. In a real sense, scholarly publications, along with specialized websites, are gifts for the stewards of local congregational ministries. As Stanley Hauerwas once wrote, “The theologian’s task is not to present something new but to help the church to know what it has been given” (Hauerwas, 134).

Agendas Close to the Surface

Drucker’s barbed questions deserve theological answers, not simply programmatic ones. Theologians use the term “ecclesiology” when trying to describe the origins, nature, liturgies, practices, and mission of Christian communities. Because it is a foundational topic in Christian theology, writers on ecclesiology seek to make clear the essential affirmations and distinctive characteristics of a faithful Christian community. This book, then, is an ecclesiology for Protestant congregations. Or, in the words of the theologian Jürgen Moltmann, it seeks to “bring out what is specific, strange and special” about Christian congregations.

At the same time, however, the venerable adage “The church reformed is always in need of being reformed according to the Word of God” still holds. Two important assumptions are explicit in this wise saying. One is that the Word of God is the normative criterion by which Christians and their congregations determine their commitments and mission. “The Scriptures principally teach,” the respected Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647) affirms, “what man [sic] is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man.”

The second assumption is that leaders of the people of God in every era and cultural context are continually called, through the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit, to discern and appraise their congregation’s practices and call to missional responsibilities. That calling is no trivial assignment. It is a weighty responsibility for leaders to manage different styles of communal worship, identify faithful practices, ensure financial stability, hone governance protocols, endorse missional priorities, measure accomplishments, name cultural inhibitors, and reframe established programs. Efforts to transform congregation-­based ministries are especially challenging when a consensus among independence-­asserting leaders and consumer-­oriented members is not automatically forthcoming.

“Where there is no vision,” the Scriptures say, “the people perish” (Prov. 29:18, KJV). I contend that without a faithful, shared, informed theological vision, congregations rarely flourish. But Christian communities can also perish with a myopic or distorted vision. I fear that many mainline congregations have neglected their “first love” (Rev. 2:4) as stewards of the gospel. As we shall find, once-­lively Protestant congregations scattered across the American landscape now seem weary, confused, and self-­contained. Many are no longer restorers of hope in their surrounding communities. In this book, I hope to provide for lay leaders a constructive alternative to any dour trajectory that would consign mainline congregations to an “also ran” status in American Protestantism.

This book will affirm that the congregation is called to be the localized, particular expression of the Body of Christ. I stand with those Protestant theologians who understand the word “church” to mean, primarily, a congregation of Christian disciples in a specific time and place. I take with utmost seriousness the biblical promise of Jesus that “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matt. 18:20). When a congregation, empowered by the Holy Spirit, remains faithful to the gospel and creatively enacts the gospel-­driven practices that Jesus expects of his followers, then that congregation can be reassured it is truly a localized community of the people of God.

The community of Jesus’ followers does not better or more fully exist in institutional structures above or apart from local congregations. Such affirmations do not exclude or devalue one congregation covenanting with others. In fact, it is of special benefit when congregations join with others across a worldwide network to learn how to (a) bear witness to the gospel; (b) equip leaders for the “work of ministry;” and (c) speak for social justice and righteousness. When referring to such a worldwide, ecumenical network of churches, I will capitalize the term “Church.”

Finally, two seasoned authorities on American congregations, Nancy Ammerman and Carl Dudley, state passionately why congregatio...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Reimagining the Future of Protestant Congregations
• 2. Cultural Impulses in American Congregations
• 3. The Gospel in Four Dimensions
• 4. On Practices
• 5. Practicing the Arts of Belonging: Koinonia
• 6. Practicing the Arts of Discipleship: Mathētēs
• 7. Practicing the Arts of Witnessing: Martyria
• 8. Practicing the Arts of Serving: Diakonia
• 9. Practicing the Arts of Worship: Leitourgia Part One — Word, Sacraments, Prayer
• 10. Practicing the Arts of Worship: Leitourgia Part Two — Community, Family, Personal
• Afterword
• Works Cited
• Index