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Review
The Shaping of Things to Come
Mike Frost, Sydney Baptist lecturer, author and
missionary, was the key speaker at both the recent CMS
Summerview conference and at the Gathering. David
Rietveld says his most recent (co-authored) book, The
Shaping of Things to Come is a great read, if for no
other reasons than it is written by Australians who practise
mission in our context.
Mike’s analysis of the current church’s is
threefold. Firstly, the church is ‘attractional’:
we run services or events, and wait for people to come. The
problem is they are not coming. Mike argues that we need to
be missional; we need to move into what he calls
‘proximity spaces’, where Christians and
not-yet-Christians can interact.
Secondly, Mike contends the church is dualistic.
We have a ‘sacred-secular’ divide in our thinking.
What we do on Sunday, in the church, is sacred. We think
that the clergy are set apart, sacred, (and the laity is
not?). This flows from Greek, not biblical, thinking, . Mike
encourages us to take Jesus into every nook and cranny of
life; to view all of life as sacred, and all Christian
ministries as sacramental.
Thirdly, the church is hierarchical. Mike
encourages us to adopt an Ephesians 4 plurality of
leadership, which recognises diverse spiritual gifting.
Mike’s broad critique is timely and insightful. We
are sitting around on Sundays, wondering why people
don’t come to us. We go to work or wherever on Mondays
and live a life in sharp contrast to what we do on Sundays.
We look within existing models and structures for answers,
yet few seem to be finding them there.
However, I find Frost’s critique of the
church is too dualistic. People still come to us
Anglicans for baptisms, weddings, funerals, and occasionally
to seek God. Hierarchically structured churches can be
empowering (enabled ministry). The New Testament, whilst
moving away from the sharp Old Testament distinction of the
sacred vs secular does not totally abandon the concept of
the sacred. Jesus promises to be with us when we come
together in worship (Matt. 18:20), and in evangelism
(28:20). The OT concept of the sacred place, where God is
especially present, becomes in the NT a sacred occasion,
with Jesus being especially present.
My greatest concern with The Shaping of Things to Come is
not what it says, but that it might leave the impression
that the mainstream church is broken beyond repair. However,
just because corporate ‘come-to-us’ worship is
less effective as outreach than it used to be does not mean
we ought to abandon it all together.
So read this book, but whatever you do, be on
about both worship and mission.
David Rietveld is Senior Minister at BayWest
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Mike Frost (seen on screen) and Tim Scheuer were interviewed
by David
Rietveld at the Gathering.
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