Twenty years ago, I was finishing my Ph.D. in missiology. My focus was on reaching Western culture, which was a bit odd back then. At the time, almost all my peers were studying international missions.
Then, a watershed book in the missional-incarnational movement was published: The Shaping of Things to Come by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch. Written at a time when many in the church sensed something needed to shift, Frost and Hirsch put thought to pen and articulated ideas that gave us both help and hope.
They helped the church to think more clearly about emerging ideas like the missional and incarnational church. They challenged the status quo marked by programs and institutions, arguing the church must move from Christendom to a more revolutionary form of Christianity. And they provided the hope that fresh expressions of the church, inspired by the early church, could flourish.
It’s now been 20 years since that book was published. Since then, hundreds of books with the word “missional” have come and gone, but what has changed in the interim—and what has stayed the same?
I reached out to my (now) friends Mike and Alan and asked them to tell us … well, the shape of things that have come, and where we go from here.
—Ed Stetzer
Next year, our book The Shaping of Things to Come will be 20 years old. Our little baby has grown up, become an adult and made its way in the world. And what a way it has made.
We don’t in any way want to appear to be ascribing any greater importance to the book than it deserves. It appeared after the work of the American (Lesslie) Newbiginians (Darrell Guder, George Hunsberger, Lois Barrett, Alan Roxburgh and Craig Van Gelder), and around the same time as the plethora of missional church planting books (by Outreach Editor-in-Chief Ed Stetzer, Murray, Malphurs) were coming out. But somehow, our little book stimulated the imagination of a great many church leaders around the world.
One of the most common affirmations we hear about the book is that we were able to explain what our readers were already sensing but couldn’t put into words. We gave specific language to a general yearning for a renewal of the mission of the church. By the turn of the century, the effectiveness of church growth theory was waning. The worst expressions of the church growth model had reduced mission to recruitment and worship to performance. When our book came along, naming this approach as “attractional” and insisting we recover a mission-incarnational posture in our world, it rang true for many readers.
Aside from resonating with a new generation of church planters, missionaries and pastors, what has resulted from our (and others’) call for a radical reorientation of the church around the mission of God? Disentangling the various threads of post-attractional church growth isn’t easy—and we won’t attempt it here—but for us there have been two heartening outcomes.
The first is the emergence of countless new expressions of church, such as microchurches, house church networks, missional communities and decentralized church-planting movements. The second is the way the current generation sees no need for these new expressions to compete with traditional churches, but rather to see microchurches and megachurches existing in a blended ecology, each contributing to the vitality and strength of the other.
This second outcome is both chastening and encouraging to us. We began the first edition of Shaping with a distinctly combative tone, calling for revolution not evolution, demanding that emerging missional churches rise up and challenge the status quo. Maybe 20 years ago such a bellicose tone was necessary to shake people out of a business-as-usual stupor, but it also contributed to an unhelpfully competitive relationship between proponents of attractional church growth and those planting emerging missional churches. Two decades later, we don’t sense the same pugnaciousness among new leaders. We hear more talk about a blended ecology of churches.
A Blended Ecology
Many years ago, the Church of England’s Fresh Expressions movement referred to the need for a mixed economy of church models, but today the language of biodiversity is more helpful. Younger leaders seem to believe the church landscape should be more like a forest than a monoculture like a lawn. Forests teem with a wide variety of fauna and flora, all the way down to the tiniest invertebrates and fungi. Their very diversity is necessary for the health of the whole system. The concerted action of termites, millipedes and other organisms are as indispensable as the tall trees that provide the canopy above.
Similarly, the church landscape needs fresh expressions—small, nimble faith communities—as well as large suburban churches, all contributing to the broader system. Rather than each despising the other, what would it look like if they were in meaningful conversation? Could they in fact resource each other in their own ways? Could each approach be more godly and more effective because of the voice of the other in their lives?
When we wrote Shaping, we were critiquing what we saw as a monolithic approach to church, one that lionized large congregations and baptized tools from the fields of management, marketing, pop psychology and communications. To stick with the ecology theme, they were like manicured lawns, monocultures that insisted all churches follow suit. What we see now is a celebration of diverse expressions of church, each bringing their peculiar strengths to the task of mission.
Within this “biodiversity” are several church expressions.
- Microchurches. Simple churches, messy churches, dinner churches, missional communities, house churches and decentralized church plants have much to contribute to the biodiversity of the church landscape. They often have no paid staff or property, and consist of a relatively small number of highly motivated members, although it should be noted that they often have a significantly larger number of nonmembers connected to their community.
They are highly relational and flexible in their structures and approach. They can exist everywhere and anywhere, being based around a variety of coalescing factors such as a particular area, a workplace, a community group, a theme or purpose, a project or an interest. Some microchurches are part of broader networks, like the missional communities of Tampa Underground, while others are completely independent.
- Neighborhood churches. Local churches have a strong sense of place. They often have a single pastor and a team of lay leaders. Influenced by the “new parish” discussions of Martin Robinson, Tim Soerens, etc., they are focused on a distinct geographical place, partnering with neighbors and ministering incarnationally to the felt needs of the area. They see themselves as joining with the city in creating a better society and are strongly relational, localized and organic in their structures.
- Regional churches. Once strongly influenced by church growth theory, regional churches are still quite attractional. They draw their members from a large geographical area, tending to be more program-driven in their ministry and mission. Because of their size, they have a more heavily systematized, organized and hierarchical structure. They are usually led by teams with specialist ministry focuses, and by a lead pastor who serves primarily as visionary and figurehead. These churches usually center most of their ministry around a particular physical hub or campus.
- Resource churches. This type of church can be either a regional church or a neighborhood church. What makes them distinct from these other models is that resource churches are strongly committed to multiplication. They feel called to resource church-planting movements and are therefore focused on raising up and developing leaders and fostering networks and partnerships across the city (or in some cases, across the country). They are so committed to this calling that they are willing to dedicate a significant proportion of their time and budget toward leadership development and multiplication. One well-known example of this approach would be Chicago’s Community Christian Church and its commitment to NewThing church-planting network.
It isn’t hard to imagine how resource churches could be a huge practical support to emerging microchurches. But we’re also hearing how microchurch leaders are helping to resource larger churches to recover their congregation’s missional mojo. This wasn’t an outcome we anticipated 20 years ago, but one we are glad to see.
Emerging Missional Churches
Back to the first outcome we mentioned earlier, we are delighted to see so many new, or simple, church models proliferating around the world. (Of course, house churches existed long before we wrote Shaping.) Back then we were referring to emerging missional churches, but now there are multiple terms for them and multiple expressions. We’ll simply focus on the forms that identify as microchurches. What have we observed about these churches?
- Microchurches meet in the round. Whatever specific expression they take, microchurches are committed to a form of church gathering that is inclusive, hospitable and generous. This is sometimes referred to as meeting “in the round” even though their meetings might not be arranged in an actual circle. In Household of Freedom, American theologian Letty Russell writes, “To speak of ‘the church in the round’ is to provide a metaphorical description of a church struggling to become a household of freedom, a community where walls have been broken down so that God’s welcome to those who hunger and thirst for justice is clear. This unknown reality is described in terms of what we have all experienced: gathering in the round, with or without tables, and experiencing the welcome of others.”
Microchurches are small, which allows for this kind of inclusion, the type of community that notices everyone. Russell uses the metaphor of a table to describe the work usually done in these churches. In fact, she sees church in the round as an amalgam of three different types of tables. First, it is like a workplace roundtable meeting, a gathering that fosters collaboration and creativity. It also is like a kitchen table, where the kids do their homework and where their parents prepare meals and keep the family accounts. For microchurches, this means coming together to work for justice in solidarity with those at the margins of society. And the third type of table is what Russell called the welcome table, but we take her to mean the formal dining table, the place where we host dinner parties, places of conviviality, hospitality and storytelling.
- Microchurches are multi-voiced. Related to being in the round, microchurches draw out the contributions of all—women and men, children, the marginalized, the overlooked. And this isn’t only for the purposes of stronger community. There is a missional dimension to multi-voiced church, as British theologian Stuart Murray and his wife Sian Williams write, “Active participants in healthy multi-voiced churches are much more likely to be confident in sharing their faith with others, ready to engage in social action, hospitable to their neighbors, alert to pastoral opportunities beyond the church, and able to participate in gracious dialogue with people of other faiths or none.”
In many microchurches, the congregation searches for the purpose of Christ together, to find his mind for their life and mission. Finding the mind of Christ relies on a corporate interpretation of Scripture, or a “congregational hermeneutic,” to which individuals are always subject. That is, to the mind of the whole community, gathered in the presence of Christ.
- Microchurches eat together. Writer, futurist and scholar Leonard Sweet once said, “Whenever I’m asked, ‘What is God up to?’ my most common answer is, ‘Have you heard of the dinner church movement?” Dinner churches are a type of microchurch where the meal and the table are not simply points of distinction from other churches; they are essential to the congregation’s ecclesiology. This vision of church values conviviality, collaboration, communion and collectivity. As the father of the dinner church movement, Vernon Fosner says, “There’s a profound difference between doing Christian formation around tables instead of a teaching environment. For Jesus, the dinner table was the invitation to faith. Jesus clearly embedded the gospel into the dinner-table theology.”
At St. Lydia’s in Brooklyn, dinner church involves communal meal prep to build community and bring people closer to God. During the meal there are prayers, readings, songs and discussion, and the Eucharist is shared midway through the gathering—a meal within a meal. In fact, we’ve found even those microchurches that don’t meet for dinner are committed to recentering the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper in their gatherings.
- Microchurches are missional. Perhaps the greatest proponent of missional microchurches is Brian Sanders, founder of the Underground Network in Tampa and author of Microchurches: A Smaller Way. He calls microchurches as “a new, nimble, empowered, indomitable church in our time,” describes them as “teams of people who worship like monks, live like family and engage the world like missionaries.”
Indeed, the Underground is comprised of over 200 microchurches, each committed to responding to a need in the city. These include ministering with women who have been harmed by sexual abuse; addressing men dealing with addiction, homelessness, depression and incarceration; challenging distorted images of the Black community; ministering to university and college campuses; and providing doula services for single mothers before, during and after birth. Aside from the great good they bring to the city, their involvement in microchurches makes every member of the Underground deeply committed to mission.
Bree Mills, founding director of Micro Churches Australia, says microchurches have five core elements: They are small, Christ-centered, have a simple ecclesiology, are committed to multiplication and value collaboration with other churches.
Across the world, microchurches have proven effective in high-density urban settings where megachurches can’t find a foothold. They have the capacity to be hyper-flexible and innovative, giving them a strategic advantage amid heavily dechurched and unchurched populations. In fact, we have seen microchurches planted in all kinds of environments—pubs, nightclubs, sports facilities, trains, workplaces, film sets, you name it.
Still More to Come
G.K. Chesterton once quipped, “On five occasions in history, the church has gone to the dogs, but on each occasion, it was the dogs that died.” If Chesterton were alive today, he’d probably think we are living through the sixth occasion. The debilitating effects of the pandemic are still being felt. Pastors are exhausted and disillusioned after negotiating their churches through various COVID-19 restrictions. We live in a time of unprecedented polarization. Church membership is falling. The economy is tanking. There are wars and rumors of wars.
And yet, we think we are living at a time of great creativity and innovation in the church. We have focused here on mainly one current expression of missional church, namely that of microchurches. But we have also observed exciting developments in larger movements that incorporate diverse expressions of churches and church-planting methodologies. Exploring them would take an article in its own right, but it appears the pressure our churches are experiencing is squeezing out spiritual entrepreneurs and myriad fresh expressions of mission across the world. These include hybrid churches, churches in the metaverse, messy churches and new ecclesial movements in mainline denominations. And there is still more to come.
Suffice to say, we think the metaphorical dogs will die again this time. And we are very honored to have even played a small part in what God has been doing over these last two decades in shaping the things that have come.
Michael Frost is founding director of the Tinsley Institute at Morling College in Sydney, Australia, and one of the founders of the Forge Mission Training Network. Alan Hirsch is the founder of 100Movements, Forge Mission Training Network and Future Travelers.
