Posted on November 27, 2008 - by Stephen Murray
Total Church, Community, Maturity and Patience
After making a biblical case for the necessity of living breathing community as the best context for the gospel and the work of the gospel, Steve Timmis and Tim Chester put forward the following caution:
‘If you warm to this vision of Christian community then start where you are. Sell the vision by modelling the vision. Don’t become a pain to your existing congregation, telling them everything they are doing is wrong. Become a blessing by offering hospitality, showing practical care, dropping in on people. Create around you a group of Christians who will share their lives and encourage one another in the faith. You might start with your home group. Often home groups are little more than a meeting. Make yours a community by acting like a community. You don’t have to mount a campaign for change – just get on with it and make community infectious. Create something that oter people want to be part of. And think about whether you could establish a context in which people in your church can hang out together and invite unbelieving friends: something like a regular cafe night, an open home or football practice‘ (Total Church, p.48)
What I appreciate about Steve and Tim is that they somehow manage to be radical, challenging, mature, sensitive and patient all at the same time. My temptation is to err on one of those at the exclusion of the others. Its easy to be radical and just forge ahead disregarding all the genuine people of God around you who might not be ready to go where you lead. Its easy to make a lot of noise about your newly found convictions and not worry about whether or not you are alienating others. Having read much of Steve and Tim’s literature, following Tim’s blog and listening to all their talks from the recent Total Church conference in San Diego, I’m convinced that these guys know how to bring balance and sanity to the missional conversation which is, by nature, a very radical conversation. I’m greatly encouraged and rebuked not to simply go out and tell everyone that they’ve got it wrong but rather simply to get out there to love and live in God’s new community.
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Stephen Murray
Christian, husband to my beautiful Robin, missional dreamer, pastor, church planter, Arsenal, Sharks and Springbok supporter, surfer (in the real sea), patriotic South African, Capetonian. Find out more about the church planting work I'm involved in at my support blog.
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November 27, 2008
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jdodson said:
I couldn’t agree more, Stephen. Their writing is so balanced it probably won’t be a big hit in the U.S.–not controversial enough. I love their emphasis on community as a product of a community focused gospel.
My only concerns are the heavy emphasis on dialogical preaching, anabaptist leanings, and defining the Gospel as “word-centered” to the exculsion of the Spirit. They, of course, affirm teh SPirit but seem to footnote his role in their writing.
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November 30, 2008
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Steve Timmis said:
That’s an interesting observation about those concerns. If you go to our website (www.thecrowdedhouse.org) you’ll hear a lot of preaching that isn’t ‘dialogical’ at all. What we’re doing is challenging the status of monologue preaching. Dialogical preaching isn’t an inferior way of teaching the Bible, and monologue isn’t always the best or most appropriate form. I use it more than Tim does, but that’s because of my context and what we’re trying to do. In the end, it’s a gospel decision. As for our Anabaptist leanings, I can’t really engage with that as I don’t know what you mean by anabaptist. It’s a pretty wide, catch-you-all category with people meaning whatever they want to mean. I know I mean the evangelical anabaptists who were committed to the gospel and community and died for their convictions. I don’t agree with everything they did, said or wrote, but then I guess even the most fervent Reformed guy wouldn’t agree with everything Calvin said either? Sadly, the anabaptists have had a bad press for such a long time and that’s primarily because they didn’t write a lot of church history or have the leisure or opportunity to compose worthy theological works. As for our relative lack of emphasis on the Spirit, that is something we should consider. You could take a look at our Statement of Faith on the website. I think that gives him due and appropriate profile. It’s also interesting that when people join us from more conservative churches, they often take a while to get used to our ‘charismatic’ culture and emphasis! In the end, perhaps it depends on where you’re coming from! But thanks for the promptings and challenges. Enjoy grace.
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December 1, 2008
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Jonathan Dodson said:
Steve,
PLease take the concerns from a supportive not unduly critical spirit. I enjoyed your sessions at the TC conference, and your movement has significantly influenced our church plant in Austin, Texas. Thanks for the clarification on monologue vs. dialogue; I am open to either, it just seemed that you guys made some pretty strong statements against monologue during the TC conference.
I raised this question of the neglect of the Spirit during the conference. Recently, I gave a talk at an Acts 29 conference on Spirit-led Ecclesiology. In it I argued that we are subtly replacing the Spirit with the gospel in some church planting circles, when it the church is a community created by the Spirit, not the gospel. An important distinction, especially if we are functionally trinitarian, calling people into relationship with the Trinity.
Enjoying grace,
Jonathan