The Great Giveaway
These are more for my own reference, but you may find them interesting, I sure did! Wow!
Some quotes from The Great Giveaway
By David E. Fitch
Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2005
0-8010-6483-X
“The thesis of this book is that evangelicalism has ‘given away’ being the church in North America. Simply put, evangelical churches have forfeited the practices that constitute being the church either (a) by portioning them off to various concerns exterior to the church or (b) by compromising them so badly that they are no longer recognizable bas being functions of the church” (13)
“…I will contend that the main culprit in this ‘giveaway’ is evengelicalism’s complicity with modernity.” (13)
Chapter 1: Our definition of Success
“Our focus on numbers, bigness, and large institutions is … rooted in two of America’s sacred cows: the autonomy of the individual and the necessity to organize for economic efficiency.” (33)
Sacred Cow #1: Autonomy of the individual….
“The question is not ‘Do decisions for Christ matter?’ Rather the question is ‘Are decisions for Christ significant and of ultimate importance if they do not represent an individual’s actual decision to follow Christ into a life of discipleship and become part of the kingdom of God via the body of Christ?’ ” (34)
“…The decisions that we count today may be only vapors in the air. At the end of modernity, evangelicals can no longer oversimplify and just pursue personal decisions of faith from people. We must seek ways to successfully immerse lives into the life of Christ and his kingdom.” (34
“Amidst a fragmented culture… with many competing ways to live, a decision must be followed by the serious engagement of that decision maker into a way that makes that decision intelligible. We must preach salvation not just as an escape from hell, but as an overall repentance and turning away from a world gone awry into its own self-indulgences. We must preach salvation not merely as a personal ticket out of hell but as the entrance into the reality of the lordship of Jesus Christ were God is working to bring about his kingdom unto the day that he returns. This may require bringing together justification and sanctification into a more unified ordo salutis where one simply cannot make sense without the other.” (36)
Sacred Cow #2: Numbers…
“…the question is not whether harvesting more souls out of darkness into Christ’s kingdom is not more desirable than fewer souls. And the question is not whether we should organize churches intentionally. The question is, What kind of organization facilitates the inner workings of a local body of Christ that are necessary to properly mature new believers into followers of Christ and participants in his salvation through the body of Christ?” (38)
“…true community diminishes with increased size. There simply is no way to efficiently mass-organize thousands of people for the goals of community. Community is inefficient. It is nigh impossible to organize multiple groups who can genuinely come together to pray for one another, edify one another, support and affirm one another, correct and forgive one another. Because in mass, groups will always tend to come together based upon affinity instead of the Lord’s Table. Groups will not come together as black and white, Jew and Gentile, woman and man, poor and wealthy. Such groups, when mass organized, easily degenerate into self-fulfillment enclaves that last only as long as we each have need of specific services and supports.” (42)
“[A vision of success based on faithfulness] is purged of modernity’s individualism and tendencies toward crass commodification of salvation. It reflects a salvation that is from God, embodied in a people’s character and a way of life. This vision for success aims toward faithfulness in being the body of Christ before the watching world. The goal is not bigness. The goal is to inflame the inner workings of the body.” (43)
Practices that Measure faithfulness…
“Count baptisms instead of decisions” (44)
“Use qualitative measures of community” (44)
“Measure the number of new church plants, not the size of church buildings” (46)
Chapter 2: Evangelism
“Within our history, many of the evangelistic methods I’ve just described have succeeded in bringing large numbers of people to Christ. But a new generation has arrived and their culture challenges these methods. This new generation is not impacted by the ways evangelicals have traditionally presented truth and defended their faith. They experience and engage truth differently than previous generations.” (48)
“What has changed about truth in postmodernity? At the risk of oversimplifying, I propose that there are two shifts to the way people experience knowledge in postmodernity. (50)… One of these shifts is the way postmoderns experience modern science. (50) … A second shift in the perception of reality is the way postmoderns doubt that objective truth is accessible to the critical individual mind. (52)”
“…evangelism among postmoderns takes on the character of witness as opposed to coercive evangelism…. In this context, the task of the witness is not to argue or contend for universal meta-proofs but to live truth so deeply and sufficiently that it trows alternative worlds into ]epistemic crisis’ and leaves open the door to those in that crisis for conversion and enterence into the kingdom of God of Israel and Jesus Christ.” (57)
“In postmodernity, truth is about character.” (59)
Practices that restore the church to the center of evangelism…
“Practice hospitality” (60)
“Reinvigorate the ministry of prayer, mercy and justice” (61)
“Be a community”(62)
“Create room for the ‘third space’ evangelism” (63)
“Worship” (65)
“Reinvigorate the rite of baptism” (65)
Chapter 3: Leadership
“The idea of ‘leadership’ has captivated evangelicals in the last twenty years. During this time, leadership conferences have proliferated among evangelicals, along with leadership books and consultantships. These conferences train pastors how to manage staff, inspire volunteers, cast visions for growth, and generally lead churches as effective organizations…. This rise of the ‘CEO-leader-pastor’ is recent.” (73)
“behind these evangelical notions of leadership stand the assumptions of modernity. Modernity subscribes to the notion of scientific objectivity even when classifying sociological behavior. It is the modern habit to forever seek to grasp predictable principles of sociological behavior that stand above historical contingencies and call it science. Evangelical experts on leadership fall into line with these modern assumptions when they seek out timeless principles that will make every leader effective and predict positive outcomes.” (75)
“…we should note that the word leader in the New Testament is generally avoided in the New Testament context of the church…. Roman Catholic theologian Hans Küng outlines how the New Testament writers saw that any words that suggest a relationship of rulers and the ruled were unusable in the new community context. The New Testament on this reading appears to carefully avoid the models of authority available in surrounding society for defining leaderships in the church. (80) Why was the New Testament so careful? Most certainly it is because the New Testament church carried the consciousness of Christ’s words…” (81)
“Though we may disagree how ti implement Jesus’s commands regarding authority and leadership within the church, we can surely conclude that Jesus instructs the church to resist modeling its own leadership in any way on the secular notions of leadership that exist outside of the church.” (81)
Practice for restoring the link between the pastorate and the virtues…
“Reinvigorate ordination into the service of Christ’s Church: Dealing with the problem of rogue ordinations” (89)
“See seminaries as places of servant formation” (91)
“Form confessional groups for pastors” (91)
“Nurture emerging leaders and bi-vocational clergy” (92)
“Establish multiple leadership” (93)
“Grow authentic leaders” (93)
Chapter 4: The Production of Experience
“Traditional evangelicals design worship services for teaching sound doctrine.” (97)
“The other evangelical approach to worship is labeled ‘charismatic’ worship because of its emphasis on an ‘experience.’ It is also called ‘contemporary’ worship. It’s goal is self-expression. Whereas traditional evangelicals orient their worship services toward the sermon, contemporary evangelicals orient their worship services toward simple praise and worship choruses that invite and nurture personal expression.” (101)
“The problem with evangelical worship…. is that it fails to form experience in a people that is faithful to the reality of God in Jesus Christ. As a result, evangelical worship gives away the production of experience by default to the culture industries inherent in American life.” (104)
“Only through immersion can our ’selves’ be ordered doxologically so as to experience God as he is and live the Christian life in the world.” (105)
“Immersive worship removes the self from the center of worship: the liturgical necessity” (107)
“Immersive worship requires art: toward truth as beauty” (108)
“Immersive worship is formative: Worship as lex orandi, lex credendi” (110)
“Immersive worship is what happens via the alive body, not a lecture hall or a pep rally: Worship according to Lindbeck” (113)
Practices for finding our way back to liturgy and art in Christian worship…
“Restore liturgy to the church and make it accessible” (116)
“Pattern worship after call and response” (118)
“Revive the church calendar” (118)
“Reinvigorate the Eucharist” (119)
“Use candles and other tactile symbols” (120)
“Use visual arts” (121)
“Sing substantive music” (121)
“See the sanctuary as an art gallery” (122)
Chapter 5: The Preaching of the Word
“There are some assumptions that undergird this evangelical love affair with expository preaching…. These assumptions concerning expository preaching feed into the modernism of evangelical culture where we are comfortable with hardened notions of propositional truth.” (131)
“Expository preaching enables the person in the pew to remain isolated from further conversation and testing of the Scriptures within the congregation.” (133)
“It requires a community to interpret the Word” (135)
Practices for returning to the faithful hearing of the Word…
“Return to the lectionary” (147)
“Practice performative reading” (147)
“Tailor the conclusion of the sermon for response” (148)
“Employ narrative-based preaching” (149)
“Promote communal discourse” (150)
“Persevere in times of conflict” (150)
Chapter 6: Justice (Our Understanding Of)
“… evangelical churches still have trouble practicing social and economic justice right inside the local congregation. We seek to minister to the poor or the disadvantaged by going to them. But rarely do we actually minister to the poor or disadvantaged among us.” (155)
“Evangelicals can detach justice ministries in this way from the local congregation due to tour individualizing habits inherited from modernity. We view the church as a voluntarist institution composed of and in service to individuals.” (157)
“The work of James Dunn challenges our evangelical churches to manifest a justice among ourselves that displays the kind of righteousness that can only be God’s.” (170)
“Whether intentional community of a common purse or whether we come together maintaining separate bank accounts, I contend that the development of this crucial disposition of stewardship and practices to live in that disposition are what shall enable us as evangelicals to carry out justice as a community in but not of capitalism.” (173)
“I propose that the ‘benevolent fund’ be such a practice that can form this kind of community in but not of capitalism. Simply put, at the time of the celebration of our oneness in Christ, around the reception of the gift of God in Christ, in the Lord’s Supper, we must Reinvigorate e the practice of benevolence as the outgrowth of that time around the Lord’s Table.” (175)
Chapter 7: Spiritual Formation
“Psychology and Christianity… differ in important ways. (186) … The two differ in the way reality is construed, the way each one sees the world, and the quality and shape of the experience produced. (187) … It turns out then that Christianity and psychology do not necessarily lead to the same truth and experience. Instead they are two different ways of interpreting our reality, producing two different ways of experiencing and living in the world. Indeed, it is possible that psychology and Christianity may diametrically oppose one another. (187)
“The above does not mean that Christians have nothing to learn from psychology. Indeed, we should not ignore therapy’s profound effects upon people’s lives both in and outside the church.” (194)
“…therapy requires Christian preaching, teaching and wisdom.” (194)
Practices for returning to confession…
“Recapture the confessional.” (196)
“Practice therapist agreements within the church” (198)
Chapter 8: Moral Education
“Typically, evangelicals respond to moral issues in the public school by (a) engagint the publical school on moral content (the public schooling activism option), (b) withdrawing their children entirely from the public school (the homeschooling option), or (c) starting up a parochial school as an extension of the local church body (the parochial schooling option).. Any of these options, however, accomplishes little for evangelicals when we lack a moral community as a way of life to initiate our children into.” (215)
Practices that raise up our children to be faithful disciples…
“Do deliberate catechesis.” (223)
“Use children’s curriculum that keeps the church together as a learning community” (224)
“Integrate communal worship and children’s ministries” (224)
“Subordinate the public schools” (225)
Grace and Peace,
`tim
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