A bunch of blog time is being spent on leadership these last couple of days (see Darryl, Bob, Bill, Todd, Dave, Scot), and I thought I would add my unique, white-male voice… Actually this is from a talk I gave at Verge, LA last year.  It is a bit longish, but I believe gets to the heart of the issues.  If you would prefer the video, see below)

The Death of Leadership: Christ, Co-Leading, and Missional Living

In these postmodern times we are used to hearing of the death of the author, the death of the text, and even the death of the book (unless you have a Kindle).  Well, today, it is the death of leadership, for Christ our leader is the Crucified One, and what servant is greater that his master?  But many have not heard of this death.  It has been drowned out by the dearth of leadership books, even Christian leadership books, and I’m sure many of us, and myself included, have read them.  But while these leadership books, and conferences, and seminars tell of many helpful things, but they do not know of the Crucified Christ.  And this makes all the difference.  They lack a leadership that lives through the cross.  According to the pattern of the Crucified Christ I believe missional leadership must nurture new structures, new processes, and new people who will lead through living and dying in Christ.

Philippians Hymn

Few turn to the hymn of Philippians 2 as a leadership model, so hopefully we are on the verge of something indeed.  Here we find a pattern, or model of Christian leadership and community.  It is the narrative of Christ, of the incarnation, of the gospel.  And if leaders do not practice it, then the community will not follow it, and then the lost will not see it, and they will not get it even when they hear it.

Philippians 2:5-11

⁵ In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had:

⁶ Who, although being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; ⁷ rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. ⁸ And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! ⁹ Therefore God exalted him to the highest placeand gave him the name that is above every name,¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,in heaven and on earth and under the earth,¹¹ and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

There is a three part pattern to this passage.  It is the pattern of although—did not—but. Although Christ has the very status, or being, of God, he did not take advantage of his status and use it selfishly.  But rather humbled himself in his incarnation (“being made in human likeness”) and crucifixion (“by becoming obedient to death–even death on a cross”).  And the result is that God works, God exalts, God saves in Christ.  This hymn to Christ reveals the pattern of our lives, the pattern by which we related with one another.  It is the pattern by which we learn the death of leadership.

Indeed, the apostle Paul who uses this hymn to exhort the Philippians to Christ-likeness.  But Paul did not leave them without an example, but rather understood and practiced his own apostolic ministry according to this same narrative pattern.  In 1 Corinthians 9 Paul speaks about the rights of an apostle to receive funds for their ministries.  But Paul did not exercise this right, but worked to pay his own way.  And he also claims that while he has the right of freedom in all things, he does not exercise this right selfishly, but rather became a slave of all for the sake of the gospel.  What does that sound like?  It sounds exactly like Christ in the Philippians Hymn.  And even within the very contentious issue of slavery Paul did not lay down the apostolic hammer on Philemon so that he would release Onesimus.  But instead he acted in love toward Philemon, seeking his consent on the matter.  This, then, is the death of leadership that Paul points us toward when he speaks of Christ, a cruciform leadership that lays down it rights and its status in love and becomes a servant to all.

At Life on the Vine

Because of this pattern in Christ I believe missional leadership must nurture new structures, new processes, and new people who will lead according to Christ’s example.  At Life on the Vine we try to live this out.

For us, leadership at the highest level is structured as a co-pastorate.  There is no ‘senior’ or ‘lead’ pastor where the buck finally stops, where the decisions are finally made, where final authority resides.  While our community was planted by one person, David Fitch, he very quickly brought me on as a co-pastor.  And then later we brought on a third co-pastor to balance out the giftings among us.  We did this in order to spread out the ministry, offer opportunities for younger leaders to grow, but most importantly, as a structured model of shared leadership.  As co-pastors we had to practice the pattern of although—did not—but.  Although we were called as pastors and therefore elevated by a certain authority, we did not, we could not practice unilateral power, but mutually submitted to one another as we lead the community.  This was embedded in our pastor structure because Christ-like leadership is not merely servant leadership.  It does not function on top but then not act like it.  Rather we have given up having a ‘lead’ anything at all by creating an alternative structure.

In addition to having a structure of co-leadership, we practice various processes of communal discernment that hand leadership to the entire community, or parts of the community.  For example, according to the same pattern, although all the pastors were in complete agreement regarding how we should move forward concern the issue of women in church leadership, and we had the authority of make a decision, we did not lead from position and privilege.  But instead we submitted to a year long process where different members of the community presented biblical perspectives on the issue, culminating in a 2-month long council to discern the issue.  In another case, an issue with someone on our shepherd board, the pastors were again in complete agreement in how to proceed, but the person involved was not receiving things particularly well.  So we brought the whole issue to our shepherd for their discernment, trusting that Christ would lead through this process and that all involved would both be formed into Christ-like character and that the issue would be resolved not through the imposition of a position, but through the constant relational work of the Spirit opened by practicing the death of leadership.

And while these types of processes are bolstered by a structure of co-leadership, it really comes down practicing the death of leadership on a personal level.  This is living without having to justify yourself, without having to constantly defend yourself to others.  It means not needing everyone to always understand you.  In the midst of arguments it means just sticking to the issues without getting personal or taking things personally.  It involves actively creating spaces for other to flourish while not receiving any credit and minimal appreciation.  It means giving over tasks and responsibilities that you really enjoy to someone else so they can grow.  It means submitting to others in the little things even when you have a sense they are wrong, and then only forcing issues when it is essential for the group to move forward.  In all these ways following Christ through the death of leadership entails overcoming personal insecurity and immaturity, so that one can rest in the work of Christ in the community rather than seeking to manage and control everything that is going on.

Now, you might be thinking that every Christian leader should exhibit these characteristics, the characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit.  Of course!  But it is much easier to hide immaturity and insecurity, to mask a lack of the Spirit’s work in your life in a hierarchical leadership structure which does not demand processes of communal discernment.  When someone knows exactly who is their superior and who is under them, then they know exactly how to get whatever “ego” fix they need, whether it is seeking approval or asserting authority, even while masking it as servant leadership, even while they excelling in various ministry results.  It is for these reasons that missional leadership, under the sign of the Cross, must nurture new structures, new processes, and new people who live, lead, and die, laying down their rights and status in love and becoming a servants to all.

Missional Leadership

So, then, how is the death of leadership also missional leadership?  First, the structure of co-leadership, the processes of communal discernment, and the practice of personal cruciformity are all ways of saying the same thing, namely, that this community is marked by the gospel, by Christ-likeness.  As I said before, if leaders do not it, then the community will not do it, and then the lost will not see it, and they will not get it even when they hear it.  Second, communities marked by the death of leadership will always be marked my brokenness growing into life.  When you lead this way it is impossible to put leaders on a pedestal, which opens the door for everyone to lead out of brokenness and into life.  When everyone is emptying themselves as Christ did, it has the strange effect of raising everyone up as they are deployed in creative expressions of the gospel.  Lastly, this is missional leadership, at least for us, because God moves in mysterious ways.  It is funny.  There are people in our congregation who literally say time and again to me, “I don’t know why I stay at Life on the Vine.  I don’t fit here, I’m not even sure that I like it hear, and I don’t like they way you do things.”  But it is those exact people whom God has used to bring others to Christ, and those people feel at home with us.  Isn’t that weird?  One man told me two years ago that he was discerning leaving our community.  But he had started a letter writing friendship with a man who was in prison for breaking into our sanctuary.  He eventually received Christ and was baptized on Easter Sunday.  There are at least two other stories I could share about people who really are upset with the leaders at Life on the Vine, but God is using them to bring people to Christ and then those people are finding a place among us.  I believe it is because the leaders at Life on the Vine have embraced a missional leadership of the cross, and out of that death the Father is exalting Christ and bringing others to life.

Conclusion

Some much more could be said, but my hope is that the next big thing the church is on the verge of will be the death of leadership as an expression of the gospel, as living in Christ-likeness, as a bearing the cross, not only personally, but structurally and procedurally.

This kind of leadership is certainly not from the top-down as in a hierarchy, nor is it merely from the bottom up, as some form of leaderless organization, nor is it a leading from the front as those who have gone before, as some missional books describe it.  But it is leading from below while running forward, as if one were trying to fly a kite when there is just not enough wind.  You are down on the ground, down below, yet moving forward, for the whole purpose of the church rising up on the breath of the Spirit, roaring high.  And people don’t watch the person holding the string, they watch the kite in its glory, rising to new life and love, and at the center of its frame it bears the sign of the cross.

—

My reading of Philippians is based on Micheal Gorman’s Inhabiting the Cruciform God.

Too often the efforts of church planting and evangelism in unreached places, goes by the term ‘missions.’  But when a group of believers is sufficiently gathered, we then say that a ‘church’ has been established.  The linking of terms in a before-after type of relationship has often been propagated by mission agencies themselves.

But is this a good way of talking about things? When mission grows up, does it become a church?

The problem with this is well considered by Hoedemaker’s summary of a missiologist from the last generation,

“Can a development of mission into church really be considered a maturing? Is it not, rather, a betrayal of the fundamental missionary meaning of “church” (the church happens as the Gospel of the kingdom is brought to the world)? “The Legacy of J.C. Hoekendijk (International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 19 no 4 O 1995, p 166-170)

Don’t many of us feel that way now, after the explosion of the missional church, after the critique of the inward focused church?  It’s the church really always already mission?

But it seems Hoekendijk, and others who follow him, overreact.  Not in their criticism, but in its result.

The criticism is right.  We ought not separate the church from mission, and mission doesn’t create a church entity, but rather the church is such as engaged in mission.

But the result of this theological emphasis tends to absolutize, or abstract, from the real, historical processes of, dare I say, actually planting a church.  While mission isn’t some great big arrow that points toward a church building (like the picture above), there is a necessary process of maturation and development.  It is this process, that while unfortunate, mission agencies hope to convey in describing a shift from a ‘mission’ to a ‘church’.

We must understand that while everything is mission, or that the church is missional, there still is the initial planting, the reaping, and the sending out to plant some more.  In the past the first part was considered missions and the latter parts a maturing church.  Does this mean a selling out to institutionalism?  Maybe.  Does it always mean this?  No.

It just means that some plant (a missionary, an evangelists, one gifted with apostolic fervor), and others reap (a shepherd, a prophet, a teacher).  All the gifts are used toward the maturing of the church for mission.  And at some point, a new church will begin to send out mature missionaries to plant somewhere else.  But to affirm this process is not to deny the missionary nature of the church.

Indeed, as Hoedemaker states concerning Hoekendijk,

there may be traces of an original evangelical spirituality in this suspicion, akin to the revivalistic mistrust of all ecclesial establishment.

I’m all for revival and pray for them myself, but I too worry of this too oft knee-jerk reaction against the establishment as a pietistic impulse.  And certainly, while John Wesley was saved by pietists, he also organized his movement and changed English-speaking ecclesial landscape.

I think not. But that is the buzz that I’ve been hearing?  And it get’s me all rankled up.  Really?  Are people beginning to think this.  I’m probably hot and bothered because I’m part of a team planning the next Missional Learning Commons here in Chicago in a couple of weeks.  I just don’t get it.  But if I were to guess, here are some of the reasons why some a concerned that the unconference is becoming the next Big Conference.

An unconference is a facilitated, participant-driven conference centered on a theme or purpose. The term “unconference” has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees and sponsored presentations.~wikipedia

1) The unconference is becoming more common and more common: Anti-Cool Reflex. I think for many on the edges of the church, who for good reason engaged in the emerging church conversation or are interested in missional theology, we have created an anti-cool reflex, or dare I say, hipster reflex, that says once something starts catching on we must immediately distance ourselves from it.  Now that unconferences are catching on, many people just hit the cynical button and start poo poo-ing. So I’m calling this the Anti-Cool Reflex.

2) The unconference is connected to some ‘sponsor’: Anti-Sellout Reflex. Yes, note the scare quotes.  This I believe is a very selective knee-jerk reaction.  Just because an unconference is sponsored by something doesn’t mean it is selling out.  Sure the sponsor is hoping to gain something by sponsoring, but often they are also interested in helping, and maybe are themselves acting out of certain values or convictions.  I believe this is a very selective (self-righteous?) criticism because the money/marketing potential for a missional/emergent sponsor of an unconference is so minimal compared to the money/marketing info racing in/around/through all the technology that these critics are probably using (FB, Android/Google, Twitter, Apple, MS, etc…).  If we are so worried about being ripped off or controlled then logically we would need to unplug from most social networking and the internet. “But those things are essential carriers of my anti-sellout message!”  Yeah, exactly.  Case closed.  Can we please put the Anti-Sellout Reflex to bed.

3) The unconference takes so much organization: Anti-Institutional Reflex. Now, if you couldn’t tell, I have no time for the previous two reasons to be against the rise of unconferences.  But this one does have some merit.  There is certainly a link between business/organizational models and how one plans a conference.  And I’m all for have a different organizational model when it comes to being the church, and therefore you would think this would roll over to how one plans an unconference.  But having a different organizational model doesn’t mean not being organized.  Sometimes it is good to be anti-institutional, but that can’t be a general rule, and it certainly shouldn’t be a reflex that one throws around without first investigating.

The real question for me is, What are we for?

Well, moving from the abstract to the concrete, I would say the unconference I’m helping to plan (Missional Learning Commons) is attempting to be

1) for families.  Most church conferences are not geared toward having entire families participate.  Well, this is taking quite a bit of organization, but we felt the need to offer some form of childcare because we believe the missional church should engage families, not just men who typically leave their family to attend a conference. For this reason we have actually attached a fee (kryptonite for unconferences) to this year’s MLC. But the fee doesn’t go to speakers of rental fees, but toward offering childcare so that entire families can participate.  So if we are selling-out by charging a fee because we want families to come then we are guilt.  Of course I’d like to think it is us being innovative in sharing the cost of participants.

2) for places. We believe that place and embodiment are important, so when Northern Seminary offered use of their conference center we accepted.  Certainly Northern is hoping to associate their brand to the missional movement and maybe attract students, but they are accessibly located by several Chicago freeways, have local hotels, and other conveniences.

3) for hearing from ordinary people. I think the biggest benefit of the unconference is the typical use of local, engaged people rather than big names.  The unconferences I’ve been part of seeks just to hear what God is doing on the ground in and through ordinary communities.  The age of disconnect big names who ride in to inspire the masses are over.  Let’s learn from each other.

4) for relationship and networks. The MLC is also connected to Ecclesia Network because we believe in the formation of organized movements, of creating a web of local/regional/national relationships for the furthering Christ’s kingdom and the reformation of the church in North America.

Basically, if you are not for these thing, the please feel free not to come to the MLC or any other unconference.

But if you are for these things, and many others, we would love to see you on Oct. 29-30, and I would love to hear of your unconference too.

—

This post sponsored buy some caffeine (homemade double-shot), air, a desk, a comfy chair, electricity, Ben Sternke (donated the poster and MLC site), fb, twitter, google, wordpress, wikipedia, apple, Wadle and Silvy Show (radio) and other people and stuff.

An essential failure in disciple in our church, and perhaps in evangelicalism, is dawning on me.  Not only a failure to follow Christ in his radical discipleship, in his self-giving love, in his calls from/against the world, for the sake of the world.  This failure of discipleship is of course the great omission of which Dallas Willard speaks.

I’m thinking of the failure to understand discipleship as becoming a child of the Father, of knowing the Father that Jesus knew.  The Fatherhood of God is the most distinctive aspect of God of Jesus’s teaching.  The Old Testament refers to God as father only a handful of time while Jesus teaches/refers to God as the Father over a hundred times (just in the Gospels!) and the rest of the New Testament picks up this thread.

In the evangelicalism that I come from, and the missional churches I know, the hard calling of following Christ is rarely linked to the high calling of being a child of the Father.  Our discipleship is rightly based in seeking the Father’s will just as Jesus did, of learning to say with Jesus “Take this cup from me.  But not my will, but your will be done” (Mark 14:36).  But this picture of selfless abandon in the Garden of Gethsemane, as right as it is, is incomplete because we often exclude the first part of the verse (“Abba, Father…”) and the relationship of trust and love that flows between Father and Son.

Jesus knew, in everyway, that the Father loved, valued, and rejoiced in the Son, and it was only from this place that Jesus could obey, live, suffer, and die according to the Father’s will.

I fear that we too often call ourselves, and others, to live, love, suffer, and die for the mission of the gospel of the Son, but do it without knowing the Father’s love for us.  And I’m not talking about the general-generic love that God has for the world, that God loves us and died for us, that God’s love saved us.  I’m talking about the specific knowing, rejoicing, celebrating, and protecting of me, of you, of individual people that our Father wants to pour out on us.

Of course I understand how an overly sentimentalized, even therapeutic, or health-n-wealth view of God in many evangelical or charismatic churches has caused this reaction and shift to radical discipleship in Christ, but we must learn again to balance being disciples of the Son and being children of God.  As one in our congregation said, “The radical calling of Jesus is a call to be children of the Father rather than children of the world.”

Whose child are you?  If we labor under the banner of Jesus, but not also of the Father, I fear we will most often end in despair and dejection or legalism and triumphalism, rather than the joy and peace available to us.

You need to bake the bread before you give it away.  Likewise, we need to nurture the church to bless the world.  These are the basic movements of the church gathered and scattered.

So often we forget one of these steps.  For some, the moment of blessing the world is so emphasized, of going to the poor and oppressed, of transforming, of advocating, that they neglect the preparation of the bread.  In the haste to bless the world, some feel the church is expendable, secondary, and often times positively a hinderance to God’s mission in the world.  “Why are you so focused on the church when God loves the world?” they often complain.  But this overemphasis often leads to burnout, self-righteousness, and the lack of a developed maturity in Christ.

For others, the moment of nurturing the church is emphasized, the moment of discipleship, of depth of wisdom and understanding, of community and spiritual formation.  In the excitement of nurturing the church it is mission that becomes secondary, an advance step of discipleship, or something that only those with the gift of evangelism do.  Or it takes the mentality that if we build it ‘they’ will come.  But this perspective often leads to stagnation and also keeps the full maturity of Christ from being manifested in us.

But the life of gathering, of baking, of contemplation leads to the life of scattering, of blessing, of action.  To neglect one is to ruin the other.  To bake bread and not share leads to its wasting and rotting.  But to bless the world with something other than the bread of life within us is not blessing at all.

“May the Holy Spirit fire take the individual kernels of our lives and bake us together into one loaf, that we might be the sweet fragrance of the gospel and a blessing to the world.”

Here is an interesting piece by NPR on Evangelicals, spurred on my McLaren’s book.  Listen to it below, or read it at NPR.

BREAKING NEWS: The 9 Marks of the church, a ministry of Mark Devers is really a front for a clandestine organization devoted receiving to the 9 Stigmata of Christ. While the 9 Marks ministry has received much attention of late, it seems to be based in a serious misunderstanding.  The 9 “biblical” marks of the church are coded references to the 9 wounds of Christ received during his Holy Passion, which this group seeks to experience in their own bodies.  Polemics against liberalism, the emerging or missional church, and bland evangelicalism are really pleas for everyone to experience for themselves the 9 Stigmata as a way of overcome the wounds of ecclesial divisions.

The 9 wounds of Christ to which this order is devoted are the wound on Christ’s back, the two nail holes in Christ’s feet, the two in Christ’s hands, the wound from the crown of thorns, Christ’s pierced sides, the wound of a broken heart, and a ninth secret wound, known only to those in the order.

A high ranking official in this secret order leaked this information because she (yes, she!) feels the message has not be received properly.  In the hope of overcoming the wound of church division by devoting themselves exclusively to the 9 Wounds of Christ, this order actually desire to connect with the emerging, missional, liberal, and ecumenical dialogues so that all might experience the 9 Wounds of Christ from themselves, because as we know, “by his wounds we are healed.”

___

But in all seriousness, the church has been divided enough.  Let us remember the broken body of Christ, torn apart again at each Eucharist, so that we might be united.  As Thomas à Kempis says, “If you can not soar up as high as Christ sitting on his throne, behold him hanging on his cross.  Rest in Christ’s Passion and live willingly in his wounds.”  And as the old poem, Anima Christi, says,

Passion of Christ, strengthen me.
O Good Jesus, hear me.
Within Thy wounds hide me.

(The woodcut print at the top of the post is by Sigmund Grimm, Augsburg, Germany, 1520.)

Do you live in a world of accountants or editors? Are you yourself an accountant or an editor? I’m not talking in the sense of actual professions, but rather in your relationships, in how you understand others, and in your community.

Joe Myers, in Organic Community, speaks of the difference between accountability and edit-ability: the former looks for mistakes and problems while the latter looks for goodness and improvement. Here is the quick and dirty as Myers breaks it down:

- accountability relationships are bilt on the understanding that people are primarily bad and sinful.
- edit-ability relationships are built on the understanding that people are good, made in the image of God.

- the accountabilty partner looks for mistakes and keeps an account.
- the editor looks for trengths and makes suggestions for imporvemnet.

- the accountability partner initiates accountability discussions on a regular schedule or on whatever schedule that accountability partner deems necessary for proper recording.
- in a relationship of edit-ability, one person brings requests for help to the other on an as-needed basis.

- the accountability partner tries to help by creating more structures, rules, and regulations.
- the editor makes suggestions but leaves the major reworking wih the individual.

- the accountability partner is often drawn from a limited resource pool (e.g. someone within the individual’s organized small group).
- the editor is a person of one’s own choosing, in whatever spher of life would be helpful.

- the accountability partner tries to get the individual to cooperate with and conform to certain standards and expectations (a prescriptive pattern).
- the editor allows one to resource oneslef in whatever ways are healthy (a descriptive pattern).

- the accountability partner emphasizes and inadvertently reinforces the negative behavior by concentrating on it.
- an editor celebrates the journey of wholeness.

- the accountability partner holds the power.
- the project–health or wholeness–holds the power.

Now for the most part, I really like the way he construes this, speaking of the accountability relationship as one of cooperation according to a master plan as opposed to edit-ability as a relationship of collaboration according to an organic order.

But I must say, that while great in theory, often life is not so clear cut. There needs to be a connections relationships of accountability to root out sin and relationships of edit-ability to foster grace and the gifts of the Spirit. While one portion of my theology says that humans are created good in the image of God, another part of my theology (and most of my experience) says the Fall messed everything up, so I can’t whole-sale affirm editorial understanding of relationships. However, as Myers says, “when presented with th option, most peole prefer an author-editor relationship over a client-accountant relationship.” And certainly this is true, and a needed corrective to such evangelical spirituality which merely focuses on sin-management. So let us recover this edit-ability where we celebrate God’s grace in each other, but let us not abdicate the responsibility of legitimate accountability

“We let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects. We who were scandalized in 1940 when men were sent to fight armored tanks with rifles, are not scandalized when young men and women are sent into the world to fight massed propaganda with a smattering of “subjects”; and when whole classes and whole nations become hypnotized by the arts of the spellbinder, we have the impudence to be astonished. We dole out lip-service to the importance of education, lip service and, just occasionally, a little grant of money; we postpone the school-leaving age, and plan to build bigger and better schools; the teachers slave conscientiously in and out of school hours; and yet, as I believe, all this devoted effort is largely frustrated, because we have lost the tools of learning, and in their absence can only make a botched and piecemeal job of it.” (Dorothy L. Sayers, “The Lost Tools of Learning”)

Children are taught various subjects (history, literature, science, arts), but not how to deal with subjects. They are not taught the tools of learning, or organizing, or criticizing a subject, but the facts of a subject from an authority. These lost tool are basic grammar (rules of a subject), logic (rules argumentation of a subject), and rhetoric (rules for articulating and debating a subject). The are taught the basics of reading words, but not of reading for arguments, for biases, for implications, for spurious reasoning.

Dorothy Sayers wrote the above over 50 years ago, but are we, and our children, not still worse off? They know words but not the power of words, nor how to articulate the Word, and are left vulnerable.

It used to be in vogue to be post-evangelical. And to some extent I can understand this. People understand evangelicals often according to those who speak the loudest while at the same time defining it the narrowest. For those who became post-evangelical it was a protest of sorts about an all too limited theology and all too shallow view of society. This conversation continues still now with Rob Bell, and there with Scot McKight, and over here with Tony Jones.

For many it seemed like post-evangelicals had lost the truth, lost the way, lost the life which comes with modern Christianity. But these post-evangelicals always claimed they were working their way back to the way, truth, and life of Christ, and his Gospel, the euangelion. But then Robert Webber helped us to back off a bit and to think about pragmatic and younger evangelicals. And now people just busy themselves with out-maneuvering each other with historical and biblical investigation about what being evangelical really means.

For me, since I’ve been at Marquette, a catholic university, I have just returned to calling myself an evangelical (it always make me laugh when the student here ask about my evangelical religion). Perhaps I like the scandal it makes when people who used to be evangelicals find out that I still consider myself one (they are often now either disillusioned with the church, or have turned into Anglicans…One post-evangelical, now Anabaptist, philosophy student audibly guffawed during when he found out it was still an evangelical!).

But, I think I’m going to make a change. I would like to think of myself as a Pre-Evangelical, as one who is waiting for these little turf wars to die down, one waiting for a re-birth of the truly Evangelical. I’m want to be a Pre-Evangelical, not as one trying to get behind a fundamentalist/liberal divide or the modernist debates of the 1920’s, or recover some authentic 19th-Century religiosity, but one looking forward to a glorious dawn, one could even say the return, the parousia, toward which the Evangel points and proclaims.

I claim to be a Pre-Evangelical because the Gospel has yet to totally take root, to fully transform me. As John tells us, “what we will be has not yet been made known,” but because I am being made into the image of Christ, who is The Evangelical, we know that “when he appears, we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2) and only then will I be able to claim to be an Evangelical.

So who will join me? Let’s start a movement, a revolution, of Pre-Evangelicals. But let it not be through publishing contracts or conference circuits, let it not be through blogs and tweeds, let it not be through doctrinal emphases or identity markers, but let us Pre-Evangelicals live, proclaims, follow, give, die, and rise again with Christ the Evangelical. Let us not argue over being a post-Evangelical, but living into the Gospel as something before us that leads us on.