Do Emerging/Missional Churches Reach the Lost?

Mark Driscoll says the emergent church is not reaching the lost:

"And all the nonsense of emerging, and Emergent, and new monastic communities, and, you know, all of these various kinds of ridiculous conversations - I'll tell you as one on the inside, they don't have converts. The silly little myth, the naked emperor is this: they will tell you it's all about being in culture to reach lost people, and they're not."

David Fitch says hold your horses there Hoss.  Here's five bullet points from David Fitch in response to Driscoll, and you really need to read the whole post to see his explanation of each:

1.) I agree. There is a stunning lack of sustainable communities in the movements addressed by Driscoll and I think this is disturbing.

2.) Regarding missional churches, it is difficult to survive as a sustainable missional church (versus your standard Driscollesque mega church). Missional church ecclesiology is organic and incarnational. It does not fit easily with denominational expectations. This creates economic pressures for the missional leaders. I believe it takes 5- 10 years to nourish a missional community into a true functioning existence. This doesn't fit with established denominational models of church planting (especially evangelical). This creates added pressures and less support for missonal church plants. Missional church plants therefore generally start out with alot of energy but often die by the end of year three.

3.) Regarding emerging churches/Emergent Village, I don't believe they intend to plant church communities that would lead to converts.

4.) Having said all this, the number of conversions for missional church communities could still match the mega churches on the basis of percentages (if we were counting).

5.) We must also recognize that "missionary conversions" take longer than mega church conversions.

Quick reaction - it is equally disturbing that emergent churches don't intend to plant church communities that would lead to converts.  Now, before you jump all over that, please read what Fitch has to say about point #3, I think he qualifies the point, but still, it is hard to imagine a church that would not want to see the conversion of the lost. 

I do find points 4 and 5 intriguing - maybe Driscoll is not seeing the whole picture and maybe these churches are doing comparatively well in seeing conversions.

Point #5 is most interesting to me.  Later on, Fitch says:

I argue that a conversion of a post-Christendom "pagan," who has had little to no exposure to the language and story of Christ in Scripture, requires five years of relational immersion before a decision would even make sense.

This I wonder about.  I think the determinative phrase here is "post-christian."  I keep hearing stories from the southern hemisphere and Asia which do emphasize the relational element in conversion, but I don't hear that it always takes years for people to come to faith.  I talked to one guy in China who said that people are so hungry for the gospel there that if someone doesn't come to faith after about a week of intense attempts to share the gospel, then they move on.

Now, I disagree strenuously with that attitude.  On the other hand, his point is that there is such a hunger for the gospel in China that if you have the option of sharing the gospel with someone who desperately wants it, better to engage them than the one who is resistant.

But getting back to the point - again I think that what Fitch is getting at in terms of the time element, is the reality of living in a post-Christian world.  Post-Christians are not merely ignorant of Christianity, they are hostile to it, thus there are more walls to break down.  It is the situation that C. S. Lewis spoke of when he said:

“A person must court a virgin differently than a divorcee. One welcomes the charming words; the other needs a demonstration of love to overcome inbuilt skepticism."

So I'm curious - is Driscoll just full of ill-informed bluster here, or is he reading things right?  How about Fitch, is his reasoning sound?

Comments

[R. Radewicz]

Numbers lacking. The "big-box" megachurch model is a magnet that sucks believers from smaller, more "relational" churches, just like Wal-Mart sucks business from the small Main Street mom & pop stores. Let's face it: it all boils down to who has the best show in town, and the little white church in the vale cannot compete with million-dollar techno-glitz. Big, possibly inflated, numbers, but how many are actually "new" converts? Haven't seen those credible stats anywhere.

[Matt]

Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck just released a great book on the growing Emergent Christian movement and what a load it truly is. Why We're Not Emergent. It is a must read.

[pgepps]

Regarding the length of time to conversion in pagan versus post-Christian cultures, one data point I can provide that jibes with my limited experience: nearly all experienced workers in Japan, from a variety of backgrounds, agree that a Japanese convert requires about two years of fairly intense study from the point of being willing to attend services and openly be "interested in Jesus" to the point of being willing to be baptized and profess to be a Christian. Exceptions happen, but this is a very well-attested expectation. Also, it is very usual for a Japanese convert to have read the Bible cover-to-cover in that time.

[Dan Phillips]

My first thought is that the five-year relational notion is hooey, and reflects the Emerg*** muddling of the Gospel more than any possible Biblical exemplar. ("Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" "Er... how 'bout you get back to us in five years, eh?")

[David Wayne]

Dan - your point is well taken - I know there is a fair amount of hooey in the emergent church. On the other hand, if I may give you a friendly pushback here, I think one issue that underlies Fitch's point is that few are asking the question "what must I do to be saved?" in our day. We may need some time to move someone along to the point where they are asking the right questions. On the other hand, five years does sound excessive.

To put the best possible spin on what Fitch says here I would hope that he is sharing the gospel throughout the five years, but maybe he is implying it would take that long to sink in, and that you just have to stick with them that long.

[Dan Phillips]

Fair enough, David — if there weren't reason enough to fear that what Emerg***'s are about tends more in the direction of muddling misdirection than of focused clarification.

I thought about this post when I read this in the bit of Spurgeon that Phil Johnson just put up over on our site:

"They think that the atonement is a something or other, that in some way or other, somehow or other, has something or other to do with the salvation of men; but I tell them that their cloudy gospel might have surrounded me till my hair grew grey, but I should never have been any the better for it. I should never have found peace with God, nor come to love the Lord at all, if it had not been that I distinctly saw that he, who knew no sin, was made sin for me, that I might be made the righteousness of God in him."

Part of our task in evangelism is answering the questions that the lost should be asking. It isn't Biblically-informed evangelism to say, "Oh, they aren't interested in hearing about sin, the wrath of God, Hell and all that: so I won't talk about those things." But those are the things everyone and anyone should be concerned about. The task of the evangelist is to show why that is the case — not to let the lost lead us. (Think about that last phrase.)

So perhaps we'll do as Jesus does with the woman at the well, and start where our friend is. But you'll recall that He headed her off in a direction she never meant to go.

And it didn't take five years.

What say you?

[Terry]

Yeah, I think the real issue is that evangelism is just a lot of hard work. I think it is more fun to talk about than to really do. Sort of like creating a winning football team. It is easy to throw a ball around, talk about the game and get one of those cool shirts with the numbers on it. Creating a winning team means recruiting guys who won't give up even when it hurts, pushing them till it hurts and then hitting the other team so hard that it hurts, running so hard that it hurts....you get the idea. Sacrifice is what it takes.

[ben]

Driscoll is a pompous dweeb. That's probably pompous of me to call him that but it was fun. I'll repent tomorrow if God gives me breath in the morning. :)

I just don't think it is that easy to lump it all together. Culturally, we have a fascination with labels and quantified results. Maybe there are other ways to approach matters.

[David]

What the heck...he can say it since he left the movement himself. More power to him. He influences alot of them anyway the more that leave the merrier. He is also right.

[Louise]

where is this CS Lewis quote from, which book? I can't find the reference anywhere. Thanks

[David Wayne]

Louise - I can't find it right now. I am guessing I may have gotten it from this article by Phillip Yancey.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/november/19.128.html