Musings: Notes From My Daybook

Robert Webber. Ancient-Future Evangelism: Making Your Church a Faith-Forming Community. Baker, 2003.

Robert Webber, a prolific author with 40 plus books to his name, has tapped into some deep resources for understanding the church’s call to be the place of discipleship and transformation in this book. Well-known for his work on worship renewal Webber in recent years, has turned to the ancient world of earliest Christianity in search of frameworks that would make sense in light of contemporary culture.

His concern is that the church today is not forming disciples. He summarizes what the International Consultation on Discipleship, a group representing 54 countries and 90 different Christian fellowships, concluded in 1999:
• “Many converts to Christianity throughout the world fall away from faith.”
• “The church is ‘marked by a paradox of growth without depth.’”
• “Many within the church are not living lives of biblical purity, integrity and holiness.” (13)

Or, to put it another way, though persons may be converted or baptized they often fall away. This is true in my own experience and I think for most of the churches that I know. Webber wants to change this.

The target for Webber is to reframe our understanding of evangelism. Evangelism is not a moment but rather a process that takes place over a period of time. Evangelism is really discipleship and to demonstrate what that looks like, Webber turns to the first four centuries of the church to explore how the earliest Christian people nurtured people in the faith.

The first thing Webber wants his readers to know is that the early church was quite intentional about spiritual formation; they did not accept people into the community of faith until they had undergone a lengthy process of training and spiritual growth. Evangelism was not about an event—getting someone baptized. Rather, evangelism was a process with multiple stages, each marked by what Webber calls ‘rites of passage.’

Those stages were (48):
1. Evangelize into the gospel of Jesus Christ
2. Disciple into the church, its worship, its Scripture, its disciplines.
3. Spiritually form into the ethic and lifestyle of faith.
4. Assimilate into the church through a discovery of gifts, the Christian vocation of work, and caring for the poor and needy.

As persons passed through each stage it was marked by various Christian practices—including baptism, formal welcome into the way of faith, and formal induction into a time of instruction. With basic Christian teaching along each step of the way, the new believer comes to embrace the radical call of Jesus upon his life.

In addition, Webber notes at some length the wide spread growth of the early church. Noting the work of various sociologists and New Testament scholars such as Rodney Stark and Wayne Meeks, Webber presents a convincing case for the communal nature of early church. Evangelism was not something the early church did. Evangelism was the way the early church lived. The early church used the natural familial and social networks of their lives to be the conduit of the gospel message. By sharing their lives together and inviting others into that life persons witnessed the truth of the gospel in words and deeds of early believers.

This social reality has a great bearing on our present experience. How connected are we with other believers? In what way are we sharing our lives that allows others to see the gospel within us? Or, have we inadvertently insulated ourselves from non-Christian people by our “Christian” activity?

The second half of the book, entitled “Cultural and Theological Reflection,” offers an assessment of culture and its increasingly post-Christian flavor. Though often sweeping in his comments, Webber does present a cogent picture. Webber’s interest, however, is not in a philosophical debate. Rather, in a rapidly changed and changing world, Webber is concerned that the church practice intentional discipleship practices, model healthy community, worship unapologetically, and faithfully tell the story, letting the living Word call us into lives of obedience.

In the rapidly changing world, it means, by necessity, that the face of the church will change. It will become more intentional about the practice of discipleship. Churches will move away from thinking about members and began forming disciples. Churches will recognize that the present cultural values are often at odds with the way of Jesus and therefore churches will have to articulate—with clarity—the alternative way of discipleship.

The book is a good read and is challenging our church staff to begin stating in simple, clear language what it means to be a part of our congregation, how should baptism be practiced and taught, and how do we call people—beginning with ourselves and the existing persons within our congregation—into a way of obedience before Jesus. Letting the early church—and the historic church—feed our meditation on Scripture is a healthy and encouraging practice.