Book Review of What Is the Church and Why Does It Exist by David E. Fitch

What is the Church and Why Does It Exist?

by David E. Fitch

ISBN 978-1-5138-0570-2

Herald Press

Reviewed by Clint Walker

    David E. Fitch has written a new book that is being published this spring. It is from Herald Press, and is part of their "The Jesus Way" series of small books that pack a big punch. Fitch's contribution to this series is fitting, as he argues for a missional ecclesiology, and gives some helpful hints in how to put this way of doing church into action.

    What is the Church and Why Does it Exist is a book centered around three questions: What is Church? Why Church? and How do we do Church?. The book has a partner video curriculum by the same name with the new streaming platform SeminaryNow as well. For those familiar with Fitch's other writings, Fitch borrows heavily from some of the content in his book Faithful Presence in communicating his vision for how churches should structure and function, but each work stands apart from the other with a slightly different focus. 

    Fitch challenges his collegues and student to be pithy in their communication, and works on that himself. However, anyone who has went to David Fitch's lectures or had a conversation with him knows that he himself leans less toward the earthy pithiness of  Ernest Hemingway in his communication, and more toward the wordy thoughtfulness of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

    For this reason, this book is an accomplishment for Dr. Fitch. He packs a lot of his conceptual work he has done over the last twenty years or so about what the missional church is all about in a relatively brief, thoughtful, easy to understand book that you can share with people in your small group or congregation. There are discussion questions in the back of the book that allow conversation to begin.

    I have worked through the material in this book with a small group in my congregation. They interacted well with it. At times they thought what David Fitch shared was common sense, and at other times they were challenged by his perspective, which is exactly what I wanted. For our people, we were affirmed in our commitment to congregational life, and also challenged to practice our faith together, in our homes, and in our communities. 

    This will be a helpful resource for any church to look at as they consider how to connect with the continually changing, post-Christian world. It honors the wisdom of having a community called the church. Yet at the same time challenges us to move out of siloed churches and siloed living into a wholistic, authentic way of living for Jesus together as believers in the world for the love of humanity and the glory of God.

Detectives of Divinity

 

On Being a Detective of Divinity

          So, this morning I got a call for someone with an unusual request. “Pastor, I live at the Liberty House, and we have been on lockdown. My brother says I need someone to bring me communion. I really want communion. Will you bring me some?”

          “Sure,” I said, “do you believe in Jesus?”.

“I believe in the Father, Jesus, and the Spirit. And I am a Baptist, because John the Baptist was a Baptist too,” she replied.

“Will 2:30 work?”

“Yes! I will see you at 2:30. Thank you! Thank you! Just come around the back and will meet you there.”

So, like a meth dealer around the corner of a rehab clinic, I smuggled the body and blood of Jesus down the back alley of an assisted living facility on lockdown. “This ought to be interesting,” I thought.

As I approached, I prayed, “Lord, be present in this moment. Let your love and grace present in the sharing of the bread and the cup in such a way that we are all sense your Spirit at work among us. Amen.”

I drove down the alley to what appears to be the main entrance of the facility. I brought with me the elements I had packed. Three pre-packaged and sealed communion servings were loaded into three plastic easter eggs to make the transport of the elements easier and were sitting on the passenger seat of my car. I had no idea why I packed three servings, I just felt led to do so.

I get out. “Are you the one bringing us communion?” my new friend yells out.

“I am. Do your friends want to share with us?”

“Yes, two of my friends heard and want to do communion too.”

So, I get out all three Easter eggs containing the elements of the Lord’s Supper. I read through I Corinthians 11.

“The body of Christ, broken for you,” I proclaim. Then I help each one of them open their wafer off the top of the cup.

“This is the new covenant in my blood,” I say, and help them with the cup.

It was a sacred moment. Three adults, each with challenges that make it hard for them to live independently, stood hungry for the inbreaking of the transcendent God into their lives. Having the body and blood smuggled to them through a back alley delivery, they experienced the love of Christ in the ritual of the Lord’s Supper.  Through presence of the church in delivering and sharing this moment with them, and in their longing for a tactile way to connect with the grace of God, the Spirit of God broke through in a powerful way as four people shared communion in a parking lot on Sixth Street and Willow.

Alan Roxburgh, a prolific Christian author and leader of the missional church movement, says that missional leaders/pastors do their work best when they are detectives of divinity. In other words, as we go out into the world around us, we do our best work when we open our eyes to what the Spirit is doing and join God in it.

I have no idea, in the end, how meaningful that moment was for my new friends. But I know it was meaningful for me. It helped me to remember that God is as work in ways I never expect. And it reminded me that sharing the table, and remembering the sacrifice of Christ, is a powerful way to experience the love of Christ, and to offer solidarity and love to one another. It reminded me, as I enter Holy Week, that I should not take the Lord’s Supper or what happened on Calvary for granted. As a matter of fact, we should all be hungry and thirsty for the presence of God.

I drove out of the parking lot today remembering the Emmaus Walk of those two people with Jesus, who discovered in the breaking of bread that Jesus had been present with them all along. And I mumbled to myself, “Wasn’t my heart burning within me in the breaking of bread?”

 

Amen and Awoman

   

  

Of all the controversies that evangelical Christians have created and embroiled themselves in, the backlash regarding the closing of the Rev. Emmanuel Cleaver's prayer may have been the most petty. You would think, from the response of many people I am aquainted with that he brought a golden calf into an altar in the worship space of a Christian congregation, or wore a t-shirt promoting the Piss Christ (yes there are such t-shirts). Instead, the last word of his prayer was a pun, intended to celebrate the inclusion of the first woman chaplain to the House of Representatives, as well as the larger proportion of women in this term's Congressional delegation. The closing of the prayer fit with much of the rest of his prayer which called for spirit-led peacemaking and inclusion of  "the other". In the prayer Rep. Cleaver called for peace and an end to partisan tribalism. The final word of the prayer fit with this theme. Although it may have been a little dorky, it should not have made news. Furthermore, it should not have Christian around the country offended and ready to wage a Twitter/Facebook jihad. 

    Cleaver's prayer wasn't perfect. In my opinion, Rev. Cleaver's mistake was this: don't mistake a prayer for a sermon. For public prayers, it is almost always a temptation to take the opportunity to lecture folks, or to placate those in authority through the use of prayer. Don't do it. When you pray, pray. Even in congress. And when you preach, preach.

    Nevertheless, I am intrigued that many evangelicals are pretending that misusing the word "amen" is like taking the Lord's name in vain. The earliest manuscripts of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6 do not even use the word "amen". Many faithful Christians and secularists use the term "amen" in everyday conversation to communicate agreement, not as an expression of prayer. It is not required to "hang up" a prayer with the word "amen". It is just a tradition.

    So then, is there a controversy about the term "awoman"? My suspicions are as follows:

1. In light of Warnock's upcoming election, evangelicals wanted to disparage the African American church, especially those grounded in some sort of liberation tradition, as being untrue to the gospel. It was a way of both attempting to attack African American religious tradition as illegitamate, as the SBC has done with its repudiation of critical race theory, and of peeling away any support in the upcoming election from Warnock.

2. It communicated many conservative evangelicals lack of willingness to support racial and gender inclusion, unless it is completely subjugated to constructs of white power and male power. And, any movement of faith that affirms instead of deconcontructs the structures of abusive power, including mitigating against full inclusion of both women and minorities, is anti-gospel.