Theme
Church as Movement
Church as movement forms disciples in place and sends them across boundaries.
How does a church live as a movement in its place?
How does a church live as a movement in its place?
How does a church live as a movement in its place?
Movement occurs when we answer our call to live in communion with God, and out of the overflow of our life with him, we live into our sentness as a community
Overview
In 2016 JR Woodward and Dan White Jr. published The Church as Movement with InterVarsity Press. This page speaks in Woodward's voice and marks the coauthor whenever the memory is Dan's. The book itself does that with initials. "I (Dan)" and "me (Dan)" are Dan White Jr. "I (JR)" and "our (JR's)" are Woodward, including the Los Angeles planting team in the epilogue. An unmarked "we" is both of them.
The introduction names the fuel in this order: tight-knit community, life-forming discipleship, locally rooted presence, and boundary-crossing mission. Those four values are the parts of this page. The book organizes the climb as Distributing, Discipling, Designing, and Doing, and it asks a discipleship core of four to twelve people to walk that path. The guidebook parts are the trek.
Chapter 1 sets Jesus' mustard seed over the argument. Movement, in the sentence that opens the teaching, happens when a people answer the call to live in communion with God and, from the overflow of that life, live their sentness as a community, carrying his co-mission as a sign, foretaste, and instrument of the kingdom. Woodward reads the first days as small on purpose. Several weeks after the resurrection, as he tells Acts 1:14-15, there were 120 followers. He imagines Jesus filing a monthly report: "My core team has deserted me, the crowds want to kill me, but I do think my mom is still on board." The grassroots pattern he names is confiding in the three, training the Twelve, and mobilizing the seventy.
He also names seasons when the vision was clear enough to see the church as movement. The list is the Devotio Moderna, which produced The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, then the Franciscans, the Anabaptists, the Moravians, the Wesleyans, and the Pentecostal movements. They stand in the chapter as bright moments.
Under the values sit four spaces, drawn in chapter 6 with Edward T. Hall and Joseph Myers. Public space, gatherings of about seventy or more, offers visibility. Social space, about twenty to fifty, is the household size they call oikos, the size of the early household churches as they read them. Personal space, about six to twelve, is where disciples are formed. Intimate space, two to four, is where someone can be known without shame. The epilogue adds the marks that hold a plant when the tools are in the backpack and the climb is still hard: sustained faith, stubborn hope, and sacrificial love.
Creating a Missional Culture (2012) already calls each neighborhood church a sign, foretaste, and instrument in light of who she is and where she ministers. That earlier book supports locally rooted presence.
Start with chapter 1 for the lens. Then take the values in the introduction's order: community formation, the disciple chapters, incarnational practices, and the co-mission that crosses boundaries. Ecclesial architecture is where the four spaces get their sizes.
The usual question:
How does a church live as a movement in its place?
The better question:
How does a church live as a movement in its place?
The idea
tight-knit community
In the section Dan White Jr. opens, community is called the pod that carries mission. An elder Dan mentions had described a television show as a picture of how community affects mission, and the scene he tells ends with an anemic community and a mission that suffers. The shared claim that follows is Woodward and White together. A church as movement starts with a discipleship core, hospitality, presence in the neighborhood, and an inviting spirit, and that produces a life-giving social space. Henri Nouwen is quoted to the effect that community is the fruit of making the interests of others more important than our own. Woodward and White add their own picture from Genesis: it is not good to be alone, and a people untethered from an embodied family in a physical place are floating.
The table is the practice. In chapter 6 they read Acts as a common life: those who had much shared with those who did not have enough, and they ate in homes with glad and sincere hearts. They were family. Chapter 7 says personal space, about six to twelve, is large enough for energy and small enough for conversation. When the circle drops below six it starts to feel like an intimate dinner. The church, they write, is formed around a table. Planters begin by opening their homes for a weekly community meal. There are twenty-one already-scheduled meals in a week. Love and eating are the requirements they name.
Oikos is the shape of that table at social size. Chapter 6 says the New Testament household was an extended family, about twenty to fifty people, gathered for worship, community, and mission. Chapter 7 calls a missional community an encounter with the whole body, apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, and teacher, a messy household. Relational tethering is the name Woodward and White give the work of thickening that life. Dan's climbing story in the same chapter, marked as his, supplies the image: a rope of three strands, and a frayed rope that cannot hold weight. Trust, they say, is built by doing what you said you would do, apologizing when you cannot, and taking unmet expectations face to face.
life-forming discipleship
The introduction states the diagnosis Woodward and White share with Dallas Willard: the church fails to be and to make disciples of Jesus. The cost of nondiscipleship, they write, is the irrelevance of the church. People seek real transformation and walk past the church to find it. Chapter 1 then quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. Phil Meadows, as they report him, says that a start with mission strategy ends in programs, a start with community can end in social circles, a start with structures makes discipleship serve the structures, and a start with the church service ends with consumers. The commission they keep in view is to make disciples.
Chapter 3 says movements are built on character. Woodward tells his own piece of that in the summer of 2002, when he moved into the New Hollywood Apartments, a building from the 1920s renovated in 1963. A reverse screw would not loosen until a friend told him to turn it the other way. He uses the screw for a life that tightens the wrong direction: business and marketing habits that leave a leader less like Jesus. The same chapter is his on the inner life. Ministry had become a mistress. He wept when he saw it. Communion with God, he writes, is vital for fruitful ministry, and pursuing God is a struggle. He also tells of personal debt that climbed to $30,000, mostly from his own irresponsibility, while he raised support in a first plant made up mostly of college students. He hid it, then told trusted leaders. He expected to be asked to step down. He found grace. Confession moved forgiveness from a theological idea to something he experienced.
Dan's section in the same chapter is marked as his, and it stays his. He calls ministry leadership the great squeeze. Early in his own planting he paced the floor on Sundays, hungry for a crowd, disappointed when the room was small, and afraid of the question "How big is your church?" Woodward and White together say the leader's inner life shapes the community, and that making disciples includes being one. The epilogue puts the same point in a line about method: discipleship is more about imitation than instruction.
locally rooted presence
Chapter 8 says the church as movement is real people with dirt under their fingernails, serving their neighborhoods. God was place-based when Jesus moved into Nazareth, so a church takes a vision for the microspaces of a neighborhood, including people a slick service never reaches. Movements move into the streets. Woodward and White call that an incarnational movement.
The tool they give a discipleship core is NEAR: narrative, ethics, associations, and rituals. What story is the neighborhood calling the community to embody? How do people there define success? Which organizations shape identity and destiny? Which practices shape a sense of mission? The experiential prompt is a weekend in the neighborhood and the city, a conversation with people who serve the city, and a NEAR report from each person.
Woodward's own report of the journey, marked "I (JR)," is the East Hollywood story below. The shared names for the journey are for, with, of, and in. Being for a place asks what would differ if God's reign were more fully realized there, then joins acts of justice, beauty, and evangelism. Being with people means becoming a character in the community. Becoming of them, and then in them, is how the neighborhood comes to count the community as family. He quotes John 1:14 from The Message as the pattern: the Word moved into the neighborhood. This page keeps the reference and his reading, and does not reprint the paraphrase.
Creating a Missional Culture, chapter 16, is the earlier neighborhood witness. There Woodward says each neighborhood church is a sign, foretaste, and instrument in light of who she is and where she ministers, and that she matches her deep hunger with the needs of the neighborhood. Missional spaces in that book are regular places with more people outside the faith than inside. That supports this value. The four values as a set belong to the 2016 book.
boundary-crossing mission
Chapter 1 says movement is four generations deep and four spheres wide. The co-mission, as they read it, includes the hometown and the home region, and it also crosses to people different from us and to people far away. They name the spheres with Acts' map: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the utter ends of the earth. Samaria, in their sentence, is "despised people." The positive claim they make about going wide is local incarnation. A movement goes in humility and weakness, seeks first God's kingdom, crosses boundaries in order to be present and listen, and joins what God is already doing. Enemies the empire demonized become mothers, brothers, and sisters.
Woodward's travel note is his. He writes that he has been in thirty-nine countries. He was often asked to teach, and he says he learned more about being like Jesus than he taught. Kenya taught him joy in simplicity and interdependent community. Italy taught him the holy kiss. People in Latin America, China, and Ukraine taught him radical hospitality, giving out of need. Peter and Cornelius, as he reads Acts 10, show a missionary who also needs conversion.
Chapter 6 puts co-mission in the essence of the church: gifted communities sent to make disciples who seek the renewal of all things, a sign, foretaste, and instrument, proclaiming good news to the poor and releasing captives, making peace, stewarding creation. A friend of theirs said the church is the welcoming committee to the kingdom. The epilogue, still in the shared voice until Woodward marks his own questions to Paul, says love of neighbor follows from being a Christian, across country of origin, color of skin, financial status, sexual preference, and religious tradition. Sacrificial love is the greatest of the three marks. Boundary-crossing mission is that love on the road, in weakness, at a high cost, with fruitfulness left to God.
The Biblical Mandate
Stories from practice
Dan's new glasses
His ordinary week, then the day he put on a new pair — Dan's new glasses
The debt Woodward finally named
A college-student church plant, after he had hidden $30,000 of personal debt — The debt Woodward finally named
Monica learns to be weak
A storyteller's night at a missional-incarnational community in New York — Monica learns to be weak
East Hollywood, from for to in
Los Angeles, three neighborhoods, with his own congregation in East Hollywood — East Hollywood, from for to in
Thirty-six people in Los Angeles
Los Angeles, the first eighteen months after the move — Thirty-six people in Los Angeles
Come NEAR
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5
Step 6
Step 7
Step 8
Step 9
Step 10
Step 11
Step 12
Step 13
Step 14
Step 15
How have you personally contributed to the church as industrial complex in your own life? What is the first step for you to take to live into the church as movement?
What part of movement do you resonate with the most: deep, wide, long, or high? Why? Which of those four will you work through with your discipleship core?
Which of the four spaces is most comfortable for you, and which do you find most difficult? Why? How can you use social space for mission, and how can your discipleship core link directly to that social space?
On the upward, inward, and outward journeys, which area needs the most attention in your life at this moment? Where are you struggling or suffering, what brokenness are you hiding, and where do you feel too weak for the neighborhood you are sent to?
What fears, inadequacies, or hurdles do you have to face in order to be intentionally present in your neighborhood? Who is around your porch, on your pathways, at your pivots, and active in your parish?
Of communion, community, and co-mission, which do you do well, which is lacking, which intimidates you, and which excites you? What one action can your group take to live a rule and rhythm around all three, and how will you hold yourselves accountable?
What neighborhood or network has God sent your missional community to, and where are you: for them, with them, of them, or in them? What act of justice, beauty, or healing is God calling your community to bring there?
Sit with your group and ask how you can cultivate availability. What concrete ways can you work toward a common life? What hindrances do you feel personally to a weekly shared table, and who in the neighborhood will you invite?
Resources for the journey
book(link)
The Church as Movement, Introduction
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The Church as Movement, 1 Movement Intelligence
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The Church as Movement, 3 Being Disciples
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The Church as Movement, 4 Making Disciples
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The Church as Movement, 5 Missional Theology
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The Church as Movement, 6 Ecclesial Architecture
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The Church as Movement, 7 Community Formation
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The Church as Movement, 8 Incarnational Practices
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The Church as Movement, Epilogue
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Creating a Missional Culture, Introduction
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Creating a Missional Culture, The Cultural Web and the Neighborhood Church
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AI Lab
Ask how church as movement would look in the spaces your team actually funds, the table you keep, and the neighborhood you inhabit. You help a reader practice JR Woodward's theme Church as Movement, written with coauthor Dan White Jr. Hold this question open: How does a church live as a movement in its place? The parts, in this order, are tight-knit community, life-forming discipleship, locally rooted presence, and boundary-crossing mission. Do not add a fifth part or rename them. Distributing, Discipling, Designing, and Doing are the guidebook's trek, not extra values. The four spaces are public, social (about twenty to fifty), personal (about six to twelve), and intimate (two to four). When the book says "I (Dan)" or "me (Dan)," the memory belongs to Dan White Jr. Do not place Dan's glasses, his city, his squeeze, or any other first-person scene of his in Woodward's mouth. "I (JR)," "our (JR's)," and the Los Angeles planting team in the epilogue are Woodward's. An unmarked "we" is both. Draw first on *The Church as Movement* (InterVarsity Press, 2016): the introduction, movement intelligence, being disciples, making disciples, missional theology, ecclesial architecture, community formation, incarnational practices, and the epilogue. Use *Creating a Missional Culture* (2012) only to develop neighborhood presence. Quote them. Do not quote a Bible translation at length. Cite by book and chapter filename. Ask which space is receiving the team's money and attention, and which space is actually forming disciples, before you design a public launch. When they want a next action, point to Come NEAR, Porch, pathway, pivot, parish, and One sign, foretaste, or instrument, and to the questions to sit with.
- Try: “Which space is getting our money and attention, and which space is forming disciples?”
- Try: “Where do I still see the church through an industrial lens?”
- Try: “What would a weekly shared table ask of us?”
- Try: “Where are we on the journey: for, with, of, or in the neighborhood?”
- Try: “Which mark is thin right now: faith, hope, or love?”
Misreadings
Success is defined by getting bigger, collecting resources, consolidating power, and growing rapidly. Spirituality turns into a product, growth into a race, leadership into a business, and members into consumers. Neighbors become objects of mission. A personality at the center means the movement ends when the personality leaves. Woodward and White say a new lens is required if a church is going to live as movement. The positive claim is a church deep in disciples, wide in a listening incarnation, long in shared leadership and faithfulness, and high in cost, with identity in God and fruitfulness left to God. Lesslie Newbigin, as they quote him, warns that numerical growth as the criterion of judgment transports the church into a military campaign or a commercial sales drive. They answer with faithfulness. Jesus' word, as they cite Matthew 25, is to a good and faithful servant. Neighbors are fellow subjects in the story of God, and the center of that story is Jesus, the slain Lamb. A team trusts managerial skill, organizational technique, pragmatism, or a list of secrets to guarantee growth. Tools that were meant to be passed on become the thing the community trusts. The code is treated as cracked. Chapter 6 quotes Craig Van Gelder: when church is reduced to activities or functions, leaders can be seduced into confidence in managerial skills or organizational techniques. Woodward and White answer by starting with who the church is. The church is holy and human, and theology comes before sociology. Chapter 1 says some churches try to manufacture growth through business practices or ten secrets that guarantee success, and that this is a different thing from movement. Being movemental is a way of being the church in the way of Christ and the power of the Spirit, joining God's mission and trusting him for fruit. The introduction says they have no illusions that the tools by themselves create success, and they do not think they have cracked the code. Tools, they add, can become idols. The positive claim is simple, sticky, scalable tools held inside communion, community, and co-mission, with faithfulness as the work and fruitfulness as God's. Staffing, event preparation, and the weekly gathering receive the team's money and attention. Dynamic preaching and worship are used to attract people toward community later. People are taught that church is something they go to. The large gathering wags the life of disciples in the other spaces. Chapter 6 says public space has typically received the most attention, and that churches typically spend 85 percent of their budget there. That pattern creates what they call the attractional church, a come-and-see mission. Neil Cole's line, which they use, is that what you win people with, you win them to. Chapter 8 names a further danger they call extractional: the weekly gathering pulls people out of everyday mission in everyday places. The positive claim is that public space remains vital for visibility, public truth, and proclamation in the mode of Jesus and Paul, while personal space is the primary setting for discipleship and social space is where a missional community lives. Public gatherings help when they are subordinate to missional communities and reshape people to inhabit God's story in ordinary life.
The church as industrial complex
Success is defined by getting bigger, collecting resources, consolidating power, and growing rapidly. Spirituality turns into a product, growth into a race, leadership into a business, and members into consumers. Neighbors become objects of mission. A personality at the center means the movement ends when the personality leaves.
Woodward and White say a new lens is required if a church is going to live as movement. The positive claim is a church deep in disciples, wide in a listening incarnation, long in shared leadership and faithfulness, and high in cost, with identity in God and fruitfulness left to God. Lesslie Newbigin, as they quote him, warns that numerical growth as the criterion of judgment transports the church into a military campaign or a commercial sales drive. They answer with faithfulness. Jesus' word, as they cite Matthew 25, is to a good and faithful servant. Neighbors are fellow subjects in the story of God, and the center of that story is Jesus, the slain Lamb.
Technique can manufacture the movement
A team trusts managerial skill, organizational technique, pragmatism, or a list of secrets to guarantee growth. Tools that were meant to be passed on become the thing the community trusts. The code is treated as cracked.
Chapter 6 quotes Craig Van Gelder: when church is reduced to activities or functions, leaders can be seduced into confidence in managerial skills or organizational techniques. Woodward and White answer by starting with who the church is. The church is holy and human, and theology comes before sociology. Chapter 1 says some churches try to manufacture growth through business practices or ten secrets that guarantee success, and that this is a different thing from movement. Being movemental is a way of being the church in the way of Christ and the power of the Spirit, joining God's mission and trusting him for fruit. The introduction says they have no illusions that the tools by themselves create success, and they do not think they have cracked the code. Tools, they add, can become idols. The positive claim is simple, sticky, scalable tools held inside communion, community, and co-mission, with faithfulness as the work and fruitfulness as God's.
The public-event church
Staffing, event preparation, and the weekly gathering receive the team's money and attention. Dynamic preaching and worship are used to attract people toward community later. People are taught that church is something they go to. The large gathering wags the life of disciples in the other spaces.
Chapter 6 says public space has typically received the most attention, and that churches typically spend 85 percent of their budget there. That pattern creates what they call the attractional church, a come-and-see mission. Neil Cole's line, which they use, is that what you win people with, you win them to. Chapter 8 names a further danger they call extractional: the weekly gathering pulls people out of everyday mission in everyday places. The positive claim is that public space remains vital for visibility, public truth, and proclamation in the mode of Jesus and Paul, while personal space is the primary setting for discipleship and social space is where a missional community lives. Public gatherings help when they are subordinate to missional communities and reshape people to inhabit God's story in ordinary life.
Pathway vocabulary
- movement
- The opening of their sentence: movement occurs when we answer the call to live in communion with God and, from that overflow, live our sentness as a community, carrying out his co-mission as a sign, foretaste, and instrument of the kingdom. It also means mission-shaped disciples multiplying, with reproducing groups, communities, churches, and networks in the DNA. The introduction's name for a church fueled by the four values is church as movement.
- co-mission
- Their name for Matthew 28. God authorizes a people to make disciples far and near, in Jesus' way of life, in trinitarian presence. In the essence of the church, co-mission is the sent life: good news to the poor, release for captives, peace, reconciliation, and care of creation, as a sign, foretaste, and instrument. Apostles, in chapter 1, catalyze and co-mission others into the renewal of all things.
- oikos
- Greek for household. Chapter 6 says the Greco-Roman household included relatives, servants, employees, and friends, and that New Testament household churches were about this size, gathered for worship, community, and mission. They distinguish that from a modern nuclear family. Oikos is the basic building block and the social space where community formation and incarnational mission have room. Chapter 7 uses the same word for a missional community that is more than a small group: a whole, messy body.
- the four spaces
- With Edward T. Hall and Joseph Myers, chapter 6 names four spaces of belonging. Public space, about seventy or more, gives visibility. Social space, about twenty to fifty, gives availability and is oikos. Personal space, about six to twelve, gives accountability and is the primary setting for discipleship. Intimate space, two to four, gives vulnerability. Each space delivers something the others cannot. The introduction says the book focuses on the social, personal, and intimate spaces, where grassroots movements live or die.
- sign, foretaste, and instrument
- Chapter 5 says the church, in a provisional way, is a sign, a foretaste, and an instrument of God's kingdom. A sign points to what is not yet fully visible. A foretaste lets people taste God's future in the present, as in forgiveness and harmony. An instrument brings joy, beauty, and justice into the neighborhood. The movement sentence and the epilogue use the same three words. The epilogue says faith, hope, and love are required if a community is going to be those three things.
- communion, community, and co-mission
- Three words Woodward and White use for the essence of the church. Communion is dwelling with the Father, Son, and Spirit through the week. Community is the common life of a family around a table. Co-mission is the body sent into the world. They see the same pattern in Luke 6: Jesus prays, chooses the Twelve, and moves toward hurting people. A rule and rhythm of life, gathered and scattered, is how they train a community to inhabit all three.
- faith, hope, and love
- The epilogue says tools go in the backpack, and a faithful mission is enveloped by sustained faith, stubborn hope, and sacrificial love. The three marks show that a community is kingdom oriented. They quote Paul: three things last, and the greatest is love. Faith takes a step in the unknown. Hope endures emotional hits and a long horizon. Love breaks walls and builds bridges, loving the neighbor because one is a Christian. Without these marks, they say, a community cannot be a sign, a foretaste, and an instrument.
- relational tethering
- Woodward and White's name, in chapter 6, for how social space holds together: a common missional context and an environment where relationships can be built. Chapter 7, in Dan's climbing image and their shared tool, pictures a three-strand rope. Relational tethering is a continuum for discussion, diagnosis, and discipleship. Trust is built by keeping your word, apologizing, forgiving, and speaking about unmet expectations face to face. A frayed rope cannot hold the weight of a community on mission.
About JR Woodward
JR Woodward is a church planter, missiologist, and movement leader who has spent more than three decades establishing missional-incarnational communities across the United States. As the National Director of the V3 Church Planting Movement, co-founder of Missio Alliance and the P
Church as Movement