Holy Experiment

Movement intelligence begins with the mustard seed. It starts small and becomes significant over time. Woodward and White write that the culture around them mocks the small and wants fast, furious, fantastic growth. Disciples are formed in the small and sent into neighborhoods. Communities learn to gather under the essentials of being the church. They water the small and leave fruitfulness to God. The sentence they put on that patience is the Spirit blowing on the smallest embers.

The lens that clouds this is the church as industrial complex. They credit Skye Jethani and Scott Bessenecker with the borrowed name "Christian-industrial complex," then use church as industrial complex for the dominant lens: more resources, programs, staff, property, and attendance. Through that lens, more is better. Spirituality becomes a product, growth a race, leadership a business, members consumers. Neighbors become objects of mission. The church as movement, in the same chapter, wants shared leadership, sustainability, and faithfulness, and leaves fruitfulness to God. It crosses boundaries to be present and listen, joining what God is already doing.

Dan White Jr. supplies the local stakes. He estimates that 3.5 percent of his city attend church regularly. A sizable share of people have experienced church and found it unhelpful for becoming whole and healthy. He and Woodward believe the way of Jesus is the road to wholeness and healing, and they say that is not the word on the street. The options they list are denial, a long break from the organized church, or faithfulness that recovers a way of being the church in the way of Christ and in the power of the Spirit. They are explicit that manufacturing growth through pragmatism, business practice, or "the ten secrets that will guarantee success" is a different project. Jesus, they note, says "Well done, my good and faithful servant."

Chapter 8 then locates being the church. Come-and-see is attractional. Go-and-be-with is incarnational. They refuse the habit of pitting those two against each other. The danger they name is extractional: elevating the weekly gathering until people are pulled from everyday mission in everyday places. The quoted line, noted to Huckins and Yackley, says this teaches that church is something we go to instead of something we are. Public gatherings, in their account, belong under missional communities. Missional means sent out. Incarnational means going deep. The Spirit is drawing the church toward the people, and God is already moving along the streets. When the ecclesial essentials are understood, they write, there is a lot of freedom in what it means to be the church in a local situation. Church is not a building. A shark, in their image, grows only to the size of the tank.

In the teachers chapter Woodward's telos for teachers is inhabiting the sacred text: immersing a congregation in Scripture and dwelling faithfully in God's story. He says a teacher helps people hear the Bible as a voice. He also says Scripture has to be reclaimed as narrative if a people are going to stay true to the God of the story.

N. T. Wright's image, which he quotes at length, is a Shakespeare play whose fifth act has been lost. The first four acts are rich enough to stage. Writing one official fifth act would freeze the play and make Shakespeare responsible for work that is not his. Highly trained actors immerse themselves in the earlier acts and in Shakespeare's language, then work out a fifth act themselves. Woodward's summary is that the actors improvise, using both innovation and consistency: they move the story forward while staying with the subplots and themes the author has already developed. They are not called to merely imitate an earlier act. The authority of the first four acts informs the fifth.

He maps the image onto Scripture. The first four acts are Creation, Fall, Israel, and Jesus. The last piece of the fifth act, New Creation, is also given. People who live in the real-life drama learn those acts well enough to improvise lives faithful to the God of the story. Grenz, as cited here, says it is ultimately the Spirit who speaks through the sacred text, inspiration and illumination as one act. Woodward's conclusion is that listening to the Spirit, in the events of the past and in the promised new heavens and new earth, is how a church joins God's mission of renewing all things.

He also records how a reading goes formulaic. Barram, in the same chapter, names cultural fixations with bottom lines, quick fixes, and technological innovation. Those fixations, Barram says, push interpretation toward method and technique. Woodward is using that warning inside a missional hermeneutic, alongside Chris Wright, Darrell Guder, Barram, and Jim Brownson. Austin Mustard Seed, later in the chapter, asks one question of Scripture: How can we continue to partner with God in the writing of this story going forward? That question is the local form of the fifth act. One Sunday a month they leave the gathering and go out, because they believe the story is working toward redemption and repair.