Ecclesia Gathering in Review

Eric Murphy on February 16th, 2008

This Week I spent some time at the Ecclesia National Gathering in Washington DC, with friends Brent Underwood and Daniel Farrell. Ecclesia is a relational network of missional churches, and leaders who are seeking to revolutionize the idea of church. The Drive for us living in Richmond, VA was only 2 hours - gotta love it.

The first session began shortly after we arrived. First of all, I don’t think I have ever seen more Apple MacBooks in one place (college doesn’t count, I went to an art school but no one had a laptop). I felt like I must have missed out on something. Is this a Mac convention? I am a designer, I am suppose to have a Macbook…. right? Yet I am the one with the large clunky Dell Notebook in the room and the pastors were the cool kids with their Macbooks and IPhones.

All that aside. I always love these kinds of events, because of the different kinds of people I meet from different walks of life, and the immense sense of community that always seems to occur - as if its a big family gathering. Overall, It was a great time of fellowship with some very dynamic church leaders truly seeking to further embody the life of Jesus in their own faith communities.

The primary speakers were David Fitch, author of The Great Giveaway, and Alan Hirsch, Author of The Forgotten Ways and Co-Author of The Shaping of Things to Come.

Prior to the conference I had not heard of David Fitch nor of his writings, but I figured his message would have some level relevancy to the missional church. Fitch spoke first about our approach to witness and how truth is to inhabit our way of life and how old ways and approaches to witness are failing by pointing out evidences of what the church has produced in our culture. He used cultural icons such as Ken Lay, President Bush and Jessica Simpson as byproducts of a system of dysfunctional discipleship. His basic message through his first session seemed to be make disciples, not converts. One thing I thought to be notable was his take on justice. “Justice is Relational”. With this comment, Fitch seemed to be opposing the idea that merely giving in a way that you can remain detached (physically, mentally, emotionally) to what you are giving is not enough - pointing to examples of individual that donated multiple millions as a charitable act to non-profit organizations and yet failed in their inner character.

David went on to focus secondly on preaching and proclamation in our gatherings - declaring and proclaiming boldly the word of God. While I do think this is relevant in some contextual models of church, this subject did not resinate with me. Most of the leaders there can certainly relate, as many of them still have congregational models of formation and are responsible for delivering a sermon on Sunday morning. Most gatherings I have attended lately aspire to a different kind of liturgy where the preaching format openly invites discussion rather than lecture.

Alan Hirsch, in his first session, focused on “Recalibrating the 21st Century Church by Recovering:

The Centrality of Jesus within his own movement
Discipleship as our core task
An Incarnational - Missional Impulse
Ethos/Structure of Apostolic Movements

He noted that “We cant keep doing the same thing and expect different results”. For starters, Hirsch pointed out that at the heart of recovering our mission as the church is that we must first revisit the person of Jesus. The core value of the church is the centrality of Jesus. Do we have the right idea about Jesus? What were his missions, intentions, how did he live, what did he accomplish, what does this mean for us now? What kind of Image of Jesus are we portraying to the world? Alan covered much content of high relevance within this session. I will post my more detailed notes in a later entry.

Alan’s wife Debra talked much about discipleship and how many of our modes of church can actually stifle our disciple-making efforts. A couple of issues she brought up suggest that we could use a real shift in our thinking when it comes to discipleship. A few that stood out to me was everyone is somewhere in relation to Jesus, that we need to go beyond looking at people as sinners and begin to look at people as formed in the image of God, and that discipleship begins before one believes in Christ.

For me, Alan’s message very much echoes some of the learning that I have been going through, and affirms the ideologies and framework in which I would like to move forward with as a ministry. The question still remains how…? However, I am not opposed to moving slow with things - allowing God to be a slow cook until the timing and season is right.