David Fitch sends me love but feels misunderstood.
Here’s my attempt to understand him better.

How a Leader Enters a Context

David Fitch writes that he agrees with almost everything I say, but feels that I missed his main point.

I would like to understand him, and his main point, better.

David offers three clues that demonstrate that I don’t get his point about church planting. I want to extend to him the benefit of the doubt because I can be slow. But, in my experience, when you have some one that takes an “either/or” position, it seems that you have to either “agree” or “you don’t get it”.

Since David’s article is about why I, Alex McManus, just don’t get it, I want to give myself every opportunity to understand things and him. So, I want to address each of the clues in two short posts rather than one long one. This makes for easier reading.

A Huge and Positive Footprint
David’s first clue that I just don’t feel him is my idea that a new church can make “A huge and positive footprint” when they launch. I gave K2 the Church as an example.

The main point David discusses here: How to enter a context.

David sees entering a context with a “big footprint” as “typical” of “mega church ways” and believes it “smacks” both of “taking up a power position in a context” and of “colonialist mission”.

Wow. All I said was they did something “positive”…oh yes, and “huge”. I didn’t say this to dismiss David’s strategy. I offered it as another good deed in addition to his ideas. I was adding a both/and option to his either/or framework.

But David proposes that we enter a context “meekly, humbly, vulnerably,…(and) incarnationally”.

Everyone tip toe around and say, “Sssshhhhhh.”

David goes on to say that the fact that the big footprint “approach is acceptable” to me “reveals” to him why I “don’t see the need for a new church planting strategy.”

Really? Now we’ve stuck a toe across the line.

Where to begin? I feel like a mosquito in a nudist colony.

Revelation vs Just Reading

I want to tread lightly because David feels that his knowledge about how I think was “revealed” to him. But I would say, respectfully, that what was revealed to David about me here is 100% false. David is correct to write that I don’t see the need for “a” new strategy. But this misleads…The truth is that I see a need for many, many new strategies.

This is why I wrote about David’s article — I think his approach limits and reduces amazing possibilities of leaders of differing capacity, especially high-impact, entrepreneurial leaders.

I am not sure why this false information about me was revealed to David. In both concept and practice I have participated in a wide variety of church planting “strategies”.

And —this is key here — nothing…no thing…in my writings either with regard to David’s article or other wise indicates that I don’t see a need for new church planting strategies.

In fact, I embrace new strategies, even the one David proposed. I also embrace high-impact, risk-filled, adventurous attempts for the gospel.

See my articles:

Twin Trajectories: Mega Church and Home Church Networks and why we need them both — Part 1

Twin Trajectories: Mega Church and Home Church Networks and why we need them both — Part 2

In that sense, David, it’s not that I don’t see a need for “a” new strategy. It’s that I invite you to be open to not only your model and strategy but to the models and strategies of others too. It’s a big world and there’s room for a lot of new ways.

I think I’ll understand you better, if you explain to me how you can write — not from a revelation of any sort but from the two articles that I have written in response to yours here and here – that I don’t see a need for new church planting strategies. Until then, I have to agree with you David, I don’t get you, but I’m trying. Much love, though.

Now, let’s move on to the issue of how to enter a context.

Either/Or Again

Here’s the situation as David sees it.

EITHER we enter a context meekly, humbly, vulnerably…incarnationally
OR we enter smacking of Colonialist mission –what?– “mega church ways” –again, what?– and taking up power positions because we are so big and mighty.

OK, Either meek and mild, like David proposes.
OR, imposing ourselves on others, pushing people around, and pegging them into a program (“colonialist mission” and “mega church ways”?) like David says I propose.

Again, we’re not getting a lot of wiggle room from David. In his either/or framework (again), you either got to be flaccid or erect, black or white.

But the either/or framework David offers is an unbalanced seesaw made up of his point of view on the one side and an exaggerated, unbalanced view on the other. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Fitch is setting up a point of view that NO ONE believes and then beating it up and addressing me as if I believed it.

This returns to why I commented on Fitch’s argument to begin with. His original proposal was built on this kind of either/or framework and this is what I disagreed with. Here is the original premise: “A look at whether churches should expand through a missionary model rather than relying on professional entrepreneurial pastors to plant churches.”Do you see it? Either missionary model or professional entrepreneurial pastors. My response to this is here.

And now, again, David gives another either/or framework of dubious seriousness.

I propose a real either/or framework:
EITHER Meek and Mild as David proposes
OR Big and Bold as David opposes
OR Both as I propose.

The Main Point

David can try to explain his main point. I will explain mine.
Creating false either/or frameworks about models keeps us from looking at the main issues at stake. For example, leadership.

Leaders are different. (Think of the leaders whose causes went supernova — The Mega church Pastors (Warren, Hybels, etc) Paul Yonngi Cho, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Jesus, Mohammad, Aung San Sui Chi, Martin Luther King, Luther.)
Their styles vary.
Their contexts vary.
Their audiences respond differently.
The ways their passions spread vary.

It’s not healthy to try and fit everyone into one template…into “a” new strategy. In reaction to one church model that has fallen into disfavor, I think that’s what David may be trying to do. At least, that’s what I understood through David’s article, “STOP FUNDING CHURCH PLANTS and start funding missionaries. ” My own point of view, that I stated in my article, is that we are beyond a one-model-fits-all world.

In any case, leaders don’t enter a context as a strategy but as people with a strategy. They can drop the strategy–yours or mine. Who they are as people in relationship to the context determines which of many strategies will be effective. Some of these leaders…dare I say it …will have greater capacity, gifting, etc and may go supernova. They will make a huge and positive footprint.

I say, nice.
David says, Shhhhh.

For David, it seems, it’s about models. For me, it’s more primal than this. It is about humanity and the diversity of charisms and capacities given to leaders, the numerous ways human respond to them, and the variety of ways human community can structure itself.

Some people are designed to make a huge and positive impact within a context. Others come in quietly. I don’t want any system or ideology that tries to limit or restrict these kind of leaders to act for the kingdom using their gifts, talents, ambitions, and temperaments open to full throttle. When a system of thought limits the possibilities, suppresses the amazing, hammers down the nails that stand above the rest, it needs to be challenged.

Last Thing

When did making a “positive” and “huge” impact for the Kingdom impact become wrong?
Before you answer, take it in — “positive”.
I would think that when and if this ever happens, we would celebrate.
When did “positive” become wrong?

I notice that this didn’t seem to phase David.
He seem so against this attributing to it code words impregnated with negative feelings– “colonialist mission”, “mega church ways” and so on — that even with the possibility that it could be “positive” David didn’t even blink.
Did it not matter that it was “positive” because it was “huge”?
Is it intolerable that a team of Christ followers –whether colonialists or indigenous — would “bless” in the best of ways a large number of people at one time? Scandalous.

Could it be that we become so enamored with our ideologies –or so frustrated with ineffective ones –that we lose sight of basic things?
It is OK for something really good like the gospel of the kingdom to enter a context and make waves, to spread like wild fire, go to supernova. I also think that your proposal to go in quietly, vulnerably, delicately is also worth doing…often necessary. I think its OK for people whose intent it is to announce the kingdom in a community to do so either way, according to the spirit that has been given to them, and the dictates of the contexts they enter.

In this case, both/and trumps either/or. Some readers may misunderstand me to mean BOTH Missional AND Mega Church or Attractional. They would be wrong. This both/and means BOTH leaders with stealth, subverive gifts, quiet talents, and quieter dispositions AND leaders with explosive, disruptive, high impact energy. This is primal. Ways to enter a context are as diverse as are the leaders that enter them.

My thoughts on the next two “clues” that reveal to David that I just don’t get him are on the way…

All the best,

Alex