David Fitch using unnecessarily big words - we are reacting against a coercive decontextualized manipulation of the gospel* - but otherwise making good sense in his new blog post: What the Missional Church is missing: Proclaiming the Gospel.
I like a lot of what David Fitch writes, though it puzzles me that he has such a strong focus on spending quite so much time in Starbucks - not on mission but on coffee. However, as he notes in his third point: An understanding of what it means to be with people,
so as to listen long enough to create the opening whereby you are
invited to proclaim the gospel as it most makes most direct sense within
this person’s life. That's probably what Starbucks is all about....
Fitch's recent book, Prodigal Christianity, has had some mixed reactions - I haven't had a chance to read it yet (I'm in a P T Forsyth mode at the moment, thanks to Jason Goroncy), but I'll aim to get onto it at some point. One Amazon reviewer wrote about it: Take a bit of David Bosch, combine him with Darrel Guder and Lesslie
Newbigin, shake in Tim Keller, Scot McKnight, Alan Hirsch and bake on a
broad Augustinian base, and you'll get Prodigal Christianity, an unique
and filling book that Christians living in the 21st century should read.
*Or: there’s an epistemological shift here that goes way beyond the cognitive
enlightenment modes of communication most Americans are addicted to.
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