Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines that Shape the Church for Mission

by David Fitch

Publisher:

IVP

, 2016

Overview

In our quest to renew the church, Christians have walked through seeker-friendly, emergent, missional, and other movements to develop new expressions of the body of Christ. Now in the post-Christian world in North America we're asking the question again: Is there a way to be the church that engages the world, not by judgment nor accommodation but by becoming the good news in our culture?

In Faithful Presence, noted pastor and scholar David Fitch offers a new vision for the witness of the church in the world. He argues that we have lost the intent and practice of the sacramental ways of the historic church, and he recovers seven disciplines that have been with us since the birth of the church. Through numerous examples and stories, he demonstrates how these revolutionary disciplines can help the church take shape in and among our neighborhoods, transform our way of life in the world, and advance the kingdom.

This book will help you re-envision church, what you do in the name of church, and the way you lead a church. It recovers a future for the church that takes us beyond Christendom. Embrace the call to reimagine the church as the living embodiment of Christ, dwelling in and reflecting God's faithful presence to a world that desperately needs more of it.

Key Features

• Explores seven disciplines through which Christians are shaped by Christ to be his faithful presence in the world
• Names the reality that God is present in the world and that he uses a people faithful to his presence to make himself concrete and real amid the world's struggles and pain
• Offers a winsome vision for following Jesus into the world that Christians across multiple traditions will find challenging, compelling, and inspiring

Contents

Part I: God's Faithful Presence

• God's Faithful Presence
• To Change the World

Part II: The Seven Disciplines

• The Discipline of the Lord's Table
• The Discipline of Reconciliation
• The Discipline of Proclaiming the Gospel
• The Discipline of Being with the "Least of These"
• The Discipline of Being with Children
• The Discipline of the Fivefold Gifting
• The Discipline of Kingdom Prayer

Top Highlights

“In this space we submit all of our divisions and personal agendas to Christ’s presence. All of this must die” (Page 53)

“Faithful presence names the reality that God is present in the world and that he uses a people faithful to his presence to make himself concrete and real amid the world’s struggles and pain. When the church is this faithful presence, God’s kingdom becomes visible, and the world is invited to join with God.” (Page 10)

“We participate in his work in the world, and his presence becomes visible. The world then sees God’s presence among us and through us and joins in with God. And the world is changed. This, I contend, is faithful presence. This is the church. And this is how God has chosen to change the world.” (Page 26)

“In this half circle the question is never whether Christ is here or not. Rather it is whether his presence will be welcomed.” (Page 41)

“In this space the Father (reigning), the Son (being sent), and the Spirit (making the Son’s presence real) work together” (Page 34)

Praise for Faithful Presence

David Fitch continues his constructive work in ecclesiology by emphasizing the presence the church makes possible in a world that desperately needs God's presence. The disciplines he calls attention to are life giving because they are the disciplines God has given us to be a faithful presence. Hopefully this book will be widely read and used in churches everywhere.

Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus, Duke Divinity School

David Fitch can write this book not just because he has a heart for mission, but because he has attended faithfully to the presence of the Spirit of the living Christ poured out on all flesh. If you want to know more about Spirit-empowered mission, read this book. But be careful, as it will transform—discipline, even!—your life, your family, and your church according to the shape of the coming reign of God.

Amos Yong, professor of theology and mission, Fuller Theological Seminary, author of Hospitality and the Other

Do you want some practical, pastoral, and theological wisdom and encouragement on how to be the church, rather than merely go to church? Do you want to be a people for God's name and faithful presence—for one another and the world? Read this book. Learn nonnegotiable practices that Fitch and his communities have learned through their communion with a faithful God. These disciplines (including being with and for children), practiced together by the power of the Holy Spirit, will conform us to Jesus. Joined to him, one another, and those he's given us to love with him, we are intentionally shaped for God's missional life among us.

Cherith Fee Nordling, associate professor of theology, Northern Seminary

Product Details

• Title: Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines That Shape the Church for Mission
• Author: David Fitch
• Publisher: IVP
• Print Publication Date: 2016
• Logos Release Date: 2019
• Pages: 240
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subject: Church
• ISBNs: 9780830899418, 9780830841271, 0830899413, 083084127X
• Resource ID: LLS:9780830899418
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-06T21:00:29Z

About David Fitch

David Fitch is the founding pastor of Life on the Vine Christian Community—an emerging church in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago. He is the co-founder of Up/Rooted, an emergent cohort that gathers leaders and thinkers to engage issues of the emerging church and the post-modern context. Up/rooted now has chapters all over the Chicago area. He has been a speaker and presenter at “emerging church” gatherings, the Ekklesia Project, as well as academic and denominational gatherings on the issues of church, postmodernity and culture. He is the author of numerous articles on church, culture and theological ethics in journals as diverse as the Journal of the Academy for Evangelism in Theological Education, Discernment, Pastoral Psychology and the Journal of Christian Education. He is the author of The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from American Business, Para-Church Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism and Other Modern Maladies (Baker Books, 2005).