Book Review of Future Church, Will Mancini and Cory Hartman
You have to be brave to title your book Future Church. To promise to predict the future, and then inform others how to prepare for it is a big call. That is not how I was taught the social sciences. The present is as imperceptible to us as water is to fish. Sociology and history can only make sense of our experience as it passes and begins to fracture – only then can we see through the cracks.
Despite my scepticism of the title, this book contains much wisdom. The basic thesis is that the church has been grooming attendees, not growing disciples – though it must be said this is not a new thesis. Dallas Willard names this The Great Omission in his 2006 book. Churches as organisations focus on programs and consumers felt needs, not the church’s unique calling and disciple-making.
The Upper and Lower Room
Mancini labels church programs as the lower room, and disciple-making as the upper room. He is not against lower room activities per se. When practised outside of a disciple-making vision, church programs become an ‘end’ disconnected from their ultimate purpose. Leadership defaults to measuring attendance, giving, program growth, and property upgrades. This is the legacy of 60 years of ‘church growth’ thinking. Churches grew by being attractional, providing ‘services’, remaining relevant, and assimilating attendees into the organisation.
I have two reservations with Mancini’s core thesis. First, I am uncomfortable with the implicit assumptions of the downstairs as methodology versus upstairs as the ultimate purpose metaphor. To use Simon Sinek’s vocabulary, Mancini’s hypothesis is that ‘why’ is the foundational question, and it must precede ‘how’ and ‘what’ questions.
All three questions are valid, must be addressed, and you can start anywhere. Learning Style Theory (according to Honey and Mumford) suggests that ‘why’, ‘how’ and ‘what’ are the preferential enquiry questions of ‘theorists’, ‘pragmatists’ and ‘activists’ respectively. ‘Why’ precedes ‘how’ and ‘what’ for a ‘theorist’, but not other three learning styles. Honey and Mumford would critique Sinek and Mancini as universalising their idiosyncratic learning preferences.
More importantly, Learning Style Theory postulates that whatever one’s preferred window into a topic might be, cycling through all learning styles results in the greatest outcomes. Applying this insight to a church setting, it follows that any church will have some combination of ‘activists’, ‘pragmatists’, ‘theorists’, and ‘reflectors’. Ministry and mission ought to be approached from all perspectives. Leaders must facilitate a generative dialogue between all perspectives.
To critique Mancini from another discipline – namely psychology – where there are three ‘tribes’. Cognitivists prioritise thinking, behaviourists favour doing, and psychotherapies centre around emotions. To suggest that if you get the core principles right, everything else follows aligns with a cognitivist approach. Most think there is truth in each ‘tribe’. With Mancini, right thinking can lead to right behaviour, but it can work the other way too, and often emotions drive our thinking and actions.
I labour this point for two reasons. Mancini’s prioritisation of the ‘why’ over the ‘how’ is central to his thesis. Second, he is not alone. Much of the Reformed Evangelical spirituality and churchmanship prioritises right thought (orthodoxy) over right practice (orthopraxis), and is wary of emotions.
My response is to suggest that chicken-egg thinking (who knows what comes first, but it’s a spiral of causation) is to be preferred over horse-cart thinking (the horse must proceed the cart).
Turning to the biblical data, Mancini notes instances in Jesus’ ministry that aligns with his upstairs as core, and downstairs as secondary metaphor. I find his interpretation a little forced and selective. Jesus disciples from varied starting points, moving through divergent progressions. For instance, for Jesus’ disciples, love causes obedience (John 14:15), and obedience causes love (John 15:10). The progression is cyclical and iterative, more so than linear. Again, disciples are called to love God with heart, mind, soul and strength (Mark 12:30).
Church-centric universe
The second flaw I perceive in Mancini’s core methodology is that he is church-centric in his account of the problem and solution. The church of the 1940s-'60s just decided to treat the congregation as an audience, then en masse in the '60s-80s became denomination and program focused, and then from the '80s to the 2000s all became seeker focused. The (Future) church needs to clarify its core vision and ministry model to be more effective.
This is not the standard way to do history or explain social movements. The early church father Eusebius wrote history with God as the ultimate cause. Enlightenment scholars – both Christian and secular – frame history as the adaptation of individuals and institutions to broader cultural shifts and phenomena. Whereas Mancini construes (recent) church history with the church as its own cause and solution.
Isolating the expressions of ministry from its social context sound unlike Jesus and Paul. They both convey the gospel as a contextualised message in dialogue with culture. Paul is Jew-like to Jews, and lives as one not under the law when with Gentiles – he “become(s) all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.” (I Cor 9:22).
Seven laws of real church growth
The second part of Mancini’s book lists seven ‘laws’ of upper room disciple-making. I agree that disciple-making is the deeper goal of churches, and that programs risk becoming ends in themselves. But to frame disciple-making as following seven steps or laws sounds remarkably modernistic (20th Century). The Church Health era postulated that you must practice the (eight if you follow NCD’s formula) essential qualities to experience church health, which results in church growth. The parallels between Schwartz’s eight characteristics, Warren’s five M’s, and Mancini’s seven laws is uncanny. Mancini’s Future Church sounds much like the recent past.
The last section of the book is also a twist on ‘church growth’ theory. Mancini outlines the assimilation funnel model of the church growth era, inverts it into a discipleship model, and suggests there are insights to both – but the emphasis ought to fall on disciple-making. I agree, but all this reminds me of youth ministry theory of the 90s, and even parts of Purpose Driven Church. Warren’s funnel always had both push-through and draw-in dynamics.
Is it worth the read?
So why did I say there is much wisdom in this book? Mancini is a well-travelled church health consultant, who has a global (OK, maybe Pan-American) picture of the 21st Century Church. Many are in program mode, and not making disciples who make disciples. In short his analysis of the problem is backed by experience and anecdotes that rings true.
On the solution side, there are pearls of wisdom in each of Mancini’s seven laws (I want to call them something else – habits maybe). I liked the reminder that future mission will be more contextualised, decentralised, and relational as opposed to programmatic.
Buried deep and late within his final chapter entitled ‘funnel fusion’ was a delightful taxonomy of some of the new approaches to mission that he (and I) have seen working. He calls these program as practice – disciple-making of disciple-makers embedded in structured programs; program to meet people for practice – think missional communities; and program to celebrate practice – occasional church that celebrates decentralised continuous ministry and mission.
The book would be stronger if it grounded recent church history in its social historical context – namely the move from Christendom to post-Christendom. How does this recent tectonic shift explain why what used to work no longer fits, and what new approaches engage with the new yearnings of our culture? Dan Strange’s concept of subversive fulfilment is an example of how understanding your context sheds light on emerging trends in mission. This book would be less irritating if his use of biblical examples wasn’t quite so forced, and if you didn’t have endure so many either-or dichotomies.
Do I recommend you read this book? Sure. Imagine the book is entitled The Best of the Present Church, see the ruts we are stuck in for what they are, pick out the pearls, explore contextualised mission, reimagine your missional discipleship, and this book will bring some helpful frames and practices to your local church. As for what will happen in the future – it’s not ours to write.
© David Rietveld 08/03/2024