Howard Webb. Torn Curtain Publishing, 2020. 180 pages.
Does your experience of church ever feel less involved and meaningful than you suspect it could be? Howard Webb’s Redemptive Family advocates a model of church which involves the whole church community in the work of ministry. If this is new thinking, consider the implications of how the formal gathering time of most churches is structured:
“Time on Sunday is given to listening to preachers and worship leaders, while most of the congregation sit passively, unable to meaningfully communicate with the person beside them without being rude. Precious few get the chance to have deep conversations before or after the church service about the things that matter most, and even fewer get to exercise their spiritual gifts when church is gathered” (p. 13).
We might fairly object that much of what we do outside of a church service allows for relationships with others to develop. This is true, but it misses a few factors. Conversations we have at other times and places don’t include the whole church family, and the busyness of life in for most people today means that the Sunday service might be the one church activity they prioritize being present at. Furthermore, many of us can find it difficult to begin the conversations that build each other up in the faith, even with other believers.
Much of the author’s personal story—which led him to develop the model he promotes—involves his transition from energised involvement in university campus ministry as a student to a return to the more settled nature of a local church, together with the realities of adult life with family and employment. He realised that there were important differences between these two experiences of Christian community. Unlike the campus ministry, church gatherings are not typically mission-centric, required little input from most people, and have little accountability for discipleship built into them.
In light of this, Webb aimed to take the lessons learned from his time in campus ministry and integrate them into regular church gatherings. The proposal he makes is summed up by his assertion that church should be “a family, in a place, on a mission, together.” In the closing pages of the first chapter the author gently responds to some valid pushbacks against his model, before his book unpacks what it means for a church to be these things.
The Church as Family
Chapter 2 insists that only a family can fulfil the church’s purpose. It begins by recounting the church plant “experiment” in the outer central Auckland suburb of Point Chevalier that Webb and a team of others began in the mid-2010s. They intentionally built the space and time into their gatherings to allow relationships to develop between members and guests. Included in this part was the story of “Craig,” a scaffolder who after an operation was unable to retain his job and ended up homeless, and at this time became part of this church family. The chapter also includes a biblical demonstration that Christian churches ought to see themselves as families, and how a church operating by this understanding is redemptive for both church members and for outsiders who are not part of the church, but are interested enough to visit and join in. Webb sees this as particularly important given what has been described as an “epidemic of loneliness” that plagues modern life. But he is also realistic about how hard it can be to sustain multiple new relationships, even as they are so important for sharing the love of God to the world around us. For this reason, he contends that “This approach to mission is only more doable, it is sensible. Relationships can be hard work. All of us have a limited capacity to add new relationships to our lives, especially if those people are ‘high need.’ However, if we can share our relationships with others in our church family, then we can sustainably befriend many more people between us” (p. 48). The chapter ends with a list of nine practical helps for making church more like family.
The Church in a Place
The third chapter asks us to embrace our place. It asserts that our individualistic, consumer-oriented culture not only undermines our sense of church as family, but also erodes our connection to a particular place. Webb aims to retrieve the older idea of the “parish” for churches—the idea that every local church has a unique responsibility towards the people and places in the immediate area around it. This gives the “gift of boundaries,” “and boundaries help us by limiting our scope and focussing our efforts. They bring freedom and clarity” (p. 70). When churches see the value and the gift of the places that they find themselves in, they can understand how belonging to it helps us see it as God sees it and seek the opportunities to bring his redemption and blessing to it. The latter half of this chapter shares stories and suggestions on why and how to embrace the place where your church is located.
The Church on God’s Mission
Chapter Four is titled “Clarifying our Mission.” It begins by discussing the nature of mission, emphasizing that its goal is in glorifying God and bringing all things brought under the lordship of Christ. Webb sees our mission as best facilitated through our “nurturing of redemptive relationships,” both within and outside the church, to grow the church both in its numbers and in the faith of its members. He shares a range of helpful thoughts about the way relationships can be redemptive in facilitating the beginnings and growth of Christian faith, and how church programmes are limited in their capacity to foster faith. The ending pages of this chapter emphasise the importance of thus enabling members to become “active missioners” rather than “passive congregants” while gathered as church, and troubleshoot some of the hinderances to living out such a pattern of church and mission.
The Church on Mission Together
The fifth chapter emphasizes the communal nature of the church’s mission. This is done largely by highlighting the core convictions and key practices of the church plant which Webb and his friends began in the mid-2010s, which to the present (2024) has remained a success. Webb identifies the use of deliberately chosen self-descriptive language, their clearly understood way of mission, and intentionally fostering a sense of community in the church by encouraging at least a small degree of sharing from everybody. Much of the chapter discusses the practicalities (including the challenges!) of reconfiguring a church gathering as a family gathering rather than as a formal ‘service.’ One interesting feature that could be of use is the “diagnostic checklist” for a church to assess their culture, their structures and practices, and their support for each member as a missioner.
Embracing Change or Starting Anew
The final two chapters discuss the processes by which an established church might be renewed in its sense of being “a family on a mission in a place together,” and the steps by which a new church like this may be planted. Part of the former includes the process of “appreciative inquiry” which the Love Your Neighbour team can facilitate with churches (Church-wide Conversations – Love Your Neighbour). Both chapters are filled with numerous encouragements and tips for either enterprise.
Redemptive Family was written on the eve of the Covid-19 pandemic, and thus before the challenges that it brought to churches in New Zealand and around the world. In view of these challenges, this book appears all the more relevant to churches as they grapple with how to rebuild after the disruption to church life that many have experienced. Redemptive Family highlights the fundamental features of the nature of the church—a family, on a mission, in a place, together—and challenges all Christians to ensure that these things are clearly built into the way we spend our time together.
If this book sounds helpful to you, the related website Love Your Neighbour is worth checking out. The Redemptive Family book is available from the Love Your Neighbour website here or from Manna Bookstores here for NZ$28 (prices as at June 2024), and can also be purchased as an E-book (see e.g. here).
Chris Northcott 