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When the World Is Changing
A Roundtable Review

James, Christopher. 2018.

Church Planting in Post-Christian 
Soil: Theology and Practice.
Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

ISBN: 978-0-19-067364-2

Keifert, Patrick, and Wesley Granberg-
Michaelson. 2019.

How Change Comes to Your Church: 
A Guidebook for Church Innovations. 

Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. 

ISBN: 978-0-8028-7624-9

Taylor, Steve. 2019. 

First Expressions: Innovation  
and the Mission of God.
London: SCM. 

ISBN: 978-0-334-05847-2



118

Reviewed by Dustin D. Benac
Postdoctoral Associate, Duke University Divinity School 
dustin.benac@duke.edu

Change is neither novel nor avoidable for communities of 
faith. Quite the opposite is true: disruption creates the conditions 
for innovations in Christian thought and practice. To borrow lan-
guage from J. R. R. Tolkien: “The world is changing” (Tolkien 2004, 
1223). Spoken by Treebeard, a figure who embodies ancient and 
rooted wisdom, Tolkien’s diagnosis gives voice to communities of 
faith, those who serve them, and those who study them. And, as 
Gideon Lichfield observed in the wake of Covid-19, “There is no 
going back to normal” (Lichfield 2020).

The three works reviewed here represent different attempts 
to attend to a changing church when the world is changing. Even 
though these works share a fundamental concern, their authors 
employ different methods, units of analysis, and rhetorical struc-
tures to attend to the changes that confront communities of faith. 
This review introduces each work, notes its distinctive contribu-
tion to the study of ecclesial change, and concludes by discuss-
ing future horizons for ecclesiological inquiry when the world is 
changing. 

Christopher James’s Church Planting in Post-Christian Soil 
attends to the theology and practice that guides church-planting 
in Seattle, Washington.1 Following his description of Seattle as a 
“future trending city,” James contends that attending to a cohort of 
church plants “yields practical wisdom for the US church as it seeks 
to faithfully engage with its emerging contexts” (4). Four move-
ments develop James’s argument over seven chapters: chapters 1 
and 2 introduce Seattle as a future-trending, post-Christian con-
text. Based on his review of one hundred and five churches that were 
founded between 2001 and 2014, surveys submitted by fifty-seven 
pastors, and follow-up interviews with sixteen respondents, James 
identifies four different “paradigmatic ecclesial combinations” 

1. The three works are reviewed in alphabetical order by author. 



Dustin D. Benac—First Expressions

119

(62): the Great Commission Team, Household of the Spirit, New 
Community, and Neighborhood Incarnation. Chapters 3 and 4 
provides an interdisciplinary review of different attempts to model 
church, noting how existing typologies provide interpretive lenses 
to examine the theology and practice of church planting. The 
lived theology of James’s respondents, in turn, demonstrates the 
need for new practical ecclesiologies in order to engage the four 
paradigms he identifies. James takes a prescriptive turn in chapters 
5 and 6, moving from what is to what ought to be based on his 
sociological-theological assessment. Taking cues from missional 
theology, James argues the Neighborhood Incarnation model is 
“contextually superior” (178), meriting “increased theological 
and practical consideration” (139). Following Richard Osmer’s 
four-fold paradigm for practical theological inquiry, James also 
proposes new practices across the four typologies he identifies. 
Finally, James concludes in chapter 6 by describing the form(s) of 
practical wisdom that can enrich Christian witness on the edge 
of Christendom. James’s work is methodologically innovative, 
combining theology and social theory to enrich scholarship and 
practice within a shifting cultural-ecclesial environment. 

Patrick Keifert and Wesley Granberg-Michaelson’s How 
Change Comes to Your Church is a guidebook for leaders who 
envision “transformational, missional change” in the communi-
ties they serve (24). At 154 pages and small enough to fit into a 
handbag, this collaborative work can be read in a single sitting. 
The work’s purposeful brevity, however, should not obscure the 
hard-won wisdom that informs it. Drawn from three decades of 
combined ministry and consulting experience, the authors write 
as contextual savants, incorporating insights from ministry in 
multiple contexts and continents. Six chapters organize their 
description of the conditions and process that supports transfor-
mation. Following an antanagoge rhetorical structure, chapter 
1, “What Needs to Change, and How?,” introduces the problem 
that occasions their work: ministry leaders know the challenges 
they face require change, but “we” don’t know how to achieve the 
change “we” envision. Writing with a subtle precision, Keifert and 



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120

Granberg-Michaelson consistently use the third person plural, 
as if to suggest a more capacious “we” provides a first step to un-
derstand this problem. Accordingly, chapter 2, “Making Space,” 
describes the personal and organizational space transformational 
change requires. Much as Gary Gunderson describes conflict 
and creativity in “boundary zones” as dyads of transformational 
change (Gunderson 2004), they observe how disruption can create 
organizational and spiritual space for new patterns and practices 
to emerge. Chapter 3, “Nurturing a Climate of Discernment,” at-
tends to the inner-organizational processes that sustain change. 
Following Craig Dykstra’s account of pastoral and ecclesial imagi-
nation, they conclude meaningful change requires changing how 
decisions are made, which is itself an act of imagination. Chapters 
4 and 5, “Dwelling in the Word” and “Sharing the Journey” turn 
to consider two interrelated modes of discovery that can promote 
change within communities of faith: (1) sustained communal read-
ing of Scripture and (2) collective discernment of God’s missional 
call upon a congregation. When combined, these two modes invite 
communities to “trust the leadership of the Holy Spirit” (98) and 
“take the next steps in our shared pilgrimage toward missional 
transformation” (120). Finally, chapter 6, “Being Transformed: 
Practices for Missional Change,” describes the practices that en-
able communities to “find a useable past for a faithful future” (128). 

Keifert and Granberg-Michaelson’s work offers companion-
ship and literary salve for transition-weary pastors and commu-
nities of faith. As the authors conclude, change is inevitable for 
churches; they exist in ever-changing contexts and dynamic insti-
tutional settings. Nevertheless, time, trust-filled relationships, and 
the word and work of God can enliven the kind of transformation-
al, missional change that is embedded in the Christian tradition. 

“Innovation is nothing new,” writes Steve Taylor in First Ex-
pressions (3). Taylor’s work continues a decade of ecclesiological 
investigations by reexamining sites of ecclesial innovation in the 
United Kingdom eleven years later. This longitudinal approach 
leads Taylor to identify first expressions, representing “initial ex-
periments in ecclesial innovation” (4), as a patterned process that 



Dustin D. Benac—First Expressions

121

contributes to institutional change. Four moves organize his inves-
tigation over thirteen chapters: Part I introduces the methods and 
contextual centers that organize Taylor’s longitudinal research, 
examining birth narratives for first expressions. Part II considers 
how patterns of organizational death and renewal reflect the adap-
tive process each innovation pursues. This section also includes 
Taylor’s typology of four different approaches to ecclesial innova-
tion: commerce, ecology, indigenous, and craft. Part III examines 
first expressions as an organizational innovation, noting the dual 
need for leadership to create a suitable holding environment as well 
as a nimble structure to sustain mission. Finally, part IV considers 
how first expressions offer an ambient witness, bodying forth the 
word and work of God in relation to a local setting and a broader 
ecclesial matrix of relations. When patterned by forms of gover-
nance and practice that incorporate first expressions into an eccle-
sial politic, first expressions may find the conditions to form and 
flourish. As Taylor concludes: “If the way of Jesus is reformation, 
then our institutions, including their structures of governance, can 
be converted” (230). 

As an exploration of the practical theology of ecclesial inno-
vation, Taylor’s work is equal parts a descriptive and an imaginative 
inquiry. Written in a lyrical style that includes several stanzas of 
poetry to open each part, Taylor displays the “gift of poetic imagi-
nation” (124) that ecclesial innovation requires. Further, Taylor’s 
longitudinal design advances ecclesiological inquiry, providing a 
template for future studies of change within communities of faith. 

When read together, James’s, Keifert and Granberg-Michael-
son’s, and Taylor’s work display three different modes of inquiry 
amid the changes that confront communities of faith. Each work 
maps a shifting organizational landscape and discerns the requi-
site ecclesial, pastoral, and organizational responses. For James, a 
shifting cultural context need not diminish the possibility of mis-
sion-driven ecclesial engagement. Rather, contextually attentive 
approaches can form and flourish. For Keifert and Granberg-Mi-
chaelson, change comes to every community of faith. More than a 
crisis that is to be skirted, however, the challenges faith leaders face 



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122

invite discernment and missional transformation. For Taylor, first 
expressions are at once missional response to changes in a broader 
ecclesial environment and places of possibility for ecclesial inno-
vation. Representing more than deviant expressions beyond the 
pale of institutionalize Christianity, first expressions contribute to 
the vitality of a broader ecclesial communion.

For scholars and practitioners in moments of cultural-eccle-
sial change, these books offer three insights about future horizons 
for ecclesiological inquiry: (1) Cultural-ecclesial change occurs 
within a dynamic ecclesial ecology. This ecclesial ecology, which 
includes traditional, nontraditional, and para traditional ap-
proaches to organize a common life, may nourish and sustain the 
forms of witness, education, and leadership that are able to adapt 
to changing environments. (2) The study of shifting communities 
of faith requires an interdisciplinary framework that attends to the 
precise point of contact between theology, practice, and interdis-
ciplinary perspectives. Much like trying to hang a door, this task 
requires getting the hinges of an argument to line up in order for 
a rhetorical pin to fall through. (3) In so far as the Christian tradi-
tion may guide the form of response, it demonstrates the need for 
a new and emerging form of wisdom, one that emerges from local 
communities of faith and is also borne by a broader intellectual 
community. 

The world is changing. For Tolkien, the change is more than 
speculation, it is imbibed, sensed, and touched. “I feel [change] in 
the water, a feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air,” Treebeard 
shares (Tolkien 2004, 1223). We similarly feel change in our com-
munities. We see it on the news. We hear it in the tremoring voices 
of parishioners. We perceive it in shifting vocations for religious 
leadership. Nevertheless, even when the world is change, the an-
cient and rooted wisdom that marks these three works may nour-
ish imagination for a changing church.



Dustin D. Benac—First Expressions

123

Bibliography

Gunderson, Gary. 2004. Boundary Leaders: Leadership Skills for People of Faith. 
Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress.

Lichfield, Gideon. 2020. “We’re Not Going Back to Normal.” MIT 
Technology Review, March 17. Online. https://www.technologyreview.
com/2020/03/17/905264/coronavirus-pandemic-social-distancing-18-
months.

Tolkien, J. R. R. 2004. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Boston: 
Houghton Mifflin.


