Michael Frost > Quotes

“Many exiles leave the mainstream church and engage in the kinds of things we’ve looked at already: living an authentic life, struggling for global justice, showing compassion, pursuing vocation as a way of doing God’s work. But often they do it alone, imagining that it’s either the conventional church or no church at all.”
― Michael Frost, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture

“I, for one, am happy to see the end of Christendom. I’m glad that we can no longer rely on temporal, cultural supports to reinforce our message or the validity of our presence. I suspect that the increasing marginalization of the Christian movement in the West is the very thing that will wake us up to the marvelously exciting, dangerous, and confronting message of Jesus. If we are exiles on foreign soil—post-Christendom, postmodern, postliterate, and so on—then maybe at last it’s time to start living like exiles, as a pesky, fringe-dwelling alternative to the dominant forces of our times. As the saying goes, “Way out people know the way out.”[8”
― Michael Frost, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture

“Surely the challenge for the church today is to be taken captive by the agenda of Jesus, rather than seeking to mold him to fit our agendas, no matter how noble they might be.”
― Michael Frost, ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church

“The Christian experience is not primarily formed by our liturgy, doctrine, or ecclesiology, as important as those might be. We are formed by the dangerous stories of our great hero.”
― Michael Frost, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture

“The founding father of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, was noted as saying, “When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.”
― Michael Frost, Surprise the World: The Five Habits of Highly Missional People

“Shane Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution, once surveyed a group of people who identified themselves as “strong followers of Jesus” and asked them, “Did Jesus spend time with the poor?” Around 80 percent replied in the affirmative, leaving a disturbing 20 percent of so-called strong followers of Jesus who think Jesus didn’t spend time with the poor. That this could be the case should remind us of the levels of Christian ignorance about our founder and Lord. But the more disturbing fact is that Claiborne asked the same group, “Do you spend time with the poor?” Only 2 percent replied that they did. There is for many an almost complete disconnect between our beliefs about Jesus and our actions. This disconnection lies at the nub of the problem facing the church.”
― Michael Frost, ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church

“you know you’ve remade Jesus in your own image when he hates all the same people you hate!”
― Michael Frost, ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church

“The Come-To-Us stance developed over the Christendom period is unbiblical.”
― Michael Frost, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church

“One is not required to be, or to intend to be, a disciple in order to become a Christian, and one may remain a Christian without any signs of progress toward or in discipleship. Contemporary Western churches do not require following Christ in his example, spirit, and teachings as a condition of membership—either of entering into or continuing in fellowship of a denomination or a local church. . . . So far as the visible Christian institutions of our day are concerned, discipleship clearly is optional. . . . Churches are therefore filled with “undiscipled disciples.” “Most problems in contemporary churches can be explained by the fact that members have not yet decided to follow Christ.”
― Michael Frost, ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church

“If the heart of Christian spirituality is to increasingly become like our founder, then an authentic comprehension of Jesus becomes critical.”
― Michael Frost, ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church

“Therefore, we propose a rediscovery of Christology that includes a preoccupation with the example and teaching of Jesus for the purposes of emulation by his followers.”
― Michael Frost, ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church

“As Alan Hirsch and Lance Ford say in their book Right Here, Right Now: Sharing meals together on a regular basis is one of the most sacred practices we can engage in as believers. Missional hospitality is a tremendous opportunity to extend the kingdom of God. We can literally eat our way into the kingdom of God! If every Christian household regularly invited a stranger or a poor person into their home for a meal once a week, we would literally change the world by eating![13]”
― Michael Frost, Surprise the World: The Five Habits of Highly Missional People

“We can no longer afford our historical sentimentality, even addiction, to the past.”
― Michael Frost, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church

“In the face of Jesus’ dogged steadfastness, how could we but offer him our own loyal allegiance? As we have seen, our decision to serve Jesus should be made not in order to earn Jesus’ grace but as a response to it. He who has given so much for us can rightly call us to lay down our lives for him. Recognizing that we will continue to stumble and fall short of his impeccable standard, we nonetheless strain onward out of gratitude for his mercy and kindness to us. Why do we serve the poor or preach the Gospel? Why do we continue with the otherwise foolish work of peace-making or justice-seeking? Not out of some neurotic fear of losing God’s favor but precisely because we have tasted that favor and would do anything for the one who died to win it for us.”
― Michael Frost, Jesus the Fool: The Mission of the Unconventional Christ

“Through the eyes of Jesus, we will see God differently, no longer as a distant father figure, but through the paradigm of the missio Dei to find the sent and sending God. Second, we will see the church differently, no longer as a religious institution but as a community of Jesus followers devoted to participating in his mission. We call this the participatio Christi. And third, through Jesus’ eyes we will see the world afresh, not simply as fallen or depraved but as bearing the mark of the imago Dei–the image of God.”
― Michael Frost, ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church

“Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
― Michael Frost, Surprise the World: The Five Habits of Highly Missional People

“How vigilant we must be to ensure that we don’t allow our impression of Jesus to be held captive by the prevailing mores of our secular culture! Rather, it is essential that we continue to return to the Gospels to ensure that the reverse occurs: to allow Jesus to hold our hearts and imaginations captive in response to the dominant thinking of our time. For exiles trying to live faithfully within the host empire of post-Christendom, the Gospel stories are our most dangerous memories. They continue to fire our imaginations and remind us that it’s possible to thrive on foreign soil while serving Yahweh, but it’s the kind of thriving that often rejects popular wisdom. These stories are the standard by which we judge all other stories, all other descriptors of life today. If, after reading these dangerous biblical stories, you can’t imagine Jesus the Messiah as a televangelist, strutting around on stage in a flashy suit, playing it up for the cameras, then you are forced to reject this image and seek another mode of being Christ today.”
― Michael Frost, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture

“It is important to note that the missional church combines the concern for community development normally characterized by the liberal churches and the desire for personal and community transformation normally characterized by the evangelical movement. This blurring of the old lines of demarcation between theologies, doctrine, and ideology within the church makes the way open for much more integrated mission to occur. It’s like saying that we want to prepare like an evangelical; preach like a Pentecostal; pray like a mystic; do the spiritual disciplines like a Desert Father, art like a Catholic, and social justice like a liberal.”
― Michael Frost, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church

“Is a Can Opener a Can Opener . . . ? As we explain in The Shaping of Things to Come,[157] one of the “trick questions” we use to get group discussion going around the idea of purpose is, “Is a can opener a can opener if it can’t open cans anymore?” This usually initiates a lively discussion around the idea of essence versus function. When the discussion turns to the application to the idea of church, it generates insight into the issue of purpose of the church. Is the church simply a church because it confesses Christ, or is there some functional test that must be applied? When answering the question, “What do you do with a can opener that doesn’t open cans anymore?” most people will say that unless it is fixable, it is not fulfilling that which it was designed for and it should be thrown away. Without getting too heavy about it, and recognizing that we do live by the grace and love of God, we must recognize that in the Hebraic worldview, fruitfulness and functionality are very important and tend to trump the concept of “essence,” which derives largely from Platonic idealism and Greek philosophy. (Idealism basically states that concepts and ideas are real in themselves and are the essence of reality, and forms are just expressions of preexisting ideas.) This is why Jesus always applies the very Hebraic test of fruitfulness to any claims of belief (e.g., Matt. 7:16–20; 12:33; 21:19; Luke 3:8; 13:6–9; John 15; Rev. 2–3). The ultimate test of faithfulness in the Scriptures is not correct intellectual belief (e.g., Matt. 25; Luke 6:46; James 2:12, 21–26) but rather an ethical-functional one—in 1 John it is whether we love or fail in love; in James it is faith with works, about how we care for widows and orphans; in the letters of Peter it is our capacity to suffer in our witness for Jesus; in Hebrews to stay true to the journey. And as politically incorrect as it is to say it, judgment regarding fruitfulness is a vital aspect of the revelation of God in the Scriptures (e.g., John 15; Rev. 2–3; as well as the many parables of judgment that lace Jesus’s teachings).”
― Michael Frost, The Faith of Leap: Embracing a Theology of Risk, Adventure & Courage

“Being more missional might actually mean doing fewer things. There is a Latin American proverb that says, “If you don’t know where you’re coming from, and if you don’t know where you’re going, then any bus will do.” Some congregations are clearly riding too many busesl What they need is not more flurry, but more focus. Becoming disciplined about being a missional church can provide such a focus.[16”
― Michael Frost, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture

“important to note that the missional church combines the concern for community development normally characterized by the liberal churches and the desire for personal and community transformation normally characterized by the evangelical movement.”
― Michael Frost, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church

“It will place a high value on communal life, more open leadership structures, and the contribution of all the people of God. It will be radical in its attempts to embrace biblical mandates for the life of locally based faith communities without feeling as though it has to reconstruct the first-century church in every detail. We believe the missional church will be adventurous, playful, and surprising. Leonard Sweet has borrowed the term “chaordic” to describe the missional church’s inclination toward chaos and improvisation within the constraints of broadly held biblical values. It will gather for sensual-experiential-participatory worship and be deeply concerned for matters of justice-seeking and mercy-bringing. It will strive for a type of unity-in-diversity as it celebrates individual differences and values uniqueness, while also placing a high premium on community.”
― Michael Frost, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church

“Those who are taken captive by Jesus see mission not merely as a practice preferred by God but as an aspect of his very character. He is mission. Core to understanding God’s nature is the realization that God cannot not be about the business of mission.”
― Michael Frost, ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church

“Let’s get our Christology right and then dare to place all our deeply held desires for how to do church at its service. Not vice versa.”
― Michael Frost, ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church

“Simply beautiful! David Brazzeal takes the hospitality traditions of the French and the Brazilians and stirs in spiritual disciplines and alternative worship practices for a book on prayer unlike anything you’ve read before. He reminds us that time with God is a rich and delicious banquet that we share together, and not a drive-thru fast food meal we eat alone. Nourishing and indulgent.”
― Michael Frost

“Obedience is the evidence that knowledge of God has been received and understood.”
― Michael Frost, ReJesus: Remaking the Church in Our Founder's Image [Revised & Updated Edition]

“Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. N. T. WRIGHT”
― Michael Frost, Incarnate: The Body of Christ in an Age of Disengagement

“Today we have his Spirit within us and the Gospels as our guide and impetus. It would follow”
― Michael Frost, ReJesus: Remaking the Church in Our Founder's Image [Revised & Updated Edition]

“The center and foundation of Christian faith is Jesus of Nazareth”
― Michael Frost, ReJesus: Remaking the Church in Our Founder's Image [Revised & Updated Edition]

“So”
― Michael Frost, ReJesus: Remaking the Church in Our Founder's Image [Revised & Updated Edition]