We Are Here Now: A New Missional Era [Paperback]

Patrick Keifert (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2007

We are in a time of big change. Christendom for most of us has passed; some of us who value its blessings grieve, and we should. When we mark our X on the map of the history of Christianity, we mark it Post-Christendom. We Are Here Now: a New Missional Era outlines a path that recognizes and responds to this same X as a time of a New Era of Mission for your local church. This ground-breaking book introduces; a new era of mission - discovering our partners - experimenting - visioning for embodiment - learning and growing - mentoring and sharing Pat Keifert invites you to explore PMC (Partnership for Missional Church) - a journey filled with learning, growing, discovering, experimenting, visioning, mentoring, and sharing as local churches move from the maintenance of Christendom to innovating missional church in their time and location.

Editorial Reviews

Review

We don't need another book of bright ideas or management and marketing finesse, so I am grateful for Keifert's pursuit of spiritual discernment, deep transformation, and creative deployment of churches as agents of God's love. --Rev Mark Lau Branson, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California

Never have I seen an author so aware that Christ's Spirit is alive and available to those who dwell in God's Word. --William R. Burrows, Managing Editor, Orbis Books

If you suspect that our churches need to go on a transforming journey - a spiritual journey of discernment, imagination, reflection, communication, faith, and action - then this book by veteran consultant and scholar Pat Keifert is just what you have been looking for. --Brian McLaren, Author/Networker

About the Author

Patrick Keifert is the President and Director of Research of Church Innovations Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to discovering and implementing tools for congregational renewal. He earned a B.A. degree in 1973 from Valparaiso (IN) University, where he was a Christ College Scholar, and an M. Div. Degree from Christ Seminary-Seminex in 1977. He received a Ph.D. degree from the Divinity School, University of Chicago in 1982, with additional study at the University of Heidelberg and the University of Tubingen in Germany. Named a full professor in systematic theology at Luther Seminary in 1996, he also served as adjunct professor a the School of Law, Hamline University, Saint Paul, MN.

Product Details

• Paperback: 169 pages
• Publisher: Allelon Publishing; 1st edition (January 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0977718417
• ISBN-13: 978-0977718412
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #617,214 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Helps readers think through their own process of redevelopment for missional church, July 23, 2007

By 

Clint Schnekloth "Clint S." (Fayetteville, AR) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: We Are Here Now: A New Missional Era (Paperback)

This is an unusual book. On the one hand, it is a kind of cultural and congregational study in the traditional vein of materials that addresses change in the church. Keifert assesses "where we are", and is a participant in the on-going missional church, post-Christendom thing. The book is helpful as a summary of that discussion.

But it is also a description of the way Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) works with clusters, judicatories, and congregations to effect change, to consult for missional church, asking the key question, "What is God's preferred and promised future for our local church?"

As a springboard for reflection on the local congregation and its ministry, this is profoundly helpful. Since it is the description of a consulting process, it does not work well as a "how-to" book, since a finding of Keifert's is that partnership for missional church is effected most successfully when it is a partnership of 12-15 churches.

Keifert writes, "To review, the purpose of this book is to describe a journal of spiritual discernment that is done communally within local congregations, among 12-16 partner churches, and with still other partners."

Probably the most important insight from the book (there are an incredible number of these insights in the book- it is VERY rewarding): development of mission/vision for a congregation takes place in the late stage of a 4-6 year process of discernment that begins with "dwelling in the Word," includes experimentation, and then only begins after considerable time spent doing these things, as well as "listening each other into free speech."

This is a crucial insight, because a lot of mission/vision resources will start you right away writing a mission/vision statement, without any insight into whether those will be effective over the long term, or appropriated culturally within the congregation.

I recommend this book. It bears more and more fruit through multiple readings. Our leadership team is reading it this summer as part of discernment and dwelling in the Word process.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At last some one with parctical ideas on the journey to become missional, September 4, 2007

By 

Dr. Jf Marais "Frederick Marais" (Stellenbosch South Afirca) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: We Are Here Now: A New Missional Era (Paperback)

This is simply a wonderful book for every one who are interested in missional transformation. Prof Keifert has the rare gift to integrate theology thinking and practical matters on the missional journey. Almost on every page the reader will find case studies that connects you in a real and practical way. Nico Simpson's wonderful drawings are much more than illustrations, they intive and stir the reader in a playfull way to re-think. The depth of research and years of experience as a church consultant, makes the book honest. The insights are well tested and carefully described. May be this is the reason why the book excites clergy and laity when they read it. Leadership teams in congregations that used We are here now! for a team reading, was challenged and recieved new hope that their congregation can become missional. May this book find a huge audience word wide!

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars KEIFERT - SCHMEIFERT, August 26, 2009

By 

A. Palmer (Yellow Springs, Ohio) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: We Are Here Now: A New Missional Era (Paperback)

There is much to commend We Are Here Now. It is compact, well organized, well written, and unerringly linear in its focus and presentation of a promised journey to church renewal. To use Keifert's words, it is deliberate, sustained, and critical -- in both senses of the word. Innumerable little line drawings lighten the load of the serious topic of church renewal. There is a 30 entry Glossary of technical terms and words used in unusual ways. There are some technical discourses that require the reader to slow down, read carefully, or re-read paragraphs for clarity, a necessity for him to communicate these matters. There is a lot of material in 152 pages. Too, there are some real jewels in the book: it's about multigenerational change; worship is public witness; healthy congregations are NOT families; "excellent mistakes;" the future as merely continuation of the present; and we are here now. There is no index, always a failing if a book is to be used for study and no foot-/endnotes. The Table of Contents is not detailed, but there is a 55+ entry Bibliography and a one page biography of Dr. Keifert, including his e-address at C.I.I., his corporate entity.
However, there is some to disapprove. If Keifert has an appreciation of other approaches, strengths and perspectives, as he says he does [17-18], it is not demonstrable here. He is consistently critical and dismissive of all but his methods. I heard "my way or highway" in We Are Here Now. He tries to associate his method(s) with the Apostolic Age, but there are sparse Biblical references or explicit or apparent implicit connections to the early church. Keifert is critical, if not hypercritical, of modernity, but this book and, moreover, his methods are thoroughly modern and based on social science, specifically family systems theory. The book is highly technical. There are acronyms, technical jargon, 4 Phases, and the number 5 abounds in his 'how to' lists, but he is critical of lists in others' models.
From reading We Are Here Now, one might conclude there are two satisfactory spiritual disciplines, prayer and its Dwelling in the Word into free speech technique. Objectification of people is reprehensible, but to connect use of census and demographic data to the words "a very bad moral habit of modernity," as Keifert does, is unfortunate hyperbole.
I cannot recommend this book to anyone, unless one is looking for much of what's wrong with the church renewal book genre. Dr. Keifert is a pundit, but not a good one in We Are Here Now.