Fitch, David |Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines that Shape the Church for Mission
Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines that Shape the Church for Mission
David Fitch
Paperback: IVP, 2016, 228 pp.
David Fitch’s book Faithful Presence offers a striking depiction of what it means to live the Word. “Faithful presence,” he writes in the book’s introduction, “names the reality that God is present in the world and that he uses a people faithful to his presence to make himself concrete and real amid the world’s struggles and pain” (10). Thus, his concept of faithful presence (which builds on a concept of the same name proposed by James Davison Hunter in his 2010 book To Change the World) is nearly synonymous with living the Word. As the Live the Word project has emphasized, faithful presence also is embodied in particular flesh-and-blood communities of Christ’s followers. “It must,” Fitch notes, “take shape as a whole way of life in a people” (14).
The bulk of Faithful Presence is devoted to exploring seven practices “in which Christ promises to be faithfully present to us and we in turn become his faithful presence” (14). The seven practices – which should be mostly familiar to those who have participated in churches – are the Lord’s table, reconciliation, proclaiming the Gospel, being with “the least of these,” being with children, the fivefold gifting (of church leaders), and kingdom prayer.
Participatory Worship
Although other Live the Word practices are aligned more closely with specific practices that Fitch names in Faithful Presence, participatory worship is most prominent and undergirds all seven of the practices of faithful presence. Fitch reiterates throughout the book that although it is vital for the church to gather for worship, God’s faithful presence is not confined to this space, but rather extends outward from there to fill every corner of our lives. Fitch describes how these seven practices of faithful presence “open up space for God to rearrange the world, starting in our social relationships” (36).
We all participate in this work of being a community to which God is faithfully present, and which strives to respond faithfully to God’s presence with us. The worship in which we participate together is recognizing God’s presence with us (in our gathered worship, and as we disperse in the times between our gatherings) and acting in a manner that is faithful to God’s presence. Therefore, we embody this presence in ways so that our neighbors begin to experience God’s presence through their relationship with us. Fitch notes that mutual submission is central to the way in which we worship in response to God’s faithful presence with us. The seven disciplines of faithful presence, he writes, “gather people together into a circle of submission to his reign. Submission to the King defines each subject, and the kingdom is composed of the King’s subjects. Each discipline then creates a space for surrendering our control. Each works against the impulse to take control and impose my will on a situation. In this process a marvelous space is opened up for Jesus to become Lord. We can then tend to Christ’s presence among us” (37).
Table Fellowship
The first (and arguably foremost) of the seven practices of faithful presence that Fitch identifies is table fellowship. “The Lord’s Table is about presence,” he writes, “Surely it is about eating, but ultimately it’s a discipline that shapes a group of people to be present to God’s presence in Christ around the table, where we eat. Then, in the process we are able to connect with other people around the table. Our lives are then reordered socially by his presence” (48).
Fitch unpacks how we not only celebrate the Lord’s Supper in our gathered worship, but also how we have shared meals in which neighbors can be invited into, and also how we share meals with neighbors in their homes and other spaces that are familiar to them. All three of these scenarios, Fitch observes, are necessary for healthy manifestations of Christ’s presence and they each provide opportunities to bear witness to Christ’s presence with us. The Lord’s Table is not just a function internal to the church community, nor is it solely meals eaten with those who do not know the way of Jesus. We need all of these expressions of the Lord’s Table as a robust expression of Christ’s presence with us.
Radical Kinship
Several of the seven practices of faithful presence that Fitch explores bear resemblance to the Live the Word practice of radical kinship: including reconciliation, being with “the least of these,” and being with children. Reconciliation is rooted in the reality that when we are gathered together in the name of Jesus, we “are stripped of all presumption of power, including any positions of power [we] hold in the world that may put one person over another. The kingdom is being birthed here. We do not live “as the Gentiles do,” “lording it over” one another. There is a conscious act of submission to what is happening in this space between us where Jesus Christ himself has promised to be present” (74). In reconciliation, we unlearn the world’s habits of resolving conflicts with coercion or violence, and learn to be present with those whom we perceive as enemies or those whose perspectives are starkly different from our own.
The practice of being with the least of these is, in some sense, a particular type of the practice of reconciliation, but it is one that was of special importance to Jesus, and thus should be of special importance to us. Through the practice of being with the least of these, we unlearn habits of turning people into projects, and learn to see them as fellow humans created in the image of God. “In Christ’s new kingdom,” Fitch writes, “no one becomes an object to or a project of someone else. We are invited to participate in life together with God. This is life lived in withness, kinship, faithful presence with one another” (114). Similarly, the practice of being with children is also a form of radical kinship, especially, when one considers the ways that children are often pushed to the margins in society (and in our churches). Fitch invites us to learn to be communities in which children also are humans created in God’s image, and not projects or problems.
In Faithful Presence, David Fitch offers readers a provocative and yet compelling vision of what it might look like to live the Word. This book is a striking reminder that God is present with us always, and desires to lead us in the ways we interact with our sisters and brothers, and with our neighbors. God’s presence among us is guiding us in the sort of life of table fellowship, participatory worship, and radical kinship that Jesus demonstrated, and God desires for us to live into.