Interview with Jonathan McIntosh

Jonathan was on staff for five years as a pastor and teacher at The Journey, a missional church in St. Louis that is part of The Acts 29 Network. He also worked closely with Acts 29, co-leading a region to recruit, coach, and encourage church planters throughout the Midwest.  Jonathan also created The Journey’s cultural engagement ministries that have attracted media attention worldwide. Jonathan is planting a new church in Memphis, Tennessee (Christ City Church) set to launch in Fall 2010. His website, Rethink Mission, is one of the leading websites on church planting.

Brandon Smith: Tell us a little about your testimony and calling to ministry.

Jonathan McIntosh: I grew up in a conservative church in the South – but during and after high school deeply rebelled – walking away from my faith, my God, and my church. It was a couple of years later that I experienced authentic Christian community. A group of Christian college students visibly demonstrated the power of the Gospel to me by loving God, loving each other, and loving me – even though I was different than them. They were clean cut college students… and I was a sinner. They just kept reaching out and loving me and they didn’t let my very visible sin get in the way. At one point after I was arrested for a DUI, I thought that this would surely be their chance to write me off, but they didn’t. God used them in a significant way in my life, and largely due to their care for me, I was able to walk out of a life of destructive sin and begin to see what it would be like to follow Christ.

As a new Christian, I moved away from this group and found out quickly that I did not have the willpower to be a Christian on my own. I knew that I needed a group, so as a new Christian and alone in my new town, I started a group, a Bible study for people like me. That’s how I stumbled into Christian ministry. God took a weakness in me, an inability to “do” Christianity on my own and my deep need for community, and turned it into a strength.  This is what I do and all I can imagine doing with my life, building communities of grace, where people come alive because of the power of the gospel. 
 
B: At the Cultivate Conference, you told us an interesting and powerful story about your Acts 29 assessment with Mark Driscoll, could you please retell it for my readers?

J: As a new church planter in 2004, I showed up for an Acts 29 boot camp looking for guidance and funding. My church had struggled to grow past 40, despite a committed core team. Driscoll asked me why. I blamed my over-churched town in Mississippi. but Driscoll didn’t buy it.

Then he looked at my wife and said, “Ashley, honey, you tell me what’s going on in your opinion. I want you to be honest with me. Look me in the eyes and tell me the truth. At first she gave stock answers. But then she completely broke right there. “My husband is off doing this church-planting thing. I’m stuck in this job I hate, slaving away to support us. People are in and out of our apartment at all hours of the night. I’m losing my husband to this thing. I’m miserable. It’s sapping my joy for life, my love for God, and my respect for my husband.”

Wow. At that point, needless to say, I was pretty sure Acts 29 wouldn’t get behind our church. Then Driscoll unloaded on me. “You’re a good-looking, eloquent, hip, Bible-teaching, Jesus-loving [wimp]. You think you can lead and love God’s bride when you can’t lead and love your own bride? The issue with your church is you and your marriage. Everyone knows it. You’re photocopying your marriage. That’s your church, and that’s why it’s jacked up. How dare you.”

It was beautiful. He told us to get away that night, get a hotel room, dinner, send him the bill, and for us to begin the repentance process right then: me repenting to Ashley for not loving and leading her well and Ashley repenting for her bitterness. God used that day and that encounter to save my marriage. It was a wake-up call from Jesus. 

B: How did your ministry, Rethink Mission, come about?

J: Rethink Mission is an outlet for my own writing and speaking. It was formed around the realization that pastors that I knew were having one of two “conversions.”

The first was a conversion toward a gospel-centered approach in their preaching, spirituality, counseling, and overall ministry. And by gospel-centered, I mean essentially grace based. The idea that grace changes everything, and no true growth or change can happen apart from being firmly rooted in the gospel of grace found in the finished work of Christ on our behalf.

The second conversion I noticed pastors were having was a missional conversion. Pastors in the West began to wake up to the idea that church could not continue as usual if we were going to reach what has effectively become a post-Christian culture around us… That the God calls us to incarnate or embody the gospel by taking it outside the walls of the church to the least, lost, broken and marginalized.
 
B: A big issue with many churches is that the church becomes a “holy huddle” that tends to hinder evangelism. What are your thoughts on how the church should relate to its city?

J: The church, like Israel, was called and chosen by God for a reason. Israel was blessed to be a blessing – to be a light to the nations. They quickly lost sight of this, however, when they became inwardly focused and prideful about their ethnic and religious distinctives.

The same goes for the church. We are called in order to be sent back out into the world on mission. When we loose sight of this, when church becomes a social club, or a welcoming place only to the people who look, dress, and vote like us, then we’ve forgotten the whole purpose of the church. How is your town, city, or village different because of the presence of your local church? If its hard for you to say, then it is time for repentance and recalibration.

B: How would you advise a congregant of the church to “do their part” in evangelizing to their city?

J: To the individual congregant – whether or not you are a part of a missional church  – you are called to be on mission where you are. Many look around at their current station in life and think that they are where they are because of a combination of choices and chances. That view fails to take into consideration that a sovereign God has been working behind the scenes of their lives to place them in their work place, in the school that they go to, or in the neighborhood where they live – for a purpose. Scripture is clear – you are called to be a missionary where you are… you don’t have to cross a cultural boundary to do that.

Think through – “Who are the people that I come in contact with on a regular basis – family, friends, barista, bag boy at the grocery store?” Secondly – “How can I in a tangible way serve these people?” Lastly – “Which of these people am I called to pursue and have further conversations about spiritual issues?”

B: What advice would you give to a young pastor who feels that God wants him to make major changes in his church, but has a resistant congregation?

J: -Take it slow. The only thing that people resist more than change is change made quickly or recklessly.
-Do it lovingly. Seek to understand the people that might be the most resistant to change, hear them out, listen to the fears underneath what’s being said.
-Don’t make stupid change. I define “stupid change” by unnecessary change or change for change’s sake. Often young pastors will try to make their churches into a bad copy of a famous church that they’ve been to or read about – when in reality this would not be the best expression of church for their current culture.
-Don’t die on a non-essential hill. Change needs to be rooted in the gospel and mission. Don’t fight over stuff that’s not central to one of those issues.

Even after all of this, a young pastor may have to leave his existing congregation to go a plant a new church from scratch.

B: What is the most crucial advice you could give someone who is reading the Bible or studying theology for the first time?

J: Look for Jesus. Look for the redemptive angle – even in the Old Testament. Covenant Seminary President Bryan Chapell says that every single passage of scripture is redemptive in one of four ways:  “Every text is predictive of the work of Christ, preparatory for the work of Christ, reflective of the work of Christ, and/or resultant of the work of Christ.”

As you study, learn to look for echoes of Christ and him crucified.