A Prophet in Their Midst:

Webber’s Call

For a Change in Mission

by

E. L. Bodenstab

A Book Critique

Presented to Professor Craig Van Gelder

Luther Seminary

As a Requirement in

Course LD8910

The Hermeneutics

of Leading in Mission

St. Paul, Minnesota

2010
 From Sea to Store to Seminary1

George W. Webber was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on May 2, 1920. After high

school, he went to Harvard where he graduated magna cum laude in 1942, and joined the

Navy, serving on the destroyer escort USS Breeman. He was married to Helen Barton on

August 27, 1943. He attended Union Theological Seminary after his service and

graduated with his Bachelor of Divinity in 1948 when he was appointed Dean of Students

and started the East Harlem Protestant Parish with Don Benedict and Archie Hargraves.

Webber and his family moved to East Harlem in 1956. In 1963, he received his Doctorate

in Philosophy from Columbia University. From 1969 until 1983, he was president of the

Biblical Seminary in New York, which became New York Theological Seminary during

his tenure. He died on July 10, 2010.

Webber was an advocate for social justice and peace, dedicating his life to

advocacy, education and reform, even suffering arrest and imprisonment for his work. He

authored four books: God’s Colony in Man’s World (1960), The Congregation in Mission

(1964), Today’s Church (1979), and Led by the Spirit (1990). His second book will be the

focus of this paper.

                                                                                                               
1
Sources for this section come from both of the following: Douglas Martin,
“George W. Webber, Social Activist Minister, Dies at 90,” New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/us/13webber.html?_r=1 (accessed October 10,
2010), and New York Theological Seminary, “The Passing of George W. Webber, July
10, 2010,” New York Theological Seminary, http://www.nyts.edu/latest-news/273-dr-
george-w-webber-obituary-june-10-2010 (accessed October 10, 2010).

1
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Christ for the City

Webber’s primary point through The Congregation in Mission is that the church is

called to live in the tension between the gospel and the world, neither cloistering inside

Christian ghettos based on race, class, or denomination, nor capitulating to the whims and

wants of the culture on what God is up to in their local communities while using

examples from the urban setting to show how this has happened. Webber sets forth a

five-part approach for congregations to see mission in their context using sociological

and theological research to analyze the state of the church in his day.

Through surveys, research, and experience, Webber describes an urban setting

from forty-six years ago that many readers would still find accurate today, and he builds

his case to say that leisure and apathy are the two greatest issues in the urban

environment keeping individuals from responding in freedom to God’s call.

Unfortunately, the church as described by the people in those surveys, explored by that

research and revealed in those experiences is not a church in a place to help the

community where it finds itself. Indeed, the critiques of the church this raises are still

applicable to many congregations in the country whether urban, suburban, or rural.

However, Webber sees these challenges not as a cause for apathy, but as an invitation to

experiment with a new way of being and doing church.

Early on, Webber uses and defines the phrase “morphological fundamentalism” as

the tendency of congregations and denominations to hallow the structures, forms and

organizations that no longer serve their purpose or even function appropriately. There is a

constant call—sometimes subtle, sometimes overt—for congregations to repent of this

morphological fundamentalism so they may be open to discover what God is calling them
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to do in the world where God is already at work. After sighting many distressingly

familiar incarnations of this fundamentalism, Webber turns to the work of urban

congregations presenting what he calls an “emerging consensus” about how to move

forward following God’s call.

This consensus hinges on politics, which Webber defines as the “art of making

and keeping men truly human,”2 and rather than addressing the issues raised in a

theoretical way, Webber wants to develop a Christocentric, practical theology based off

of the work of urban congregations. In the consensus, Webber presents a small group

approach as the key for rediscovering the power of Jesus as Lord in the politics of the

world negating the sacred-secular divide and restoring the humanity of each person. The

congregation exists for mission, serving Jesus—the general of the church militant,

pointing to Christ who converts and calls people into the family of God. This approach

gives Webber five loci by which to address the challenges of being a congregation doing

mission in an urban setting. The five loci are 1) The Living Covenant, 2) Worship in a

Missionary Congregation, 3) The Style of Life in the Congregation, 4) The Ministry of

the Laity, and 5) The Congregation in Mission and Webber spends the rest of the book

unpacking what these mean.

For Webber, the Living Covenant happens in our encounter with the normative,

political power of the biblical narrative. Because of this, Webber recognizes the problem

of biblical illiteracy but connects regular small group bible study with preaching as the

way address this challenge. He reports the success of congregations holding weekly adult

bible study in connection with the pastor’s sermon preparation as a way to bring the
                                                                                                               
2
George W. Webber, The Congregation in Mission, (New York: Abingdon,
1964), p.49.
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biblical narrative alive in the lives of the laity. This is one of the connections for

congregational worship, but not the only one.

While Webber’s understanding of Worship in a Missionary Congregation holds

the Bible as normative, the politics of the event are actually primary. Communion

becomes the most political activity of the congregation in worship, forming community

instead of feeding individual piety, as Webber’s examples show. This community

formation grounds itself in the political understanding of baptism as the public calling

and forming of Christians in integrity, not simply ritual actions. He also sets forth an idea

for worship was a battlefront gathering consisting of field reports (prayer concerns,

encounters with Christ, and prayer), battle orders (scripture readings and sermon),

armament (communion), and the return to the front (benediction and sending). An

interesting point Webber makes is the necessity of small congregations to facilitate a

gospel confrontation based on relationships and accountability. These expectations will

effect how a congregation lives together.

Setting forth high expectations shapes the Style of Life in the Congregation, as

Webber calls it, moves congregations from morphological fundamentalism into a

community living in the tension caused by holding the gospel and the world together

within the context of the congregation. The formation of new habits is essential in

preparation to serve Christ, so focused, cellular small groups based on discipline and

accountability that gather together corporately for worship are essential as places to

practice the love, reconciliation and mutual accountability which define Christian

integrity and our unity in Christ. Through this style of life, the ministry of the laity

becomes central in the life of the congregation outside of worship.

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The Ministry of the Laity reflects the life of Christ when Christians become self-

conscience of their identity in Christ as they participate in the world. Through

incarnational activities, every Christian participates in a world of equals, treating others

with respect and compassion while seeing everything through the eyes of faith. By

striving to do God’s will at work, at home, and in the neighborhood, Christians discover

God at work in all those areas of life calling him or her to participate in the politics of the

crucifixion. Yet this only happens in the hope of the resurrection, that God will bring new

life from death.

In this hope, the Congregation in Mission becomes a congregation that sees God

at work in the world by discerning God’s politics, sharing in that work and pointing to

what God is doing. This will drive congregations to worship in renewed faith, hold each

other accountable in small groups and reach beyond their denominational borders for the

sake of God’s mission.

Militant Small Groups?

The language in this book shows its age, and so a general warning applies to

anyone sensitive to non-inclusive language. Yet, that Webber wrote The Congregation in

Mission forty-six years ago is depressing and amazing. His critiques of the urban culture,

rural mentality, family expectations, and church attitudes of his day are still applicable

and accurate. Thankfully, his responses to the critiques are still mostly helpful.

There can be no question that Webber sees small groups as integral to faithful

congregations. In fact, so many congregations have adopted the idea of small groups that

such ministries are now a para-church industry. Unfortunately, many of these same
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congregations have been quick to discard the mission focus of Webber’s role for small

groups, which is surprising since he even favored them to the exclusion of other, more

traditional groups within congregations. He might now even challenge such

congregations as suffering from morphological fundamentalism. Yet, from a post-modern

perspective, there is one significant problem.

Webber did hold on to one dated tradition—the christologically centered militant

church. Placing this perspective at the core of worship, bible study, and the life of the

laity in the world will appear most post-modern readers as being confrontational and

arrogant, while simultaneously downplaying the role of the other two persons of the

Trinity. Given the baggage of the Crusades, colonialism and global Westernization, any

church militant language is problematic at best, while current trends in missiology are

consciously more Trinitarian. But with that said, The Congregation in Mission is still an

important book.

A Book of Transition

Webber’s use of many ideas and even phrases that provide the framework for

today’s understanding of missional church reveals the importance of this book in the

missiological discussions of the last fifty years even with the questionable language and

theology. It is evident that Webber has had a significant impact on the development of the

understanding of mission, especially the local focus for congregational mission. So

despite the language issues and Christological focus, The Congregation in Mission is a

primary point for the transformation of missional understandings, because whether we’ve

heard Webber or not, there has been a prophet in our midst.