book review: mission is the shape of water

title: Mission is the Shape of Water: Learning From the Past to Inform Our Role in the World Today
author: Michael Frost
date: 2023
publisher: 100 Movements

I have read most books by Michael Frost, and have always been encouraged and challenged by them.

In his latest book, he traces the good, the bad and the ugly of the church's missional journey. In this book, he walks us readers through what he calls the ten shapes: 

1. God Slaying, 
2. Peacemaking, 
3. Flame Bearing, 
4. Spirit Seeking, 
5. Wordsmithing, 
6. Freedom Fighting, 
7. Unshackling, 
8. Contextualizing, 
9. Remissioning, and, 
10. Unearthing.

“Mission,” he writes, “must never be about transplanting British or American forms of Christianity into foreign fields.” Having spent some time in Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda that is something that the church there wrestles with: why did missionaries bring so much British (especially) forms of Christianity to our land. 

The movement of God throughout history has seldom moved in a straight line, but has ebbed and flowed, just like water, “...the exact contours of the mission of God’s people are fluid…And throughout history, our mission has been shaped differently, depending on the challenges and interests of people in each epoch.” 

One of the things that I appreciate about the history that Michael Frost traces in this book is he doesn't shy away from the bad and the ugly parts of church history. But he also puts those parts in the context of their day. It's an important reminder that what we take for granted today may not be the best approach. As these stories are unfolded, Frost ties them together, showing us a colourful and diverse picture of God’s Kingdom work in different times and cultures. 

At the end of the book, Frost gives some questions that, if we wrestled with them, might cause us to shape things more in the way God calls us rather than the ways that have led us to what we see in the church today. Part of that is admitting that maybe what we’ve been striving for isn’t what we should be striving for after all. “What if the church in post-Christendom eschews any inclination to dominate or control the culture in which it finds itself? What if faithfulness becomes our metric rather than triumph?” 

“This is the gospel,” Frost writes, “Christ is king...as proved by his birth, life, miracles, teaching, death, and resurrection...and a relationship with him unites us into a world of deliverance, justice, peace, healing, community, joy, and the experience of God’s presence. These are the very things we need to be sharing with this current generation.”

You may find the book a little slow to get going, but I highly recommend this book.