Michael Frost (minister)

Michael Frost (born 1961) is an Australian Baptist minister, missiologist[1] and theologian[2] who is one of the leading voices in the missional church movement.[3] Frost is the founding Director of the Tinsley Institute, a mission study centre located at Morling College in Sydney, Australia.[4][5]

Career

Frost is the author or editor of 20 theological books, including The Shaping of Things to Come (2003),[5] Exiles (2006), The Road to Missional (2011) and Surprise the World (2016). These books explore a missional framework for the church in a post-Christendom era. Frost's work has been translated into German, Korean, Chinese, and Spanish. Frost is a popular inspirational speaker at Christian conferences[6][5] and has spoken at conferences in the United States, the United Kingdom and across Europe.[7]

In 1999, Frost and Alan Hirsch founded the Forge Mission Training Network, a program for training missional leaders.[8] He remains an international director of that movement which is now based in the United States.[9] In 2002, he founded the missional Christian community, smallboatbigsea, based in Manly in Sydney's north.[10] He wrote a weekly religion column for the Manly Daily from 2002 until it was axed in 2014,[11] and helped establish Action Against Poverty, a localised micro-financing agency, linking the cities of Manly and Manado in Indonesia.[12]

In August 2016, Frost was arrested[13] while praying in the Sydney offices of the then-Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, as part of an action organized by the group Love Makes a Way.[14] Then in November 2017, Frost was arrested again alongside other Australian Christian leaders after chaining themselves to the gates of the Prime Minister's Sydney residence in protest of Australia's treatment of refugees and asylum seekers on Manus Island.[15][16][17]

A 2017 Washington Post essay by Frost about Tim Tebow, Colin Kaepernick, and Christianity was widely reprinted. Tebow had drawn public attention for kneeling in prayer before football games, Kaepernick, for kneeling in protest. In the essay, Frost described Tebow and Kaepernick as representing two different versions of Christianity. Tebow's version is a Christianity of "personal piety, gentleness, respect for cultural mores and an emphasis on moral issues like abortion, homosexuality," while Kaepernick version "values social justice, community development, racial reconciliation and political activism." In Frost's view, this "bifurcation of contemporary Christianity into two distinct branches" with each side unable to value the moral lessons the other side offers, explains why "Christianity remains on its knees in the West."[18][19][20][21]

In his 2018 book, Keep Christianity Weird, Frost calls on pastors to use eccentric and unconventional approaches in their ministry to produce "greater creativity and innovation."[7][22]

Books
  • Jesus the Fool (1994; 2007; 2010)
  • Longing for Love (1996)
  • Seeing God in the Ordinary (1998; 2000)
  • Lessons from Reel Life (2001) co-authored with Robert Banks
  • Freedom to Explore (2001)
  • The Shaping of Things to Come (2003, 2013) co-authored with Alan Hirsch
  • Speaking of Mission (2006) - editor
  • Exiles (2006)
  • ReJesus (2008, 2021) co-authored with Alan Hirsch
  • The Faith of Leap (2011) co-authored with Alan Hirsch
  • The Road to Missional (2011)
  • The Big Ideas (2011)
  • Speaking of Mission Vol.2 (2013) - editor
  • Incarnate (2014) InterVarsity Press (2014)
  • Surprise the World! (2016)
  • To Alter Your World (2017) co-authored with Christiana Rice
  • Keep Christianity Weird (2018)
  • Not in Kansas Anymore (2020) co-edited with Darrell Jackson and David Starling
  • Hide This in Your Heart (2020) co-authored with Graham Joseph Hill
  • Mission is the Shape of Water (2023)

Notes
  1. Galli, Mark (16 November 2006). "Stopping Cultural Drift". Christianity Today. p. 2. Retrieved 22 December 2010.
  2. Swenson, Kyle (15 June 2018). "Sessions says the Bible justifies separating immigrant families. The verses he cited are infamous". The Washington Post. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
  3. Richardson, Rick (July 2013). "Emerging Missional Movements: An Overview and Assessment of Some Implications for Mission(s)". International Bulletin of Missionary Research. 36 (3): 131–136. doi:10.1177/239693931303700302. S2CID 149369336.
  4. "Rev. Dr Michael Frost". Morling College. Retrieved 24 March 2016.
  5. Dillon, Pamela (13 October 2012). "Talking relevance of church today". Dayton Daily News. ProQuest 1111644666.
  6. Ellsworth, Barry (10 November 2015). "What do you do when God's not on the menu?". Belleville Intelligencer. ProQuest 378741945.
  7. Grysboski, Michael (3 September 2018). "Missions Expert: Churches Must 'Keep Christianity Weird,' Embrace Eccentricity". Christian Post. Retrieved 6 January 2019.
  8. Hammond, Kim; Cronshaw, Darren (2014). Sentness: Six Postures of Missional Christians. InterVarsity Press. p. 189. ISBN 9780830884063.
  9. "Our Story". Forge International.
  10. Frost, Michael (2006). Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture. Baker Books. ISBN 9781441232793.
  11. "Faith Matters column axed by Manly Daily". Covenant Christian School. 18 July 2014. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  12. Frost, Michael; Hirsch, Alan (2013). The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church. Baker Books. p. 291. ISBN 9781441241092.
  13. https://mikefrost.net/i-got-arrested-recently/
  14. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/love-makes-a-way-what-drives-these-christians-to-risk-arrest/id83py4uz
  15. Doherty, Ben (27 November 2017). "Manus protest: Christian leaders chain themselves to Kirribilli House gate". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  16. Cooper, Luke; Calvert, Alana (27 November 2017). "Christian Leaders Arrested For Kirribilli House Protest Over Manus". Huffington Post. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  17. Bruce, Clare (31 August 2016). "After Nauru Files, I Couldn't Stay Silent: Rev Michael Frost". Hope 103.2. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  18. Stauffer, Clay (30 September 2017). "Two versions of Christianity keep us divided". The Tennessean. ProQuest 1963042175.
  19. Frost, Michael (24 September 2017). "Colin Kaepernick vs. Tim Tebow: A tale of two Christians on their knees". Washington Post. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  20. Mattingly, Terry (30 September 2017). "Tebow versus Kaepernick? Really?". Bristol Herald Courier. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  21. Libby, Anne (26 September 2017). "Progressive Piety and Conservative Politics: On Kaepernick, Tebow, and American Christianity". Patheos. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  22. Daye, Jason (11 September 2018). "Michael Frost: The Church Needs to Get Back to Being Weird". Church Leaders. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
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