Authors Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk define the Missional Church as "a community of God's people who live into the imagination that they are, by their very nature , God's missionary people living as a demonstration of what God plans to do in and for all of creation".
It is from that jumping off in point that the groundwork is laid for developing and leading such a community. Some of my leadership takeaways:
- Missional leaders cultivate. "Rather than the leader having plans and strategies that the congregation will affirm and follow, cultivation describes the leader as the one who works the soil of the congregation so as to invite and constitute the environment for the people pf God to discern what the Spirit is doing in, with, and among them as a community".
Over the last six months this has been a lesson I am continually learning and trying to apply. It is hard work at times, but very rewarding to look for what and how God is working in people, and then help that development continue.
- Missional leaders must develop skills to deal with discontinuous change. The authors argue that most church leaders are trained and equipped to handle continuous change. "Continuous change develops out of what has gone before and therefore can be expected, anticipated, and managed. Te maturation of our children is an example". Within a church context dealing with this type of change focuses on making something that exists better.
"Discontinuous change is disruptive and unanticipated; it creates situations that challenge our assumptions." The Exodus stories are an example of this type of change.
This plays out in the local church in the following way. "What do congregational leaders do when the skills that have been effective in drawing people in and building it up no longer get the same results because the growing numbers of emerging generations are no longer interested in being attracted into a church building or joining a church program"?
The authors answer this question by rolling out their Missional Change Model, which you can check out if you do as I suggest and read this book.
- Missional leaders get feedback on their leadership from those they lead, other leaders, and other key people. Then good leaders evaluate the "evaluation" and learn about their own leadership. The book has a process for dong all of this that looks pretty helpful.
- Missional leaders help their community engage with scripture in fresh ways. "For too long, congregations have been schooled in viewing Scripture as a tool to be used for ... a help desk for finding an answer for a pressing problem. At other times it is used as a hammer to drive home doctrinal positions. Scripture has become like a bank safety deposit box holding a depository of information and knowledge that can be collected when needed. But all the uses of Scripture as a tool fail to engage it as the narrative presence of God, who invites us into a story that reads and shapes us".
"The missional leader cultivates an environment for indwelling the Scriptural narrative and inviting the congregation to join in on that journey.
OK, I probably wrote too much, but I really like the book. It is a good compliment to this one.
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