The Missional Leader

Over the next couple of months my posts will fall into one of 3 categories. In one category I am going to review books, highlight important people you should know and share other blogs I have found interesting. In the second I will focus on praxis, the place where our faith and our actions meet. The third category will be a look at scripture, especially the lectionary texts for the week. I am sure I will drop some ramblings in there as well at some point, but they are really a category of their own. With that being said, today I offer you The Missional Leader by Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk

There is no bigger buzzword floating around Evangelical and Emergent Church circles right now than missional. Churches everywhere are working to be missional, to sound missional and to understand what it is to be missional. What does being missional mean? A missional church is one that exists to go out and impact the world around it. The going out is a strong part of this identification. Missional churches are not primarily concerned about bringing the world through the doors of a building, instead they want to equip their members to do ministry, through real community, and send them out into the world to bring Christ to those outside the church.

Isn’t every church called to this? Yes, they are, but that is not necessarily how most churches operate. As opposed to being missional, many churches are attractional. Their main purpose, (especially as indicated by their budgets, ministries, and vision statements) is to bring the world to them. They want to attract the world to what they are doing. Trying to get people to come to a church is a good idea. Being hospitable and welcoming when they get there is great. But, a church focused on attracting the world can also become overly focused on themselves. Everything can be pointed towards their church, their staff, their worship gatherings. When all that emphasis is placed inwards, it can be hard to really focus outwards as well.

Into this reality of attractional churches, missional churches have begun to emerge and reshape the world. All across Africa, Asia, and South America these missional churches can be seen. They look and feel different than the institutionalized Christianity that has dominated our culture, and they are producing drastically different results than Western Institutionalized Church.

Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk set out to study these churches, understand them and to write a book that would help leaders understand what it actually takes to lead a church through the transition of becoming missional. Of all the books on this topic I have read, this is the only I have found that has actually attempted to do so. Combining organizational studies with leadership analysis, theology, and praxis, they lay out a very interesting picture of what it will take to transform the institutional and attractional churches that dominate North America, into missional churches.

At the beginning of their book they talk about the intense need for such an undertaking. Most leaders in the church, if they have received education and training for ministry, received it for a church and culture that no longer exists. Too many seminaries and denominations are training their leaders to succeed at leading the church of 30 years ago or at best 15 years ago. The major problem that leaders are facing now is that the changes they are facing are discontinuous changed, not continuous.

Continuous change is a change that you can see coming. Everything that has come before it has been leading up to this change. You can prepare, plan, and strategize for such change. Discontinuous change is change that happens without warning, is unrelated to what came before it, and nothing that you did before has actually prepared you for this type of change. What we, as a church and culture, are going through now is discontinuous change. The authors work to extrapolate discontinuous change and its affect on a church and on our culture, while sharing their insight into the processes gained by their work with numerous churches around the globe.

Especially helpful in the book are the chapters that focus on changing and creating a culture within a church to shape your mission and shaping and creating missional people within that culture. This is not a book of 5 step processes, cute acronyms or cookie cutter strategies. Instead, this is a book that offers a new frame work of understand that challenges church leaders to go back into their specific culture and context and understand how God is at work and how they can be part of that work.

I am very impressed by the comprehensive and well laid out work done by the authors of this book. For those who are passionate about learning to be the church for more than an hour a week and helping to lead change, this is a great resources. Pick it up, read it, and then pass it on to a fellow brother or sister who shares your passions.