Missional Renaissance is a book that sets out to describe the nature of the Missional Church and the need for change that the present church faces if it truly wants to become missional.
As McNeal says: Missional is not a place you arrive at but a direction in which you are moving.
Too often the church takes a term like missional and turns it into a new programme for outreach or ministry. Missional is clearly not a term with which we should take this kind of liberty. If we do we are in danger of adding yet more layers of church to the average Christian’s already heavy schedule. We will continue to measure success and commitment in terms of internal, church-focused standards.
Missional Renaissance calls us to make a shift in three key areas. First we need to shift from an internal to an external focus; second we need to shift from programme development to people development; thirdly we need to shift from church-based to kingdom-based leadership.
McNeal describes these three shifts as compass settings rather than destinations. He claims that by making these shifts:
They will move you from doing church as primarily a refuge, conservator, and institutional activity in a post-Christendom culture to being a risky, missionary, organic force in the increasingly pre-Christian world.
The book first introduces these three shifts and then discusses them in detail. The first 40 pages will let you know if this is a book that you really want to read in detail. Alongside the description of each shift there is an analysis of how such a shift also changes the way we measure success, the scorecard as McNeal calls it. In the typical church success is measured by how many are in church, how often they are attending and how much they give. The missional church will score things very differently. To quote the book:
The current scorecard rewards church activity and can be filled in without any reference to the church’s impact beyond itself.
The new scorecard will need to celebrate externally focused ministry, people development efforts and a kingdom oriented leadership agenda.
At the heart of this call to go missional and to see through the shifts that are needed is a desperate desire to see the church have the kind of kingdom impact that appears to be on God’s heart. Indeed the driving force for the need to change is the observation that God is on a mission and we ought to be involved in it. As the book says:
The missional church is the people of God partnering with God in his redemptive mission in the world.
I read this book more slowly that I read Present Future. Both have been really helpful in providing a background to much of the thinking I've been doing over all the years that I’ve been a Christian. I have always struggled with the heavy internal focus of the typical church. I’ve always carried this idea that the church exists as a missionary movement first and foremost. If you share some of that passion and perspective, this might well be a book worth putting on your summer reading list.
No comments:
Post a Comment