How are churches responding to the economy? Listen to the church bull session with Dave Travis, Reggie McNeal, and Chris Willard that appeared on Leadership Network’s The Show on May 12, 2009.
Highlights:
Scarcity leads to clarity
Some churches seeing largest offerings ever for community needs
Great opportunity to show the community you are not in the church but in the people business
Churches are reallocating resources in ways that may be permanent even after the recession is over.
McNeal isn’t the only one talking “missional.” It seems to have become an evangelical buzzword of late. What exactly does it mean? Drew Dyck, editor of BuildingChurchLeaders.com gives some helpful background on the meaning of “missional” in his blog “Off the Agenda“:
Missional was a term coined by a group of missiologists (another strange word) who were heavily influenced by the missionary and theologian Lesslie Newbigin. Upon retiring as a missionary in South India, Newbigin returned to his native England where he came to a rather depressing conclusion about western culture—it was post-Christian. As a result, he believed that Christians in the West had to start thinking like missionaries, looking for creative and authentic ways to incarnate the gospel in a culture estranged from the principles of God’s kingdom.
In many contexts the usage of the term has strayed far from its original meaning. As the term gained popularity, it has been used by just about everybody to mean just about anything. Author and missional leader Alan Hirsch offers a definition that clears some of the fog. He describes a missional church as “a community of God’s people that defines itself and organizes its life around the purpose of being an agent of God’s mission to the world. In other words, the Church’s true and authentic organizing principle is mission.” Anyone can call themselves or their church missional, but if mission (outward directedness) is not a core-deep value of their life or community, the term missional is being misappropriated.
Missional has become a buzzword in evangelical circles. Buzzwords can be annoying, but I believe missional captures a valuable insight. We can no longer put our heads in the sand and carry on with yesteryear’s methods. Like good missionaries, we must study our culture and live out the gospel in ways that are intelligible and compelling to our unbelieving neighbors.
Here’s how Reggie McNeal describes “missional” (Missional Renaissance):
Missional is a way of living, not an affiliation or activity. Its emergence springs from a belief that God is changing his conversation with the world and with the church. Being missional involves an active engagement with this new conversation to the point that it guides every aspect of the life of the missional believer. To think and to live missionally means seeing all life as a way to be engaged with the mission of God in the world.
Is it possible for seminaries to change from train-and-deploy to the deploy-and-debrief approach that Reggie McNeal calls for in Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church? Here’s McNeal’s thinking:
Reggie McNeal calls seminaries to a deploy-and-debrief approach
The typical practice for preparing church leaders for their ministry roles proves woefully inadequate for developing kingdom movement leaders. Standard approaches to leadership training for clergy not only ignore biblical patterns but also violate even the most basic understanding of how people (and leaders) develop. The current preparation methodology follows a classroom and pretested certification model. How absurd! There is no correlation between earning high marks on academic tests and being able to lead people. Again, don’t hear what I’m not saying. I have studied some myself and think we need more, not less, theological emphasis. But it’s all a matter of how and when it’s delivered. And to whom. Of course, some seminary grads turn out to be leaders. But by and large, they were leaders when they entered. Seminary training enhanced their skills but didn’t provide them. We can no longer rely on the low percentage of leaders who make it through and the pathetic results we are reaping. We must abandon the train-and-deploy method.
How did Jesus train leaders for the movement? He used the deploy-and-debrief method. This approach allowed him to take some pretty unpromising and in some cases mercurial candidates and turn them into movement leaders. He invited them to observe what he did, promising them on occasion that they would and could do what they saw him doing. After long hours of ministry, he routinely debriefed the day’s events and teachings. He sent his disciples out on assignments before they were ready, knowing they would make mistakes. He would then debrief their experiences to help them learn from those experiences. …
Questions created teaching moments. Occasionally, he pulled his leaders aside for more extensive briefing. “Come away with me” was not an invitation to a deeper devotional life but a leadership summons to discuss the successes and failures of an early mission trip.
Movement leaders can and must still be prepared this way. Let’s start with the seminary clergy-training level. Eventually, the strangulating hold of accreditation will further relax to allow training regimens to be offered alongside deployment, employing deliver systems that permit people to stay put in their communities of relationship and leadership influence. Those wanting theological education to prepare for church leadership roles will no longer have to disrupt their families, move and live as transients for three to five years to secure their academic prize, and then have to try to reestablish life and relationships in some new place. Online technology is already creating nonresidential alternatives to the typical approach of residential studies. Seminaries will still offer a residential track for those who prefer it, but the main delivery will shift to nonresidential students who access online teaching at their own pace while integrating what they learn into their everyday life and ministry. This will greatly increase the scope of theological education. … Credentialing will certify a proven leader, not just a wannabe.
Is it possible for seminaries to change to a deploy-and-debrief approach? Yes, I believe it is! How to make this change was one of the major design questions that had to be answered when planning the launch of the 100% online Rockbridge Seminary in 2003. Here are 5 design features we incorporated to move us closer to the deploy-and-debrief approach championed by Reggie McNeal:
Asking applicants to confirm they have a ministry role and church leaders to affirm their support for the applicant, both a requirement for admission
Designing learning exercises that utilize and build on a student’s sphere of ministry influence
Offering frequent, interactive forums that build a learning community of peers globally, wrestling with difficult ministry issues
Involving local ministry coaches who debrief and support students
Requiring students to build a ministry portfolio that demonstrates competency development
Is Rockbridge Seminary there yet? No. We are a work in progress.
Re-engineering seminary education is a journey that will need to be traveled over a generation.
With everyone getting on the missional bandwagon, and everyone talking “missional,” and labeling so much as missional, there is a real danger that what it really means to be missional will become lost in the clutter. I wanted to write a book that distills the basicDNA of what missional really is.
Second, I wanted to give church leaders a way to talk about missional in ways that people would “get it.”Third, I wanted to help leaders develop a scorecard that rewarded their missional efforts.The church growth era certainly had a scorecard (one that we are still using) that declared winners and losers at that game.We need a scorecard that gives expression to the multi-dimensional facets of the missional church. (More here)
Reggie is one of those writers that you know is going to be a fabulous read. This book is no exception. In fact it may just become not only a primer for the next two decades but the primary text book.
Typical church thinking views the ministry as clergy-driven and clergy-dominated, the province of those credentialed to represent God. The laity serves mostly by providing a resource pool of time, energy, and money to generate and operate the clergy’s program.
Missional churches empower God’s people for genuine ministry. They do not just invite them to come alongside the “professionals” as their helpers. (p. 39)
Posted by Sam Simmons 
Posted by Sam Simmons 
Posted by Sam Simmons 
