Ch. 9: Forming a Missional Culture/Environment
Southside Community Church in Vancouver: single church with congregations built around missional groups. Goal - small congregations that are incarnationally present in neighborhoods (165).
Process of forming a missional culture:
- Member Integration - "important to continuously teach, train, and communicate the values and commitments of the whole church and then invite people to live into this commitment in their context" (167). I understand the need for this for church unity, but the communities may be very different in their neighborhood values and needs.
- Missional Culture - common habits, beliefs, values, and practices. Southside put them in writing.
- Missional Practices - North America churches have lost the church culture (habits, beliefs, values, etc). Practices are not forced on people, but they are invited to experiment.
- Missional Theology - Community must live in continuous engagement with the narratives. Leaders as local theologians.
Ch. 10 Engaging Context
"They (leaders) live in the neighborhood and love the people around them" (172).
Shift from a shopping mall model (attraction to building to meet personal needs) to a cathedral that trained and formed people in their own neighborhoods (174).
- must understand society. "It is not adequate to take a self-righteous view and ignore the realities of our society" (175). Leader's role is to define reality.
-Another important skill - "empowering people by way of letting the biblical narratives ask their own questions of our social context" (176).
Leaders must watch, listen, and nurture gatherings of energy. In one sense, the leader has no control. However, it will not happen unless the leader continues to encourage (180).
Biblical Foundations for Change. Folks will fear the loss of tradition. It is important to remind them that change is a part of being God's people. Challenge is to communicate the connections between the biblical narratives and the cultural narrative that community experiences (fear, anxiety, etc).
Pastor who returns to Greek in sermons: "The pastor found that he was no longer providing answers; he was disrupting their world and causing them to think deeply about their own lives in the context of biblical story" (182). Wow! This is what our preaching should do!
Ch. 11 Conclusion
Form teams for mutual development of leaders. 8-12 trusted pastor/leader peers in a geographical area.
Need for community in times of change. Sola pastora model of leadership is killing pastors (190).
This chapter outlines the process of becoming a missional leader (transforming your community into a missional church). Includes survey, team of leaders, covenant for working together, engage scripture, agenda given for the first three meetings (includes homework and feedback on growth and practices, autobiography of congregation, interviews, and reflection).
"Leadership is about cultivating the kind of environment that frees God's people to feel again the winds of the Spirit and to sail the holy gusts of the Spirit's directions in waters where we no longer have good, clear, definitive maps" (204).
Your last quote underlines a point that the authors make repeatedly about attentiveness to both culture and the Spirit in working with organizational transformation. You have to become a good organizational "ethnographer" to be a good change agent. Some people do this very intuitively. Others of us work at it a lot harder.
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