Leadership

Questions for Missional Leaders

October 2, 2009, by 1 comment

Originally offered by Mike Noel and expanded a bit by J.R. Briggs, check out 21 Questions for Missional Leaders:

A few of my favorite include:

  1. What are 8-10 characteristics of your ministry context?
  2. What are 6-10 dominant culture values in your ministry context?
  3. How does the gospel inform the values of your specific context?
  4. How does your leadership team reflect your ministry context (culturally, ethnically, economically)?
  5. How do you measure “disciple maturity” in your church community?
  6. What verifiable, transformative impact has your church’s ministries had on: individuals, families, corporate congregrational life, your geographic context, the leadership and organizational structures of your church community?
  7. How do you monitor/assess transformative impact in each of these areas of ministry influence?
  8. What are your primary missional objectives in the next 1-3 years?
  9. What structures/systems/attitudes/behaviors do you identify as obstacles to your missional effectiveness?
  10. What structures/systems will you simplify in order to reduce need for finances/personnel while preserving relational effectiveness?
  11. What discernment strategies will you teach/model as prerequisite to decision making?
  12. As you consider (a) the needs of your ministry context (b) your vision for transformative ministry and (c) the passions God has given you and your leadership team; what will you need that you don’t presently have?
  13. What for you are the essential elements of a missional congregation?
  14. Who in your community and context could you listen to and learn from regarding the values of your city?
  15. What are 3-5 ways you and your church are currently blessing the neighborhood?

Can Megachurches Be Missional?

September 30, 2009, by No comments yet

Bill Kinnon produces another great video featuring part two of the conversation between David Fitch and Ed Stetzer. For part one go here.

Ed Stetzer & Dave Fitch – a missional conversation Part II from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.

Missional Meanderings

September 29, 2009, by No comments yet

I know a couple of these links have been out there for a while but if you haven’t seen these be sure to check out the following.

Outstanding post from last month by David Fitch on moving from “the bridge” to “the onramp.” Today’s post by Fitch on Missional Discipleship is also well worth reading. Also I am looking forward to Fitch coming to Kansas City next month.

Tony Stiff and Reading the Bible Missionally. You can also follow a conversation about Tony’s thoughts at JR Woodward’s blog here and here.

Another great analysis by Ed Stetzer in Five Reasons Missional Churches Don’t Do Global Missions And How to Fix It.

Neil Cole and Church 3.0

Organized For Mission and Four P’s For Church Planting at Next Reformation.

Jonathan Dodson and Is Your Mission Driven by Prayer?

On Reaching a City.

Missional Small Communities from Ed Stetzer on Vimeo.

The Art of Manliness

March 14, 2009, by 1 comment

Over the past year I have enjoyed many wonderful posts from The Art of Manliness blog. If you are not familiar with this site then check out these two recent posts for an excellent sample of what you are missing:

Every Man Needs a Man Mentor and Great Lessons From Great Men

Reggie McNeal

May 20, 2008, by 3 comments

Here are two excellent presentations from Reggie McNeal recorded at the Reformed Church in America’s One Thing Conference last February.

While McNeal’s presentations are always laced with an abundance of humor, he never fails to present a great challenge to the church to struggle deeply with why and how the church functions. These two sessions are certainly no exception. I especially appreciate McNeal’s emphasis on the Kingdom in the first presentation. His thoughts on developing a “blessing strategy” are also very refreshing and applicable.

You can also download the audio of both sessions here.

Shapevine: A Community of Collaborators

January 4, 2008, by No comments yet

shapevine_logo.jpgIf you are not already familiar with the resources available at Shapevine be sure to check out this site. Shapevine is a multi-dimensional website created to provide a forum for discussion with a wide variety of authors and leaders.

The dialogue is made available via video cafes, podcasts and live Webinars. Some of those participating include Alan Hirsch, Reggie McNeal, Michael Frost, Neil Cole, Leonard Sweet and others. Shapevine looks to have the potential to be an excellent learning community for missional leaders and church planters.

Advent and Waiting For God

December 22, 2007, by No comments yet

soul-at-work.jpgMy friend Georges Boujakly shared the following newsletter article from Margaret Benefiel, author of Soul At Work and Founder of Executive Soul. Benefiel writes that Advent ought to be a season for waiting and looking for what God is doing. She writes:

Advent is about waiting for God, looking for the new thing that God is doing. Advent holds a lesson for all of us in this busy world, especially organizational leaders.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like waiting, thank you very much. Like most of the people around me, I tend to rush from one thing to another in my busy life. When the bank puts me on hold during a phone call, or when I find myself stuck in a long line at the post office, I get impatient.

This season leading up to Christmas is Advent, a season of waiting for Christians around the world. What’s the point of a season of waiting? Read more →

Hit the Bullseye

September 7, 2007, by 1 comment

hit-the-bullseye.jpgI spent the majority of this week with a group of denominational leaders discussing various issues dealing with congregational health and the need for rethinking denominations and judicatories to be better equipped to coach and resource churches. The bulk of our discussion centered around the book “Hit the Bullseye: How Denominations Can Aim the Congregation at the Mission Field” by Paul Borden.

While my expectations of the book were not very high initially, the more I read the more I appreciated Borden’s candor in regards to the ineffectiveness of much of what takes place in denominational life. Here are a couple of samples of what I mean:

The problem with denominations is that they want to shape the mission around their polity, rather than shape the polity around the mission. The latter view is the spirit of all the founding fathers and mothers of every denomination, while the former is the sorry state of every denomination today. The lack of mission urgency in North America means that denominational leaders think they still have time to develop modest, incremental strategic plans to tinker with polity, and time afterwards to then go about mission. The truth is just the opposite. The eternal destinies of individuals do not allow such laxness.

And:

Our current polity systems usually enfranchise those people who are the least able to lead while tying the hands of the most creative and able leaders. This statement assumes that the most able leaders are still around after any brief exposure to how religious bodies function. Our polities allow the managers, administrators, and politicians who understand complex bureaucratic systems to become the leaders in congregational, judicatory, and denominational life. In the meantime these systems weed out those with entrepreneurial and leadership skills. These people for the most part leave and create their own ministries or shadow organizations that go around the bureaucracies created by our polities.

Borden argues that there is far more time and effort spent on keeping the institution going than on focusing resources on the local congregation as the major unit of mission. Deep, paradigmatic change is needed if there is to be hope, and such change must be systemic not incremental.

However I am afraid that the vast majority of those in denominational life have been fitted with one of these: (HT: geez)

paradigm-stabilizers.jpg

Missional Leadership

August 17, 2007, by No comments yet

tfw-cover.gif“In addition to holding a clear vision, missional leadership involves facilitating the emergence of novelty by building and nurturing networks of communications; creating a learning culture in which questioning is encouraged and innovation is rewarded; creating a climate of trust and mutual support; and recognizing viable novelty when it emerges, while allowing the freedom to make mistakes.

It is for this reason that Roxburgh and Romanuk can say that the role of leadership within the church is to cultivate environments wherein the Spirit of God might call forth and unleash the missional imagination of the people of God.”

- Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways

Nurturing a Third Way for Congregations

August 1, 2007, by No comments yet

alban-institute.gifHere is an excellent article from The Alban Institute titled “Changing the Conversation: Nurturing a Third Way for Congregations.” The article, written by Anthony Robinson, first appeared in Congregations magazine and last week was included in Scot McKnight’s weekly meanderings over at Jesus Creed. For a flavor of where Robinson is going in the article here is the opening paragraph:

For congregations—particularly congregations of the mainline Protestant tradition—the way forward has everything to do with changing the conversation. Is a third way possible—a way beyond the polarized alternatives of either liberal or conservative, left or right, red or blue, traditional or contemporary, praise or classical? If it is possible, is a third way merely a compromise between extremes, a muddle in the middle, or is it a vital center and a new framing of the conversation?