In 1999 Dr. Barry Winders resigned from the church where he was the senior pastor for twelve years. Leading up to the resignation, Winders was driven by numerical growth and consequently had become a proprietor of all aspects of the church growth movement. At the end of the day, however, he realized that his determination to grow a church had come at a high relational price.

As a result of Winders’ experience he recognized the need for a new approach for “distracted churches” and busy pastors who had left their first love. The outcome of his research and reflection is a new book published this past August titled “Finding The Missional Path: Five Steps to Transforming Distracted Churches Who Leave Their First Love.”

In chapter one Winder highlights the missional reality of the church and how churches become distracted from that reality. Discussing the issue of becoming distracted, Winders asks: “What would the church look like if we stopped counting people, stopped soliciting new donors, and stopped staffing or funding ministry programs that serve only our members?” The answer, hopefully would be that the church would develop an externally focused, missionary perspective that would have eyes for those outside the church.

But why is this missional perspective so elusive in most American churches? Winders argues that in many cases “churches think they are doing missions if they raise money for charity or try to influence policy.”

Throughout the remainder of the book Winders proposes a five-step guide to a new way of viewing the church. Moreover, Winders provides the five steps to describe a “new way for leaders to have spiritual conversations when they really want to help decision-makers of the church redirect their thinking away from the distraction and on to their first love.”

Step 1: Missional Spirituality – The Soul’s Transformation

The first step emphasizes the need to understand the sentness of Christ whereby we desire and love the things He loved, namely the heart of every person.

Step 2: Missional Calling – The Soul’s Passion

The second step explores how the “missional calling” continuously shapes us so the mission remains the mission.

Step 3: Missional Visioning – The Soul’s Destination

In step three Winder discusses the importance of the leader’s ability to press forward through uncertainty.

Step 4: Missional Learning – The Soul’s Searching

In this chapter on missional learning Winder mentions the struggles of navigating away from the activities that pull us back in the direction of being distracted.

Step 5: Missional Accountability – The Soul’s Seriousness

In this last step Winder exhorts pastors and church leaders to do two things. First, as the pastor of the church go to the congregation and share the need for you to focus a certain portion of your time on being missional to the community. “You cannot teach what you do not know.” Second, intentionally release others to become missionaries in their own zip codes.