Leading Missional Change

In The Missional Leader, consultants Alan J. Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk address two questions: "How do we do missional?" and "What does missional leadership look like?" Drawing on their many years of experience, the authors show readers how to bring God's word into the community outside the church's walls. They focus on how to lead missionally on the ground, in the local setting, even amid leaders' experience of massive change within the church and in the wider world. The challenge for many church leaders is that they are not equipped to lead a church in shifting from a consumer model of church to one that is missional. They were trained in a Christendom mindset--to meet the needs of the church's members. This book assists leaders in shifting from dominant models of leadership rooted in strategic planning--with mission and vision statements, desired outcomes, measurements along the way, and determined goals. It provides a praxis for beginning where people are, rather than where the leader wants them to go. Roxburgh and Romanuk give frank recognition to the fact that the shift from a consumer model to a missional mindset will almost certainly be stormy, disruptive, and disorienting. This is not a book of quick fixes and slick slogans, but one that sets out a comprehensive and in-depth treatment for a different way of leading. The Missional Leader is a critical commentary that needs to be read in the light of today's realities.

It seems that nearly everyone is talking about missional change for congregations. As a result, many church leaders are attempting to drive that kind of change for the ministries they lead. Some succeed. But many others hit a wall of considerable frustration as they find that congregations resist the very change that is so needed. The reasons for this resistance are many, and they are explored in this volume. What is required to move a church from resistance to readiness? Some resistance is deeply rooted in spiritual patterns. But there are other reasons as well, and they center on trust--personal trust in the leaders who offer missional change. For this work, the authors have done extensive primary and secondary research to identify patterns and behaviors that invite missional leadership. More than that, they've lived this out in their own ministries as pastors of traditional congregations. This book thus offers compelling first-person stories and congregational case studies alongside more generalized findings. Leading Missional Change was written to support pastors and other church leaders who experience resistance, to share wisdom and experience that may lead to readiness, and to give hope and encouragement toward a re-energizing of your own congregation.

It seems that nearly everyone is talking about missional change for congregations. As a result, many church leaders are attempting to drive that kind of change for the ministries they lead. Some succeed. But many others hit a wall of considerable frustration as they find that congregations resist the very change that is so needed. The reasons for this resistance are many, and they are explored in this volume. What is required to move a church from resistance to readiness? Some resistance is deeply rooted in spiritual patterns. But there are other reasons as well, and they center on trust--personal trust in the leaders who offer missional change. For this work, the authors have done extensive primary and secondary research to identify patterns and behaviors that invite missional leadership. More than that, they've lived this out in their own ministries as pastors of traditional congregations. This book thus offers compelling first-person stories and congregational case studies alongside more generalized findings. Leading Missional Change was written to support pastors and other church leaders who experience resistance, to share wisdom and experience that may lead to readiness, and to give hope and encouragement toward a re-energizing of your own congregation.

Too often, the solution sought by many struggling churches is to make the homerun hire--to find the charismatic leader who will take them to the promised land of growth and vibrant ministry. While this strategy occasionally pays off, it has overwhelmingly failed as seen in the hundreds of churches across the United States that close their doors annually. Is it possible that there is another way forward for those seeking to lead local congregations into missionally vibrant ministry, especially those located in multiethnic urban areas? In Charismatic Leadership and Missional Change, one church's journey from a struggling, primarily Anglo congregation of less than 100 members to becoming a missionally vibrant, multiethnic church of more than 700 attendees with no clear ethnic majority documented. The charismatic leadership style that drove this change is discussed and critiqued, as well as the adaptive challenges that have arisen in the church because of it. An alternative approach--interpretive leadership--is proposed as a different pathway forward in response to these challenges. The result, the author suggests, will be to empower the diverse, everyday people of God to participate in God's mission in exciting and surprising new ways.

Guidance for church leaders to develop their own maps and chart new paths toward stronger, more vibrant, and more missional congregations In the burgeoning missional church movement, churches are seeking to become less focused on programs for members and more oriented toward outreach to people who are not already in church. This fundamental shift in what a congregation is and does and thinks is challenging for leaders and congregants. Using the metaphor of map-making, the book explains the perspective and skills needed to lead congregations and denominations in a time of radical change over unfamiliar terrain as churches change their focus from internal to external. Offers a clear guide for leaders wanting to transition to a missional church model Written by Alan Roxburgh, a prominent expert and practitioner in the missional movement Guides leaders seeking to create new maps for leadership and church organization and focus A Volume in the popular Leadership Network Series This book is written to be accessible to all Christian congregational styles and denominations.

Many pastors and church leaders have heard the term "missional" but have only a vague idea of what it means, let alone why it might be important to them. But what does it actually mean? What does a missional church look like and how does it function? Two leading voices in the missional movement here provide an accessible introduction, showing readers how the movement developed, why it's important, and how churches can become more missional. Introducing the Missional Church demonstrates that ours is a post-Christian culture, making it necessary for church leaders to think like missionaries right here at home. Focusing on a process that allows a church to discern its unique way of being missional, it guides readers on a journey that will lead them to implement a new set of missional practices in their churches. The authors demonstrate that living missionally is about discerning and joining God's work in the world in order to be a witness to God's kingdom on earth.

This book explores the theme of the missional conversion of the church, namely how the church is transformed toward its missionary vocation, from a biblical-theological perspective. The purpose of this book is to find biblically grounded, theologically sound, and practically applicable principles helpful for the church which seeks to be continuously shaped into a missional community which authentically and fully participates in God’s mission today. The biblical-theological findings on how the triune God in the biblical narrative shapes the people of God toward their missionary vocation demonstrates, first, that, in Scripture, the missional conversion of the church is primarily the consequence of its continuous encounter with the triune God, and, second, that this divine-human encounter for the missional conversion of the church is ineluctable in view of the ongoing tension between the missional faithfulness of God in fulfilling the missionary vocation of the church, on the one hand, and the missional failure of the church in its missionary vocation, on the other hand.