Introducing the Missional Church - a review
I recently read Introducing the Missional Church by Alan J. Roxburgh and M. Scott Boren. I think this is perhaps the best book on the subject I have read so far. They've taken the work of Leslie Newbigin and made it easier to understand and more readable for simple folk like me. In fact, the point of the book is phrased in three questions: What is the missional church, why does it matter, and how does a church become missional?I thought the first part of the book - where they explain the concept of "missional" - was the best. My only complaint is with the last section. It seems to become a bit of a sales pitch for the author's resources in helping your church become missional. There is still useful information though.
The book is broken into three parts, like so...
Part 1: One Missional River
Ch. 1 - Not All Who Wander Are Lost: Stories of a Church In Between
Ch. 2 - Just Give Me A Definition: Why Missional Church Is So Hard to Define
Ch. 3 - Does Missional Fit? Can My Church Be Missional
Part 2: Three Missional Conversations
Ch. 4 - What's Behind the Wardrobe? The Center of the Missional Church
Ch. 5 - We're Not in Kansas Anymore: Missionaries in Our Own Land
Ch. 6 - Why Do We Need Theology? Missional Is about God, Not the Church
Ch. 7 - God's Dream for the World: What Is a Contrast Society?
Part 3: Countless Missional Journeys
Ch. 8 - The Journey Ahead: Following the Winds of the Spirit
Ch. 9 - Starting from Here: Where is Your Church Now?
Ch. 10 - The Missional Change Model: Getting There from Here
Ch. 11 - The Awareness Stage: Staring Reality in the Face
Ch. 12 - The Understanding Stage: Can We Really Talk about These Things?
Ch. 13 - The Evaluation Stage: A Snapshot of the Church
Ch. 14 - The Work of the Church Board: How Do Innovators and Traditionalists Work Together?
Ch. 15 - The Experiment Stage: Little Steps toward Something Big
There were a few quotes that particularly stood out to me. The book starts out with this very nice paragraph on what being missional means...
There once was a people who were neither significant nor exceptional nor privileged. In fact they did what most people of the time did: worked, married, raised children, celebrated, mourned, and carried out the basic stuff of life. You would not think them unique, because their dress, homes, and professions were much like that of everyone else. What was different about them, however, was their strange conviction that they had been chosen by God to be a special people, a journeying people who were forced to discover again and again what God wanted them to be doing in the world... At every stage in the biblical narratives is hope for a future reality toward which the people are moving. Being missional means we join this heritage, entering a journey without any road maps to discover what God is up to in our neighborhoods and communities.
On p. 21 was this insightful little ditty which might differ from the "getting back to the NT pattern"...
As an alternative to the attractional, some take up a contrarian stance. They become anti-building, anti-clergy, anti-denomination, anti-megachurch, anti-tradition, and anti-structure. They point fingers at what is now in place and tear it down. Many are stuck on the negative, and they know how to write blogs that deconstruct and talk about what is wrong. Who doesn't know how to do that? There's nothing creative about it, even if the media is used well. Others move past the negative by elevating an ideal or dream of what the church should be. This is understandable, but it is not helpful. As counterintuitive as it may sound, we don't cultivate a missional imagination by setting up some ideal type of the church or telling people what we should be. There are different forms of these dreams. They often come in some form of getting back to New Testament patterns or describing some point in the church's history that we need to recover. Some use quite strange, almost nonsensical language about how the church must become deinstitutionalized (we actually haven't come across any human system that isn't institutionalized in one form or another) and that it needs to return to a preinstitutionalized state of organic life. None of this is helpful, because it fails to recognize where the Spirit is actually at work in shaping a new imagination.
On p. 24 they state clearly three perspectives they are hoping to challenge with the book...
First, we are challenging the elevation of any model as the way to do church... Second, we challenge arguments that the Bible reveals a missional secret or formula that provides twenty-first century Christians with a magic pill for entering missional life... Third, we are challenging the idea that there is some point in history of the church that provides us with just the right pattern and formula for creating missional churches...
As you can tell there are some fairly provocative ideas in this book. I thought it was quite good, and I would recommend it for any church leader or anyone interested in the missional conversation.
Labels: book review, books, Missional
posted by dan at 9:30 AM
4 Comments:
dan,
thanks for the review. you've certainly got me interested. one thing i'm particularly curious about. what was the gist of ch. 6, on theology?
Walt,
I thought ch.6 was an especially important chapter, and am not surprised you were curious about it.
The authors begin the chapter by sharing how often they are accused of being "theologians who don't know what is going on in the realities that [pastors face]..." They respond by saying, "We are convinced theology is critical to the formation of missional churches. If we don't think through our theology, then missional just becomes better tactics and strategies for attracting more people."
Also, "Theology is 'talk about God,' and being a part of God's missional people means that we are speaking about who God is and what God is doing in this world within a specific context. This is theology... Therefore we must reclaim theology for everyday people so that we can talk about God in ways that fit where we live in the world."
They contend being missional is all about seeing what God is up to in the world, and learning to talk about God in our local contexts, so we can live it and breathe it. They say, "Jesus's way of being a theologian was to embody God in a local setting. He came to earth not in an ideal time, an ideal way, or with an ideal plan... He came in a very particular way to a particular people at a particular time in history. He moved into the neighborhood of Galilee and demonstrated there who God is..."
Just one more quote... They state that theology begins with God and the question of what God is doing in the world. "If we begin with questions like 'What is a missional church?' or 'How do we become externally focused?' or 'What kind of church-planting strategy should we develop?' or 'How do we form a multisite church?' then we are not asking questions about what God is doing in the world; we are asking questions about the church and about tactics. This is why theology is so important - it keeps pointing us to the questions of God in the local. It asks these questions as if the people in our neighborhoods matter and are more than just the objects of our strategies to get more people inside our churches."
Sorry for the long answer. Hope that helps some.
dan,
if you know me, you'll never have to apologize for a long answer. i'm more likely to pester you for a longer one. :-)
what you said/quoted reminds me of what c.s. lewis once said, and something i've taken on as a sort of paradigm of my own: "They all say ‘the ordinary reader does not want Theology; give him plain practical religion’. I have rejected their advice. I do not think the ordinary reader is such a fool. Theology means ‘the science of God,’ and I think any man who wants to think about God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available."
now, admittedly, we don't have to do theology as the scholars do. i'm generally for using big words to say in a few sentences what would otherwise take chapters to unpack. i think the Bible (particularly paul's writings) does that fairly frequently. nevertheless, i'm probably going to avoid using "verbal plenary inerrancy" in a youth group full of 6th graders. they'll get there, just not now.
the one thing i don't wholeheartedly agree with, is where they say, "[Jesus] came to earth not in an ideal time, an ideal way, or with an ideal plan." (granted, this is somewhat out of context, so maybe i just don't understand exactly what they mean.) Scripture seems to refute that, when it says "in the fullness of time God sent forth His Son" or wherever it speaks of the perfect nature of God's plan in salvation.
i don't think that contrasts with coming into a particular scenario. and though i agree that we need to be aware of how to incarnate the Church into our local communities, i think we also need to be aware of what God's doing on a larger (national, global) scale. both/and, not either/or.
does that make sense? or am i misunderstanding their meaning?
Walt,
Regarding the quote "[Jesus] came to earth not in an ideal time, an ideal way, or with an ideal plan"... I don't think they're saying that wasn't part of God's plan or that there doesn't need to be an awareness of God on a larger scale.
That quote comes under the heading, "The Missional God: Jesus as a Contextual Theologian." They quote John 1:14 ("The Word became flesh and dwelt among us"), and I think their point is that God is a missional God; he is not some 'out there', 'other', 'distant being.'
I think they're merely trying to make the point that Jesus did come to earth at a specific time, among a specific people (in the flesh)... And that WE are now on earth at a specific time and among a specific people. Just as Jesus came to earth to show who God is, so should we.
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