My next breakout was by a guy named Mick Noel. I was intrigued by this titled since I currently find myself in an established church and probably will again sometime down the road. As an associate pastor for the past 8 years this has been something that I've wrestled with for most of that time. Can an established church change? Too many times the answer is no but after hearing Mick's presentation I believe that it can happen. I appreciate the warnings that Mick gave about expecting this to be an overnight shift and how sometimes doing what we feel is good and right can be misconstrued in a negative way by those we are serving.
I think the best quote that Mick used was by a man named Alan Roxburgh in a book called The Missional Leader. "We need to lead in ways that are different from those of a CEO, an entrepreneur, a super leader with a wonderful plan for the congregation's life. Instead we need leaders with the capacity to cultivate an environment that releases the missional imagination of the people of God." I thought so much about this quote that I bought the book to read. I have had leadership principles shoved down my throat from the beginning of my vocation in the church and have always sensed that somehow we were missing the point on a few levels. Here is where I think we miss the point. Most of our talk on leadership is self focused. Because of this we gear our ministries around our ideas, our preferences, our perceived successes. But from what I think Roxburgh is saying here, is that missional leadership is about focusing on God. Our job as a missional leader is to point people to God and the possibility of us realizing the Kingdom of God in our everyday life. This is something that I can buy into and support. One big issue is that this kind of leadership is different than most of our congregations are looking for. So it seems like there are many shifts that need to take place in some of our established churches that center around mission and leadership.
There is so much more I could say but let's discuss this for now. What do you think?
I think the key is going from high control and low accountability to low control and high accountability. In the later format we can train and inspire to follow God's vision for their lives, not the senior pastors. How will this be measured? When the majority of ministry a church family is engaged in is off campus.
ReplyDeleteThe current church model focuses way to much on providing the right kind of ministries, verses helping people create the right kind mindset about ministry. Pastors must release their flocks to ministry wherever it takes them - even if it is not bottom line friendly.
Dave,
ReplyDeleteDo you think the church needs to help push these ministries out of the church or is this something that should happen organically? What happens if several key ministries in your church begin to suffer due to lack of volunteers? Do they become expendable? Just curious.