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Review: Introducing the Missional Church: What It Is, Why It Matters, How to Become One by Alan J. Roxburgh and M. Scott Boren

January 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Reviewed by Steve Manskar

Introducing the Missional Church: What It Is, Why It Matters, How to Become One
by Alan J. Roxburgh and M. Scott Boren
Baker Books, 2009
ISBN 978-0801072123

In their introduction to Introducing the Missional Church: What It Is, Why It Matters, How to Become One, the authors quote Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury:

“It is not the church of God that has a mission. It’s the God of mission that has a church.”

The authors continue, “[Williams] is saying God is at work in the world to redeem creation, and God invites us to participate in this mission. God is not interested in getting more and more people into the institutional church. Instead, the church is to be God’s hands and feet in accomplishing God’s mission.” These lines capture a definition of “missional church.”

A Gift to Church Leaders

Roxburgh and Boren have given a gift to church leaders who understand that we live in a post-Christian, post-Constantinian, postmodern world that regards the church to be irrelevant and out of touch. They offer a vision of the church that turns the church as we know it upside-down. The missional church understands that it belongs to God and exists to serve with Christ in the world that God loves. The missional church aligns its mission with Jesus’ mission summarized in Mark 1:15, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe the good news.”

Introducing the Missional Church has its roots in an earlier book, Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, edited by Darrell L. Guder, published in 1998. The latter was a project published by the Gospel in Our Culture Network. However, its impact has been limited because it is perceived to be too academic and theoretical. Alan Roxburgh served on the Missional Church writing team. Introducing the Missional Church is his attempt to help pastors and church leaders apply the ideas presented in the earlier volume in their context.

Become Missional Step-by-Step

Roxburgh and Boren do an excellent job of helping the reader understand what it means to be a missional church. They then provide a step-by-step process designed to help new and existing congregations become missional in their identity and ministry in the world.

This book is particularly relevant for United Methodist congregations interested in reclaiming their Wesleyan DNA. I say this because the Wesleyan Methodist movement was, at its heart, a missional movement. Introducing the Missional Church is a resource that will give you a language and strategy for helping your congregation make the shift from “church-centeredness” to a Christ-centered community that is a sign and foretaste of the present and coming reign of God.

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This review is shared from the General Board of Discipleship of the United Methodist Church. Please visit the original article for more information and related resources. Copyright General Board of Discipleship. www.GBOD.org Used by permission.

Filed Under: Features, Reviews

Book Review: When the Members Are the Missionaries

May 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

When the Members Are the Missionaries: An Extraordinary Calling for Ordinary People

by A. Wayne Schwab, Member Mission Press, 2002. 203 pp.

a book review by Evan Gel

Of course we all know that Jesus is as concerned about what we do from Monday through Saturday as what happens on Sunday.  He deeply cares about real people who have learned to see all of their life as a mission for Christ without becoming obnoxious.  Wayne Schwab has done his homework here with sound, Biblical theology and useful practical application.  He gives us the Biblical foundation for every church member becoming a missionary, illustrating with real-life experiences of fifteen particular individuals in as many different contexts.  Then he shows us through examples how to go about creating a church that sees its vision as preparing every member for their particular mission in the world in which they live and work and play.

This is not just a book about ideas and theories, but a practical, resourceful collection of probing questions and specific ways to help every church member to exercise their calling and specific mission every day in every area of life.

Schwab’s “daily mission fields” include the following:

  • Home: (family and/or close friends),
  • Work: (school and volunteer work),
  • Local Community: (neighborhood, town, or city),
  • Wider world: (society, culture, economy, government, or environment in country, state, nation or world),
  • Leisure or recreation: (any activity used to rest or refresh yourself) and
  • Church: both your own spiritual health (your inner life with God, including the maintenance of your physical and emotional health that supports your spirituality), and your share in church life and its outreach (your life in the congregation, district, or communion in the U.S. or worldwide church).

Personal spiritual growth, small group re-enforcement and accountability, worship and preaching that inspires every member to “just do it,” non-judgmental encouragement and support, leaders who lead, discovering mission fields…it’s all here, and more.  And it’s not from some theorist, but from an Episcopal pastor, and first evangelism staff officer of the Episcopal Church, who practices this in his ministry through the years of change and challenge.  From the first page to the last, this is a motivating, equipping book that won’t let you down, but will get you moving, and help you to get others to join you in what Christ has called us all to do and be…every day in every aspect of our lives.

The book is also enhanced by a guidebook available through MemberMission.org

Some of my favorite quotes from the book:

“Usually, we think of mission as ‘what the church does in the world.’  When we say ‘church,’ we usually mean the congregation or some larger church body.  We don’t think about what the individual members ‘do in the world’ as mission.  It is time to see what individual Christians do as mission.  When we do, we take a giant step from the past into a new reality of mission.”

“People who say they do not know where God is leading them or what God really wants them to do, often do not recognize God’s presence in what they want to do.  If what they want to do is an honorable, giving thing, then God is speaking to them.  God speaks to us very loudly and very strongly.”

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Book Review: Change the World

April 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Change the World: Recovering the Message and Mission of Jesus

by Michael B. Slaughter
(Available at cokesbury.com)

Rediscover and reclaim the message and mission of Jesus: that is the singular focus of Michael Slaughter’s new book, Change the World. The book also serves as the centerpiece for the nationwide “Change the World Event,” April 24-25, 2010.

For the unacquainted, Slaughter is the lead pastor and chief dreamer of the Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church, a rural, small-town congregation that grew over thirty years from fewer than 100 to nearly 5,000 worshipers on three campuses.

“Not” Another Church Growth Manual

Be clear, however, Change the World is not another church growth manual. Despite Ginghamsburg’s achieving megachurch status, Slaughter and his leaders received a divine directive not to build a much-needed 3,000-seat sanctuary. Two scriptural passages led them to a spiritual about-face.

The first passage is Jesus’ inaugural message in Luke 4:18-19 in which the Lord declares good news specifically to the poor. Slaughter notes, “If [the gospel] is not working to benefit the poor and oppressed, then it is not the gospel!” The second passage is Jesus’ litmus test for true discipleship in Matthew 25:35-40. Here, Jesus identifies true followers as ones who give food, drink, clothing, visits, and care to “the least of these.”

These two passages transformed the thinking of this megachurch pastor. Slaughter says, “Quit worrying about getting people into your church and start finding opportunities to move the people who are already there out into God’s service,” hardly the advice of a church-growth guru. This book’s purpose is literally to help churches “change the world” by following Jesus Christ.

How Do You Measure Success?

Slaughter challenges current traditions and paradigms falsely canonized as biblical truth, such as the abcs of church growth: attendance, buildings, and cash–former measures of church success. Real growth derives from the development of active disciples.

The ethos at Ginghamsburg urges attendees to live simply and sacrificially, and to make mission a priority. The result? Servants (not volunteers) of Ginghamsburg are helping restart inner city churches locally and are providing sustainable agricultural projects, safe water, and child protection and development in Darfur, Sudan.

Mission not Mortar

Slaughter is keenly aware of today’s economic challenges. Ginghamsburg is sixteen miles north of Dayton, Ohio, named in 2008 as one of the fastest dying cities in America by Forbes magazine. This entrepreneurial pastor has never forgotten the skills he learned when he carved out ministry thirty years ago with an annual church budget of $27,000.

Slaughter confronts limited resources with boundless creativity and unflappable faith. He presses readers not to ignore cold facts and “common kingdom sense.” While the economy stutters, churches need to speak clearly about budget priorities. Slaughter urges churches to examine the percentage of money directed toward mortar (physical plant), ministry (ministry within the church  facility), and mission (ministry outside the walls of church facilities). Nearly 65 percent of Ginghamsburg’s current budget goes toward ministry and mission.

Servants not Spectators

Each chapter in Change the World invites congregations to critique their ministry and mission. Prophetic concepts cry out to readers: make disciples not members, servants not spectators, multiply ministries first, church buildings last.

The book has no shortage of real-world ministry based on biblical foundations, nor does it lack heavy doses of honest, provocative insight. Think of these 121 pages as a candid conversation from a megachurch pastor determined to spend the second half of his ministry “being and doing the things that [matter] most to God.” Want to change the world for Christ? Read this book.

Online Change the World Resources

Click here for the (mp3) audio file of this article

Copyright General Board of Discipleship. www.GBOD.org Re-posted on EC with permission.
Filed Under: Features, Reviews

Unbinding the Gospel, the Church and your Heart

December 31, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Are you looking for some engaging data about a church like yours and the one down the street? And, are you interested in some new hope for mainline churches like yours?

Are you and others in your church in need of a personal spiritual uplift for the beginning of another year?

Are you in need of some resources that get a handle on how you can get from here to there in a world with spiritual hunger but no place to go?

If you aren’t sure there’s anything out there like that there’s some good news for you today!

First of all…the data: Unbinding the Gospel is a book about an amazing Lilly grant study of mainline churches authored by Martha Grace Reese. It is a “good read” and more than that it offers hope for mainline churches like yours, whether big, small or medium-sized.

“Looked at as a percentage of the population, mainline church membership decreased almost 50% in 40 years. In percentage terms, in the year 2000 there were only half as many mainline Protestants as there were 40 years before.”(Unbinding the Gospel, p. 26)

“The accepted wisdom is that new churches can reach unchurched people most effectively. That lets the rest of us in all our old churches off the hook, right? Wrong! We found something wildly different. Our high adult baptism congregations ranged in age from 4 to 270 years! The median age of our high baptism congregations was 96 years old. The average age was 89 years. It is now clear: a congregation may be too stuck in its ways to do evangelism but it’s not too old!”(Unbinding the Gospel, p.31)

Secondly, Reese believes that personal spiritual revitalization precedes corporate renewal and that means that pastors and church leaders need to refresh their faith and commitment to the mission of Christ’s church. We all need to respond afresh to the “call” of our Lord to follow Him in mission to a lost and broken world so loved by Him.

“Right or wrong, we have relied on just being American to teach people about Christianity. Those days of passive absorption are ending. We now have to do more of the beginning work of educating people about the faith, or we will rob millions of people of the option of being Christian.” (Unbinding Your Heart, p.11)

As far as the resources are concerned, there are two books that go with the first one that will help you and your church get a handle on things and begin to move in the right direction again. Unbinding Your Church is a pastor’s guide that will give you the steps, the music and sermonic resources and just about everything else you need to work with your key leaders for the renewal of your church’s life and ministry to the community in which God has strategically placed you.

Another invaluable resource, Unbinding Your Heart will provide helps to engage your congregation in 40 days of prayer and faith sharing. These affordable books are all available now at your favorite bookseller or at Amazon.com. Don’t take my word for it. I’ve served four mainline congregations for 28 years and wish I had something like this “Real Life Evangelism Series” to guide us then. Just check out the books for yourself and get some additional copies for the key leaders of your church. If you are all not convinced this is something that will get the New Year started, or Lent productively programmed, or some other key time in the life of your congregation ignited, I’ll be surprised.

  • Unbinding the Gospel, Martha Grace Reese, Afterword by Brian McLaren, 2007, Chalice Press
  • Unbinding Your Church, Martha Grace Reese, with Dawn Darwin Weaks and Catherine Riddle Caffey, Foreword by George G. Hunter, 2008, Chalice Press
  • Unbinding Your Heart, Martha Grace Reese, Foreword by George G. Hunter, III, Afterword by Brian McLaren, 2008, Chalice Press

Bruce Laverman
Minister of Evangelism
Reformed Church in America

Filed Under: Reviews

Book Review: The Practicing Congregation

May 15, 2007 By Leave a Comment

by Diana Butler Bass

With a grant from the Lily Foundation endowment, church historian Diana Butler Bass set out to find new ways for mainline Protestant churches to be faithful in a changing world.

Bass looked at 50 churches from six mainline denominations in the United States where new things were happening and people were growing deeper in their faith. Recently, there has been much discussion about

Filed Under: Reviews

Review: The Celtic Way of Evangelism

February 28, 2007 By Leave a Comment

What a perfect time to read or re-read George Hunter’s thought provoking and hopefully action-oriented book, The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West Again, (2000, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 144pp.)

Here are a few quotes to ponder as we think about St. Patrick, and the Irish, and the need we have as individual Christians and as churches to think outside our boxes.

First of all, from the introduction:

The church, in the Western world, faces populations who are increasingly “secular”-people with no Christian memory, who don’t know what we Christians are talking about. These populations are increasingly “urban”-and out of touch with God’s “natural revelation.” These populations are increasingly “postmodern”; they have graduated from Enlightenment ideology and are more peer driven, feeling driven, and “right-brained” than their forebears. These populations are increasingly “neo-barbarian”, they lack “refinement” or “class,” and their lives are often out of control. These populations are increasingly receptive-exploring worldview options from Astrology to Zen-and are often looking “in all the wrong places” to make sense of their lives and find their soul’s true home.

And a few more gems:

The typical church ignores two populations, year after year: the people who aren’t “refined” enough to feel comfortable with u s, and the people who are too “out of control” for us to feel comfortable with them!

Perhaps five to ten percent of America’s churches are trying culturally relevant “contemporary” worship-with some adaptation to the pre-Christian population’s style, language, aesthetics, and music, but few churches are even considering the kind of identification with people practiced by the Celtic Christian movement and reflected in this ancient Chinese poem:

Go to the people.

Live among them.

Learn from them.

Love them.

Start with what they know.

Build on what they have.

At a time when many churches are re-thinking some “first steps” they made to reach people different than they are, and as we stretch our minds and hearts to be obedient to the one who “emptied himself” that he might reach those “who were like sheep without a shepherd,” let’s not forget the example of St. Patrick, who went who went where he didn’t want to go, to evangelize people he didn’t like, and probably started about 700 churches.

- Bruce Laverman

Filed Under: Reviews

Book Review: Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism

January 17, 2007 By Leave a Comment

by Martha Grace Reese

Chalice Press, St. Louis, Mo., 2006.

Who says mainline churches can’t do evangelism? Former pastor Martha Grace began a Lilly grant study to prove some can and do. Several years later she has come to the conclusion that though they can they need conversion themselves, first. The purpose of the mainline evangelism project was to find churches that are doing effective evangelism. What she found was that only 150 out of 30,000 mainline churches were. That’s a demoralizing one half of one percent. Enough to dull the edge of anyone’s resolve, but Martha Grace was convinced that things could be different, and that there are actions that every church along the full spectrum of theology and styles could take to reverse the sad trend of the last four decades. This book will convince you that she is right! And will (more importantly) inspire you to act on what you have learned.

From the bad news statistics we move quickly to “three stories of victory” that show us how evangelism is being done in “real life,” in some mainline churches throughout North America. The inspiration these real churches provide help us to understand what new members want and need and how they are finding it in the transformation of their own lives by the gospel of Jesus Christ. What we find here is not more idealistic rhetoric but natural, proven ways and concrete examples of some of our churches that are really touching their communities with Christian hope and making a definite difference in their neighborhoods.

The last section of the book helps us work confidently and effectively with our congregations as they re-pattern themselves for ministry in the 21 st Century, praying their way through changes that can drive them forward with confidence instead of just trying to survive. Here is sound advice for pastors to lead out of example and stay long enough to see their congregations change.

Each chapter of this compelling book ends with “honest to God” discussion questions to be answered first personally, and then in small groups. Suggestions for concrete action also help us move from clear, biblical motivation to the world of real church and community.

There is enough fertile ground here for any pastor and her/his church leaders to plow for at least a year. And those who sow are bound to reap in this soul searching and hope-filled guide to mainline church life in the days ahead.

Don’t miss this one!

Bruce Laverman

Read an article about this book from the PC(USA) Website

Filed Under: Reviews