Missional Leadership - Equipping God’s People for Mission

Missional Leadership:
Equipping God’s People for Mission

Leading from the front-

"The purpose of leadership is to form and equip a people who demonstrate and announce the purpose and direction of God through Jesus Christ. Such leadership, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, works to create a people whose life is a witness to Jesus Christ."

Leadership

"Jesus shows that leadership in the reign of God only comes from obedience to the Father. Therefore Missional leadership requires a spirituality that lives in close relationship with and reliance on the directions of the Father through the Spirit."

Leadership

"The place of leadership is to be at the front of the community, living out the implications and actions of the missional people of God, so all can see what it looks like to be the people of God. This means that leadership can never be solo."

"Their leadership will be especially evident as they equip and inform the community to discern God’s will for its missionary action."

Leadership

This leadership is more than preaching and teaching.

"…the Spirit equips that leadership to lead the community into missional engagement with the context in which they live."

"Eschatology is not only about the end of the world. It is about the future breaking in today with an alternative order known as the reign of God."

Leadership // Eschatology

"It was not just a matter of future hope beyond the horizon of history. Their experience was that God’s reign had already dawned, bringing new direction and power to their lives. In Jesus, the events of the new age were already under way."

"…enable the church to realize its ecclesial essence, to be a community of faith, hope, and love, a sign and sacrament of the kingdom of God."

Leadership

"Located always in particular places, the church inevitably sits between the Gospel and a specific cultural context. Therefore the church’s leadership seeks to express the gospel in ways that speak to the realities of their sociocultural setting."

"As God’s wise stewards, they will love that part of creation in which they have been placed."

-Gen-X service -JOY Conference in April

Leadership

Leadership in the church of North American has been shaped mostly by Christendom and modernity. That shaping has come mostly in the form of a priestly model.

Rank and Role seem increasingly to displace the New Testament model of gift and charisma.
The church became a "place where" one received grace through a state-sanctioned priesthood.

The church was a community focused on worship, sacrament, and spiritual care.

Leadership

"Teaching and preaching, oversight of right doctrine, and proper administration of the sacraments became the normative forms of Protestant leadership"
"Qualifications for leadership came to be closely identified with schooling and academic qualifications."

Leadership training

Theological faculty as equals to counterparts in empirical sciences
Training setting organized by Enlightenment categories of competence.
The view of graduate school trained professional effectively eclipsed the gifts for leadership in the non-ordained contingent of God’s sent people.

Leader as Counselor

Ecclesiologies shaped by human need.

"Pastoral identity was recast into psychological categories, with a reductionistic gospel centered on meeting human potential of the private individual."

"What does the gospel do for me?"

"How does it further my personal development?"

Leader as Manager

"…rooted in presuppositions about how the world is constructed and about human control of the world."

"... renewal movement emphasizes inner organizational design.

"... growth movement focuses on effectively reaching specific target groups of people."

"… effectiveness movement stresses leadership paradigms

"…shaped to meet the spiritual needs of consumers and maximize market penetration."

Leader as Technician

"With the right tools and skills it is always possible to get the job done."

Focus is on tools and techniques rather than on God.

"What we have lost in the ascendancy of technique is the openness to mystery and the understanding of God’s own inscrutable work in our midst."

Being a Covenant People

"A people who have grasped their brokenness understand that the reign of God is received as a gift. It is at this point that one can appropriate the convenant nature of the missional community."

"In an individualistic, voluntaristic culture, people need to be led into forms of covenant identity."

All are ordained to ministry in baptism.

All are gifted by the Holy Spirit.

The Shape of Missional Communities

The erosion of religious identity, linked with the pluralism of society, results in churches filled with people who have no cohesive belief system.

SEE OTHER SHEETS FIGURES 1-6

Leadership

1) Spends time within the community listening, praying and discerning the call of God for this particular vocation.

2) Integrity and spiritual maturity are essential.

3) Intellectual competence will be crucial.

4) Skill development in spiritual and communal formation will be essential.

Leadership

A) Leadership is never solo.

-nature of the body of Christ and its giftedness.

B) Prophetic leadership (often suppressed) is essential.

-its purpose is to direct the saving Word of God to the specific context into which a Christian community is sent.

C) The Pastor-teacher working in dynamic combination with the evangelist works best.

Unfortunate omission

The remainder of the chapter takes on the challenges of denominational structure and function.

Do to our time, I will not be speaking to this area.