PM650

We Come to the End, Tuesday, April 26, 2005

2005-04-19T15:33:00.000-07:00

What a marvelous semester we've had together. You've worked hard and I've been privileged to learn alongside you. Thank you for bringing the gifts you each bring to class each week. I have the joy of watching such marvelous new things emerge--new insights, old ones reaffirmed and strengthened, community being formed among us, models and vision for future ministry identified. It is truly a treat to be a teacher (and therefore a learner among you).

The blog this week is a place for you to make your final statements and reflections about the course if you wish, and/or to write your final questions about the readings. I hope for some rich summary work on this page this week.

Christ go with you wherever he may send you:
May he guide you through the wilderness,
And guide you through the storm.
May he carry you rejoicing at the wonders he may show you;
May he guide your every step into the marvel of his will.
Amen.

Leaders Help Disciples "Go Out" with God, Our Theme for Tuesday, April 19, 2005

2005-04-12T17:06:00.000-07:00

In my first congregation I realized very early on that if I was going to allow myself to get boxed up inside the four walls of the building and spend my time ony with church members I would soon lose every ounce of passion I once felt for the gospel. Early in my sense of call, John 20.21 had spoken powerfully to me, drawing me into the missional life. Being a chaplain to church folk, while important, was not the only thing I was called to do and be. I wanted to make sure that I still could feel the wind on my face.

And so I resolved to create a practice that would keep me balancing my work between the concerns of the congregation and the call of the church to me in the world in mission. I blocked out a time budget for my week. Mondays I labeled "Colleagues"--among other things, on Mondays I focused on staff, elders, and volunteer leaders. Tuesday were "Consituents" days. On Tuesday I scheduled counseling and home or office visitations. I called Wednesday my "Crowds" day--the day I got out into the community, sometimes walking the streets meaninglessly on the hill behind the church, other days connecting with a struggling but daring community center serving the inner city poor (regardless, I disciplined myself to find some way to get out and feel the wind). Thursdays and Fridays were for worship and teaching preparation, reading and writing. Quieter days.

Of course, life rarely fits neatly into boxes like these. But this construction of my week did give me focus and it insured that there in the middle was a day to "go out" with God in mission. It saved my ministry. It gave life to the church as I could authentically say to them, "Come along . . . " And it may well have saved my life.

Al Roxburgh writes: "Programs and activities developed in many congregations are focused on the needs and desires of those already attending and tend to be a barrier between the congregation and its community. Engaging with the community has meant finding wasy of inviting others into the programs of the church. This will not lead to engagement with the community. The leader must help the congregation rethink the focus and direction of its attention and programs."

I think a congregation rarely responds to being told what to do. And a leader who pushes and cajoles a congregation into missional engagement will tire and often times get downright cranky. It's hard to push a donkey from behind. I think we lead the delightful little creature by walking in front, talking her past her fears, inviting her to faith. She might come along. Then again she might not. If she doesn't I've still had a ball being myself and seeing the world.

Leaders Understand the Surrounding Society, Our Theme for Tuesday, April 12, 2005

2005-04-08T09:17:00.000-07:00

(Note: Sorry for the delay in this post, I was having trouble logging on to Blogger)

"Leaders Understand the Surrounding Society" . . . This ought to go without saying. Unfortunately, it must be said. Congregations are astonishingly ignorant of the world that surrounds them. At UPC we’re learning that we don’t know much about our real neighbors. For so long we naively believed the mantra “If we build it they will come.” We now realize that that line is really quite silly and runs counter to the ethic of the gospel, but it was so terribly easy to believe—especially when we were both afraid of the world beyond the walls of the church and believed that we didn’t know how to get to know our neighbors. But things are changing. Our reading of the Bible these last six years has challenged our inwardness and called us into our neighborhood. We are now looking to our neighbors not as projects but as partners; we now aim not to bring Jesus to our neighbors but to meet Jesus who has already been among them. As one of our leaders puts it, “We want to learn how to be genuine friends” with our neighbors. Friendship is a prerequisite to true understanding—we understanding our neighbors and our neighbors understanding us. We believe there is gospel in this.

“Leaders shape environments that increase people’s understanding of the social and cultural forces shaping their lives. Such understanding occurs as people learn two kinds of interconnected skills. The one is discovering how to read their context, to see beneath the surface of ‘facts’ and events to deeper levels of meaning. To do this, people will need to learn to ask new questions of their contexts and the church. The other skill is empowering people with ways of letting the biblical narratives ask their own questions of our social context. Understanding contexts a dual process in which you lead people into reading their contexts from new perspectives and give them the tools that allow the Bible to address them in this social context. This kind of leadership will be done at all levels of the congregation’s life. It will not be limited to those more formal times of teaching or preaching. It happens most effectively as the congregation learns skills of listening and informal dialog about their contexts.” —Alan Roxburgh

Leaders Foster Missional Practices, Our Theme for Tuesday, April 5, 2005

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Over the course of Western history, Christianity and Western culture because essentially fused. The church became an agent of the state. This domestication of the gospel (by a church long enamored with cultural and political privilege) seduced the church away from its preoccupation with the mission of God and toward a way of life that required it simply to serve as a dispenser of religious goods and services to a largely Christianized culture. Believing that the larger culture would prop up its values, it lost its sense of what it means to practice the way of Jesus as an alterative to the ways (good and evil) of the principalities and powers that dominate society. So identified with the cultures in which it lived, the church forgot how and why it ever needed to take seriously the formation of a peculiar people who live by a peculiar set of outlooks and practices.

“In this post-Christendom period where growing numbers of North Americans have little memory of the Christian story and less sense of how Christian formation occurs, one of the most critical leadership issues for the innovation of a missional church is the capacity to form communities of God’s people around practices of Christian life. This is why the dominant metaphor of leadership needs to change from pastor to abbot. Such practices will vary depending on the tradition that has shaped a specific community of Christians. But it is clear that at the core of missional leadership lies the capacity to form communities around such practices. The leadership challenge at this moment is that most church leaders have not been equipped or trained in this kind of formation. Here is an area where leadership is not about learning new skills but recovering ways of leading that once were at the heart of Christian formation.” —Alan Roxburgh

Leaders Cultivate a Missional Environment, Our Theme for Tuesday, March 29, 2005

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Over the next two weeks we will explore the specific kind of congregational culture/ environment that can enable people to practice a way of life that is open to missional innovation.

Alan Roxburgh says, "A culture is an environment in which people are shaped by common habits, values and practices. Culture is about a way of life that is more than any single individual or an aggregate of individuals doing similar things. A missional culture is an interdepedent system formed out of a set of common habits, practices, and values. Developing a missional culture is about the formation of a way of life generally not present in current congregations. A congregation with a missional culture understands mission not in terms of what it does, but who it is as God's people. This requires a radical shift in imagination. In order to make this shift possible, you need capacities to create processes whereby people continually engage in dialog with the gospel narratives, their tradition and the context in which they are located."

You will not make this shift by attending the next Willow Creek conference or by reading missional church books. This shift is the fruit of cultivating an open way of life that is right for "this people" among whom you are planted, and is learned only by being among them. There are no short term solutions, no formulas. You must learn to know this people, to love them, to hurt with them, and to celebrate what they celebrate.

Leaders Encourage a Highly Relational Culture, Our Theme for Tuesday, March 22, 2005

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Margaret Wheatley says, “Order is never imposed from the top down or from the outside in. Order emerges as elements of the system work together, discovering each other and together inventing new capacities” (Leadership and the New Science: 111). I wonder how a thorough-going Trinitarian theology might inform this and complete a statement like this. And I wonder why we Trinitarians have too frequently ignored the relational-communal ethics inherent in our theology—especially when it comes to the ministry of congregational leadership.

From subatomic particle and field theory to a theology of the Trinity to how a ruling elder votes at a Council meeting, relationships are everything. The universe is created in such a way that there's no way of predicting how one relationship will affect another; there are invisible yet powerful influences at work no matter the distance between entities. Obviously, a congregation will miss much if it lets a few top leaders or several powerful members do the work of discerning the future.

Says Alan Roxburgh, “In the process of innovating a missional imagination a congregation must rethink how the interactions among members actually occur. Decisions and actions made in one area of the congregation’s life create inventions that cannot be predicted but do need to be managed. Because the congregation functions as a system, you must learn to recognize the interdependent nature of all interactions. The key to congregational integration is the ability to understand how the essence of the congregation lies not in its isolated parts but rather in the relationships of the parts to one another. This kind of relational quality cannot be captured on an organizational chart. You will require capacities that enable you to recognize how the behaviors of each part of the congregation are affecting the whole. You will also learn to understand how and why subgroups naturally from in a congregational process undergoing discontinuous change.”

Students, offer your reflective comments on the reading and this theme below.

Leaders Build Action-Oriented Coalitions, Our Theme for Tuesday, March 15, 2005

2005-03-03T16:30:00.000-08:00

We've explored the ways in which old, top-down social engineering approaches to ministry are problematic in the post-modern setting in which the church is renegotiating its life and ministry. Cultivating growth is more like farming than engineering. And fostering lasting, systemic change requires serious attentiveness helping a congregation dig deep into the resources given by grace to enable it to embrace God's future that is emerging among them. Hence . . .

"Leadership is about empowerment, mentoring and equipping coalitions of people. Coalitions are not power groups advocating issues or positions. They are centers of energy coalescing around emerging missional imagination. They are settings where people can dialogue about the changes in culture and interface with the biblical narratives. Coalitions help people work with one another discerning call and gift. Coalitions are gatherings of imagination and energy where poeple experiement and innovate ways of engaging their contexts as God's people. They are places where people learn what it is to live with and for their world out of missional practices. A leader cultivates, mentors, and equips such coalitions. The skills and capacities for leading groups of people are different from those of the classic small groups movement. They require more than gathering people together around a study guide or teaching series. Action-oriented coalitions are the creative womb from which missional actions are birthed."

--Alan Roxburgh

Leaders Guide the Change Process, Our Theme for Tuesday, March 1, 2005

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Moving from what it means to nurture a missional imagination among the people of God and what it takes to cultivate a growing community, this week we engage outlooks and practices for fostering genuine, transformational change.

Says Roxburgh, “Change is more than having an idea or plan to make something happen. You are involved in more than continuous change within a stable system. Along with all other leaders, you are facing the challenge of discontinuous change in a period of instability and confusion. Leaders must develop capacities to lead change when congregations are living in the tensions of discontinuity. You lack clarity on the shape of the future and how it is going to be shaped; this is expected. Therefore, those leaders who believe they can address the kind of change we are facing by simply defining a future that people want and then setting plans to achieve that future are not innovating missional congregations. They are only finding new ways of preventing congregations from facing the nature of the discontinuous change that confronts them.”

This week we will explore through our readings and class experience what kinds of processes we can engage that move us into this new reality

Leaders Cultivate Growth, Our Theme for Tuesday, February 22, 2005

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Too often in our churches growth is understood as personal or even as numeric (as in attendance or giving), hence "church growth." We may include these notions of growth in our understanding but as we are learning from our engagement with the pastoral work of being a local theologian and nourishing a missional imagination growth is about changing our minds, and that is no easy task. Growth for missional congregations is less about producing fruit trees that stand in straight, straight lines, and more about disturbing whole systems so that they can reorganize. It means working with the conditions around us--soil, seed, climate, nutrients. And it means giving up our illusions of control and giving room for the system to respond in freedom. Finally, it means trusting the Spirit of God who wills to produce fruit but who will not be controlled by our petty dilusions and agendas.

Roxburgh says, "In discontinuous change, people are stretched. They want to stop the change and return to the former period of stability. Growth is about living in this tension; it is about new practices for living as Christians that will initially seem awkward and disconnected from their normal ways of being Christians."

Sometimes the work may mean we have to take ripper and break up the hardpan a foot beneath the topsoil. It may mean that we recognize stunted growth and do the hard and sometimes painful work necessary to make possible a Kingdom life that runs much deeper than previously imagined. That work is never easy and is rarely appreciated in the short term. This may be the kind of work we are called to in these particular days of the postmodern, post-Christendom renegotiation of the church's vocation.

And for this we may need new metaphors for pastoral ministry. Roxburgh says, "For leaders, cultivating growth is about becoming an abbot in a congregation rather than a pastor. An abbot is a leader who forms a way of life among a whole poeple. Missional change is primarily about formation--and formation is about the habits and practices which shape new ways of being the church. Cultivation is an ancient word taken from agricultural practices. It is an organic metaphor rather than one of managment or warfare. A gardner or farmer understands that the life and purpose of plants or crops is not something over which the farmer has a great deal of control. And so, leadership as cultivation is not about people fitting into your strategy; it is about providing the environment in which missional imagination buds and develops and in which the farmer may well be astonished by the results."

Leaders Nourish a Missional Imagination, Our Theme for Tuesday, February 15, 2005

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In order to lead congregations into the missional future, pastors require new skills. For too long leaders assummed that they could engineer a strategic plan for a congregation and then spend their energies leading people to the point of acceptance and involvement. Leadership in that mode was leadership from inside a Newtonian universe; what's more, it is a form of leadership that is increasingly unable to deal with the new complexities of the world in which we are living--a world that will not be controlled or dictated. Theologically, this shift witnesses to the freedom of God, the presence of God among us, the mystery of God's sending which baffles and befuddles our plans, the desire of God to dwell among a people daring to trust the risen Christ and out-poured Spirit among them, and call for us all to live by faith alone. The doctrine of justification by faith alone means that we give us the certitides the Modern world throught it had purchases. From inside the world offered to us by revelation and now by Quantum science, leadership is less about envisioning a future and then controlling, manipulating, and engineering outcomes and more about guiding and assisting the people of God to discover God's future that is already present among them.

For this kind of leadership the imagination is our crucial faculty. Leaders intent to guide the people of God into God's future will foster an environment where a missional imagination funds that future. Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Says Alan Roxburgh: "Imagination is not about fanciful dreams or irrational thinking. Is is about a variety of interrelated capacities neglected by the functional pragmatism of modern planning. Imagination is about forming in people the capacity to reconnect with the biblical story in ways that enable them to discern what God is doing among them. Scientifically, imagination was not a peripheral factor in those discoveries that have changed the way we think, see and act in the world. Imagination changes the state of the world. Is is not about the subjective side of life or preoccupation with one's own inner experiences. It is an essential way of listening to God, connecting with what God is actually doing in the world. Fostering a missional imagination requires leaders who have hgih levels of readiness in engaging the biblical narratives in order to function as local theologians. Theology is not an abstract discipline for the intellectual elite. Local leaders must develop capacities to think theologically if God's people are to see their worlds and their struggles in terms of God's encounters with them storied in Scripture, throughout history and into the unknown future."

Pastors are architects of the imagination. All that we do in administration, liturgical life, visitation and pastoral care can be bent toward the chief task of forming an imagination among the people of God so that they can enter God's future.

Leaders Develop Trust: Our Theme for February 8, 2005

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Students, please offer two comments/questions on some part of the readings in preparation next week's class.

“Trust is difficult to describe, but without it no major transformation can ever occur. Trust is like the glue holding all the elements together that enable a community to move forward in difficult times. It is about the communication of a consistency of action and character. Trust emerges from the maturity and wisdom of one’s life. It is about predictability of values. You live out of a consistent set of values that do not zig and zag with the wind . . . . Such trust is built up in several ways over a period of time . . . . A context of discontinuous change requires risk, experimentation and travel into areas yet uncharted. Few people will go with you without a deep trust in you. Most will not trust unless they believe you can provide a context in which their basic necessities and needs will be provided along the way. Trust is the invisible bond between the leader and people that make the journey possible. It is a covenant binding people to one another.” --Alan Roxburgh

Courageous leadership can create trust and trust can create respect. Courage, trust, and respect create an invisible covenant people pastor and people. And without trust a leader's courage can become abusive, autocratic, and narcissistic. Trust keeps wide the communication system. Trust requires a leader to be broadly open to the community and the community to the leader.

Leaders Practice Courage: Our Theme for Tuesday, February 1, 2005

2005-01-26T16:24:00.000-08:00

Students, please offer two comments/questions on some part of the readings in preparation next week's class.

"Courage is about doing the right thing when it is neither easy nor comfortable. While habitual solutions and practices will not innovate a missional congregation, our instinctive response is to default to solutions that have worked in the past. It takes courage to accept the personal consquences of leading people out of familiar habits and patterns toward an alternative future. When Moses brought the peole across the Red Sea, they were thrilled that someonce had finally acted to release them from an untenable situation. But once in the desert, they discovered that the habits learned in Egypt could not sustain them on this new journey. They became angry and complained, demanding that Moses return them to the security of Egypt. Moses' personal courage was in his willingness to pay the price of resisting the pressure to give in to these demands.

"Personal courage involves a readiness to sacrifice popularity in order to tackle the tough issues of transformation. This courage is essential as it beocme clear that missional change is not a short-term program amenable to pragmatic programs. Instead, it is about the formation of an alternative imagination formed over time. Personal courage is the capacity to go on a long journey in the same direction, even in those times when few might seem willing to follow. It is about keeping to one's core values, ideals and sense of call, even when these have become upopular." --Alan Roxburgh

Because missional transformation requires a courageous leadership posture, we will cultivate a willingness to expose our convictions, priorities, and plans not only acceptance and approval, but also to rejection and ridicule. Our courage may well be the fulcrum around which missional transformation can take place.

Leaders Embrace Conflict: Our Theme for Tuesday, January 25th, 2005

2005-01-18T21:37:00.000-08:00

Students, please offer two comments/questions on some part of the readings in preparation next week's class.

"Pastors have usually developed skills for minimizing dissonance rather than using conflict as a creative and imaginative potential for change. They are comfortable with bringing quick closure to conflict rather than helping people live in and through the conflict. These habits are counterproductive for innovating missional change. Conflict resolution skills are not designed to create a happy family capable of enjoying one another in their differences. The skills of conflict engagement help people live in the ambiguity of discontinuous change long enough to ask different kinds of questions about who they are as God's people." --Alan Roxburgh

Change and the conflict that comes with it are not our enemies. Nor can we manage and carefully control their consequences. In order to lead the church into God's future, pastoral leaders must learn to work with the forces of change and to help God's people find God in the midst of conflict and struggle.

Because conflict is essential to growth and intrinsic to change, pastors will practice the determination to journey forward in the face of resistence and reactive sabotage.

Leaders Cultivate Personal Maturity: Our Theme for Tuesday, January 18th, 2005

2005-01-11T16:04:00.000-08:00

Students, please offer two comments/questions on some part of the readings in preparation next week's class.

"Maturity is what gives you the strength and stability to continue in the same direction through uncertain times. it provides those about you with the confidence to continue along the road. It is an old, complex word with meanings difficult to define simply. Mature leaders are those who understand the connection between the end and purpose of their life and the work to which they have been called. It is about their inner consistency of life and work. Mature leaders know the purpose for which they were created and have gathered the elements of their life around that purpose. Their work in leadership is a reflection of that inner calling." --Alan Roxburgh

This is why leadership is such a journey. We are ever maturing, and most of us feel inadequate for the task (if we're honest). The point is that we are moving toward a sense of having an undivided life.

Welcome to the Blog for PM650!

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Welcome to the blog for the course, Missional Church Leadership: Re-Tooling Competencies and Skills for the New Realities in Church and World, at Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary, Fresno, California. The course description and syllabus are available here.

In this space students in my course can interact over the required readings on a weekly basis. Of course, any others in the blogworld are welcome to chime in too.

Each week I will post a theme for the coming week. Students are required to post at least two comments or questions based on the readings for the coming week. from the readings on this blog. The comments and questions will help students connect intelligently with the required readings, but will also provide reflective material for the up-coming week's in-class dialog. I hope this blog also enables students to engage in meaningful interaction outside of class--there may be more that goes on here that simply reporting student questions and comments.