Shifting Our Thinking - Part 1

I've been reading a book by Reggie McNeal called Missional Renaissance that is absolutely awesome! I would love to claim that he plagiarized me, but most of what he has published I never wrote down, it just kept swirling around in my head. As my kids used to say, maybe he has E-S-P-N. Anyway, I'm not very far along in the book, but he addresses a few issues that really struck a chord with me and I wanted to pass them along to you. My apologies to Reggie if I use so many quotes that you decide not to read the book for yourselves.

According to Reggie there are 3 shifts that people and churches must make in order to engage the missional renaissance:

1. Shift from an internal to an external ministry focus
2. Shift from program development to people development
3. Shift from church-based to kingdom-based leadership

First off, what does he mean by "missional renaissance," and secondly, what will each of those shifts look like in a real-world, practical way?

According to Reggie, "The missional renaissance is changing the way the people of God think about God and the world, about what God is up to in the world and what part the people of God play in it. We are learning to see things differently, and once we adjust our way of seeing, we will never be able to look at these things the way we used to."

He continues, "the missional church is the people of God partnering with God in his redemptive mission in the world." Finally he says, "The missional life... is a way of seeing oneself as partnering with God in daily life, executing the mundane as well as pursuing the sublime, with an intentionality of blessing people and sharing the life of God with them." As we have covered before, it is all about loving God, loving others, and living sent.

But what does that look like? According to Reggie,

"These three shifts call for a new scorecard for the missional church. The typical church scorecard (how many, how often, how much) doesn't mesh with a missional view of what the church should be monitoring in light of its mission in the world. The current scorecard rewards church activity and can be filled in without any reference to the church's impact beyond itself. Since it is a fundamental truism of human nature that 'what gets rewarded gets done,' it is completely understandable that the current scorecard promotes the internally focused, program-based, church-based side of the ledger. We must develop a scorecard that supports the other side of the shifts: externally focused ministry, people development efforts, and a kingdom-oriented leadership agenda. This new scorecard, more dimensional than our current one, will highlight new behaviors that will support and accelerate the rise of the missional church in North America."

Rather than trying to tackle all three shifts in one post, I am going to split them up and highlight them one at a time. Hopefully this will generate some good discussion and feedback on each one. May you live a life that is full-filled, and not just filled full.

Blessings,

Shiloh