Starting this Friday, we’ll be sending out an exclusive curated newsletter with the most important missional conversations happening around the web each week.
In Part 1 of this series, I talked a little bit about the difficulties of the calling of being a pastor when you’re not a people person. Specifically, about how it requires you to push into weakness, learn things that will be uncomfortable and foreign, all the while expecting the Holy Spirit to show up. But specifically, I need to lean into that for the good of the congregation and for the good of my own spiritual growth. I don’t get a pass on this.
So what do you do when you feel called to this, but don’t seem to have all of the innate, God-given skills that others have and are further deepened through the power Holy Spirit?
Who are your heroes? Or if you don’t have one, what would you be looking for in a hero? What are the qualities you admire in a leader?
Buildings, budgets and bigshots are the movement killers to the reproduction of churches, leaders and disciples. Salaries, rents/mortgages, equipment, advertising the list of expenses is long. Even with the tax breaks allowed to churches we are struggling to make ends meet. In today’s turbulent times many in church are feeling the resources drying up. Recently I was in a pastor’s meeting and many were wondering how their churches would continue. Some were selling their facilities just for survival. We will see more and more of this in the coming year.
Survival is one thing, but reaching a city is quite another.
A movement killer is something that exists in the common life of the organization itself–the culture, thinking, and practices–that in effect blocks the inherent potential for growth contained in the system. In systems theory, all living systems are geared for growth and flourishing. They have everything in them needed to maintain life and reproduce healthily. The “killer” therefore is something now resident in the system that is in effect blocking the innate capacity to flourish.
Here’s all the sessions the 100M team is doing at Exponential. If you’re coming early, make sure to sign up for our Pre-Conference. Lastly, our entire team will be hanging out at our booth all day long doing free coaching and consultations. Make sure to stop by! Register for Exponential here.
As you make choices about what to do each time you gather, always run everything through the filter of your mission context: you are there to reach those people. Don’t expect your unchurched friends to do the culture jump into the church world – you are there as missionaries to that people group, so you must do the shifting!
As someone who helps lead a local church, and as someone who regularly coaches pastors wanting to learn how to lean into this whole ‘missional’ thing, one of the most frequent questions I hear is, “How do I start a Missional Community?”
I think our intellectual egos are the greatest barrier to the Missional movement right now. To quote Dallas Willard, we are all educated way beyond our obedience. We read a book or go to a conference, hear and idea, get an intellectual high off it (literally) and then go home thinking because we connected to a concept that we are changed. This is not how transformation happens and it is a very dangerous practice, cognitively speaking.