The Relational Mission

Missional Reflection #8 in a series where I quote a theologian and reflect on how it might shape a missional imagination. This quote is from Henri Nouwen.   "To pray is to unite ourselves with Jesus and lift up the whole world through him to God in a cry for forgiveness, reconciliation, healing and mercy. To pray, therefore, is to connect whatever human struggle or pain we encounter—whether starvation, torture, displacement of peoples, or any form of physical and mental anguish—with the gentle and humble heart of Jesus. ...   Prayer is leading every sorrow to the source of all healing; it is letting the warmth of Jesus' love melt away the cold anger of resentment; it is opening a space where joy replaces sadness, mercy supplants bitterness, love displaces fear, gentleness and care overcome hatred and indifference. But most of all, prayer is the way to become and remain part of Jesus' mission to draw all people to the intimacy of God's love." (Henri Nouwen, The O...

I am writing the material for our Fall Church-wide Campaign, entitled Tru Calling: Praying in a Way that Makes a Difference. This is the eleventh campaign that I have either written or helped develop. At Woodland, we call them Adventures instead of campaigns, but they work the same way. It's hard to argue with the effectiveness of church-wide campaigns. Six-week series of sermons, small group discussion guides, and personal devotional or reflection guide combined with some form of actionable objective help create an effective learning and discipleship environment. And they help get disconnected people connecting in a small group on a short-term basis, proving a low risk, easy-in/easy-out opportunity for people to explore community. An essential ingredient to an effective campaign is finding the material that fits your church's situation. This means you need options. Visit my website to review nine options to consider. And you can download the basic resources for free. Tha...

For some writing I am doing, I have been reading and re-reading some books with which I see things differently. I'm not talking about secular books or books that promote something about which I have a totally different point of view like the recent popular books on atheism. I've been reading books about small groups, organic church life, the missional church and how one can live in missional community. Unlike a popular book on atheism for example, I actually agree with quite a lot of what these authors write. But there is a fundamentally different point of view that I have from most of them. Honstely, I’m exhausted from the endless books, conferences and consulting processes that promise that they have found the secret to church, or small group, or missional success. It seems that every other church book that comes out promises to have found the proverbial "yellow brick road" that will lead us to the wizard's secrets. If we would only follow the prescribed p...

Reason #5 that Small Groups Don’t Work in America: Senior Pastors Try to Be Small Group Pastors For various reasons senior pastors feel the need to be the primary small groups pastor. They lead the church and try to develop small groups and oversee life (or lack thereof) that transpires in those groups. They often feel that they need to serve as the group architect, the group builder and the group sustainer. In other words, they feel the pressure to be the creator, developer and the pastor of groups. In addition, this idea of the senior pastor as the small groups pastor has been propagated for years, if not decades. David Yongii Cho has always stated that he is the cell group pastor of his church. There are those who state that Rick Warren is the small groups pastor at Saddleback. And there are others who instruct pastors that they need to be the primary initiator of groups when they want to start them. Then in the case of smaller churches, pastors are left with few options but t...

Over the last six years, full time as a pastor in Minnesota. Now it's back to Houston. So what does Houston hold? I cannot believe that in 9 days we take off. First, we will be near family, and with four kids eight and under this will be a great thing. I will be serving as a part-time Equipping Pastor on the staff of a growing church in West Houston called Hosanna. For them I will be writing curriculum and serving on the teaching team. This will be a fun challenge. This will give me time to serve as a consultant, trainer and writer for other churches. I am excited about this opportunity. Consulting with churches and denominational systems and leading seminars has always been something I did on the side of my full-time job. Now I get to do more of it. If you have thought about getting someone to do some training or serve as a consultant in the areas of small groups or the missional vision, then please read through some of the options on my website http://mscottboren.com . Clic...

Missional Reflection #7 in a series where I quote a theologian and reflect on how it might shape a missional imagination. This quote is from Jacques Ellul. "Christians who are conformed to the world introduce into the Church the value-judgments and concepts of the world. They believe in action. They want efficiency. They give first place to economics, and they think that all means are good. ... They are denied by their sociological milieu. The protestant thinks to adopt this the means which the world employs. Since he finds those means useful in his profession, or in his leisure time, they stand so high in his estimation that eh cannot see why he should not introduce them into the Church and make the things of the spirit dependent upon them. He never faces the problem of these means. ... They are effective. Hence they are good. Since they are in a sanctified world and are effective, why not make use of them in the Church? The criteria of his thinking as a Christian are...

Everyone is a prayer novice. With that in mind, take a deep breath and relax. Yes. I mean just that. Take a deep breath and let any pressure you feel about prayer or being spiritual roll off of you. It does not matter if you are a brand new Jesus follower or if you have seen God work great miracles through your prayers. The difference between the two is microscopic when compared to the vastness of God. It’s like a grasshopper comparing itself with an ant. However when you set both next to an elephant, the differences in size fall away. Sometimes, we compare our prayers with those of others. Some seem so comfortable with prayer. They say the right words. They refer to scriptures. They might even express passion as they pray. I remember praying with a few people years ago and voiced a short, somewhat tentative request. After we said our “amens” a guy in the group corrected my theology regarding my prayers. He told me that my prayers did not quite get what God was all about. I guess...

Missional Reflection #6 in a series where I quote a theologian and reflect on how it might shape a missional imagination. This quote is from Eugene Peterson. “So, why church? The short answer is because the Holy Spirit formed it to be a colony of heaven in the country of death. … Church is the core element in the strategy of the Holy Spirit for providing human witness and physical presence to the Jesus-inaugurated kingdom of God in this world. It is not that kingdom complete, but it is a witness to that kingdom.… Church is an appointed gathering of named people in particular places who practice a life of resurrection in a world in which death gets the biggest headlines. … The practice of resurrection is an intentional, deliberate decision to believe and participate in resurrection life, life out of death, life that trumps death, life that is the last word, Jesus life.” (Peterson, Practice Resurrection, 12) Why church indeed? If we are really honest, much of the time church seems ...

In 18 days, we will be loading up our furniture and heading to Texas. My last day of serving on the staff at Woodland Hills Church will have sadly passed. I'm still living in a bit of shock. We have been in Minnesota for six years, but now we are heading back to Houston, Texas. My wife, Shawna, will the the Leadership Development Pastor at Hosanna Church in West Houston, and I will be serving the same church as a part-time equipping pastor. The departure saddens us but excited about this shift of the winds of the Spirit. Because my new role is part-time, what will I be doing with the rest of my time? I will be developing my work as a consultant, trainer, writer, and editor, and I will be doing some ghost-writing. Over the last 18 years, all my consulting and training work has been on the side. But now it is moving front and center. So if you know of anyone who needs a trainer/consultant in the areas of small group systems, missional church empowerment, or missional small groups, ...

This morning I was in Wal-Mart and saw once again the popular books that continue to be on the best-seller’s list about heaven and the after life. We are fascinated with questions about the hear after. We want to hear the story about 90 Minutes in Heaven and want to know if the little boy can tell us if Heaven is for Real . Is it true that Love Wins or are we just Erasing Hell ? Americans are fascinated with the afterlife. I guess I should not be surprised by this phenomenon after watching the frenzy of book buying that occurred with the Left Behind series. So much of American Christianity has been built upon the question of what happens after death. This made me want to write a book with the title 90 Years of Heaven on Earth or Heaven on Earth is for Real . But as soon as I say that, I wonder if the conservative contingent out there will automatically pigeonhole me into some kind of liberal camp. Nonetheless, I cannot get all wrapped up in this afterlife ranting. To a Jew listeni...

Reason #4 that Small Groups Don’t Work in America: Design Flaws Design principles guide the work of architects so they can build sound structures. Architects and structural engineers don’t copy the work of others verbatim. Every building is unique, depending upon many factors including the terrain upon which it is built. If the architect is not equipped in sound design principles, then he will be forced to copy and thereby build something that might not fit the situation at hand. If we apply this analogy to a small group structure, then we need to identify a few things in very clear terms: First we need clear small group design principles. There are many good books and blog sites that are available to equip us all in designing good small group structures. Second, we need architects who are able to apply these design principles to local contexts. In other words, an architect is not one who develops a structure that looks like what is written about in other books. An architect is...

After someone on Twitter shared how this Preface explains how my three books on small groups work together, I thought I'd share it here: I enjoy reading the back-story of how a book is developed, so I thought I would try my hand at it. Let me first state that this book is an accident, at least as much as it is possible for something that takes so much work to be called an accident. I never intended to write it. In fact, after writing Missional Small Groups , I told a friend I did not want to write another book on groups for a while. So how did this accident happen? First, there were three chapters that I could not include in my book Missional Small Groups because the intended audience was group leaders. These three chapters were written for church leaders and pastors. While consulting with pastors on the phone, I would send them these chapters and their feedback revealed that the information was helpful. So I called up my friend Randall Neighbour and asked him if his publi...

Missional Reflection #5 in a series where I quote a theologian and reflect on how it might shape a missional imagination. This quote is from Henri Nouwen. “Our society is not a community radiant with the love of Christ, but a dangerous network of domination and manipulation in which we can easily get entangled and lose our soul. The basic question is whether we ministers of Jesus Christ have not already been so deeply molded by the seductive powers of our dark world that we have become blind to our own and other people’s fatal state and have lost the power and motivation to swim for our lives. Just look for a moment at our daily routine. In general we are very busy people. We have many meetings to attend, many visits to make, many services to lead. Our calendars are filled with appointments, our days and weeks filled with engagements, our years filled with plans and projects. There is seldom a period in which we do not know what to do, and we move through life in such a distracted ...

Reason #3 that Small Groups Don’t Work in America: Hiring Program Administrators We hire program administrators to run the small group ministry instead of hiring shepherds who will do the mundane, repetitive work of caring for sheep. Effective small group pastors possess strengths that allow them to focus their energies on caring for people, developing leaders and gathering people around a vision. I’m not sure that this is something that comes that easily for those of us who have been in church leadership for any length of time. Our traditional church structures have depended upon those who are good orators and those who are good program administrators. It does not take long to see this when we assess the average M.Div. program. And look at the most popular books that target pastors. The bestsellers speak to the issue of vision development skills, leadership aptitude and communication skills. I hope that I am wrong, but my observations have caused me to conclude that we under-valu...

“In the beginning God …” --Genesis 1:1 The Bible begins with God. If we want to get inside what the Bible means, we must begin with a basic understanding that God is the primary actor in the biblical narrative. He is the one initiates the story. He is main character of the story. And he is the producer of the story as the one who holds together the various actors who seem to never quite get what God is doing in his story. As I reflect on my years of reading the Bible, I realize how I failed to see this basic, foundational point about the Bible. I read the Bible as “God’s love letter to me” as if I was the central focus of the story. When I was in college, I began in Genesis and worked my way through the Bible on a daily basis, and I would stop and journal my impressions and reactions to what I read. Recently, I looked at what I wrote. I must confess that almost every journal entry was about what I was doing for God, what God wanted me to do or what God was calling me to do. When on...

Missional Reflection #4, a series where I quote a theologian and reflect on how it might shape a missional imagination. This quote from David Bosch. “There is a tendency in Protestantism to stress the vertical relationship between God and the individual in such a way that it is distinct from the horizontal relationship between people; however, the “vertical line” is also a covenant line with the community. Theologically—and practically—this means that Christology is incomplete without ecclesiology and without Pneumatology. We cannot speak about Christ, the Lord and Savior, without speaking about his Body—his liberated and saved community. By the same token, the Spirit, in the New Testament dispensation, is not given to individuals, but to the community. If our mission is to be Christological and pneumatological, it also has to be ecclesial, in the sense of being the one mission of the one church.” (Bosch, Transforming Mission) In many cases, community is incidental and sometimes ev...

Reason #2 that Groups Don’t Work in America: Boredom with the Mundane Church leaders are not usually that good at embracing the mundane. We want results and we want them yesterday. We want something that makes for good testimonies, something that has what they call “sizzle” in the marketing world. After all we are accustomed to building churches on sizzle. In the old days, we had revival meetings, then meetings, and sing-alongs. Then we created seeker-services with all the excellence we could muster. Now we have multi-site with annual growth numbers that are staggering. Long-term small group success lacks this sizzle that we so eagerly long for. It has little fan fare. Small groups work when leaders operate like shepherds. They do the under-ground, consistent, steady work of caring for the sheep. That is hard to promote and measure. It’s different from developing programs in the church which can be seen and measured as we build buildings, develop budget-dependent programs and attra...

A pastor confesses that he can’t figure out how to make groups work. A popular author grabs a confession and says “See, small groups don’t work. You need to do it my way instead.” Another labels groups as a fad of the last decade. Another leader claims that small groups are small enough to care but not large enough to do anything. Then one of the most prominent churches that promoted small groups and developed an extensive network of churches for small group training is no longer doing groups. It seems like many people are jumping into the blog world to announce that their experience reveals that small groups don’t work in America. They proclaim the demise of groups as if their point of view is the gospel truth. And the sad thing is that we embrace their limited point of view as if it is as valid as any other. Welcome to the post-modern world of flat information dissemination. Everyone is an expert. Or so it seems. But we need to have something that helps us discern the elements o...

This is the third installment of my weekly Missional Reflections where I quote a theologian and then reflect on how that might challenge our common understanding of being missional. This quote from David Bosch. “In the new image mission is not primarily an activity of the church, but an attribute of God. God is a missionary God. ‘It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church’ (Moltmann 1977:64). Mission is thereby seen as a movement from God to the world; the church is viewed as an instrument for that mission. There is church because there is mission, not vice versa. To participate in mission is to participate in the movement of God’s love toward people, since God is a fountain of sending love.” (Bosch, Transforming Mission, 390) If we are going to see that the call to mission is much more than doing certain things that we deem as “missional,” the place to start i...

When I first started working with groups, there were not many resources of small groups or how to oversee an effective small group system. Now, there are so many, it's hard to keep up. Let me suggest six books released in the last year and a website that will help you establish or build your small group system. For Developing Groups that have Missional Focus (Unashamedly, these are both by me.) • Missional Small Groups by M.Scott Boren • MissioRelate: Becoming a Church of Missional Small Groups by M. Scott Boren For Getting People in Your Church Connected in Groups • Small Groups with Purpose by Steve Gladen • Connecting in Communities by Eddie Mosley • Lots of articles on www.markhowelllive.com For Understanding the Group Dynamics that result in Health and Growth • Small Group Big Impact by Jim Egli and Dwight Marable • Make Your Group Grow by Josh Hunt