The Relational Mission

Here are the books that shaped me the most over the past year. Most are newer books, but there are a few that have been around a bit. None of these titles are especially practical in nature. The books that impact me are those that help me think so that I can offer a different perspective on practical ministry. Missional by Alan Roxburgh—I got the privilege of reading this in manuscript form three years ago. It shocked me then. After reading it for the third time this year, I realize how the message of this book is so prophetic that most of us are not yet ready to digest it. But I challenge you to try. Click here for my review. Disruptive Grace by Walter Breuggemann—This book opened the Old Testament up to me in way that surprised me. He demonstrated how the Old Testament narrative connects to life in the West and the call of the church. After You Believe by N.T. Wright. This insightful exposition of New Testament passages that highlight the call to practice our faith for the ...

Yesterday, I wrote a review of Joel Comiskey's new book Myths and Truths of the Cell Church where I stated that it might be the best book on the cell church ever published. This got me to thinking about the top five books on the cell church. Well, I came up with six. I'm not sure if these are the best, but these are the six that I feel are the most essential to a leader who wants to start or lead his church into cells: Where Do We Go From Here?: A Guidebook for the Cell Group Church by Ralph W. Neighbour Jr. I assume that if you know about the cell church that you have this book already. It is the book that started the stir around the globe when it was published in 1990.  Myths and Truths of the Cell Church by Joel Comiskey. See my review . How To Lead a Great Cell Group Meeting by Joel Comiskey. This book is for the small group leader. You will be hard-pressed to find a group leadership book that has more practical insight than this one. Small Groups Big Impact by Ji...

In 1993, I started working for Ralph Neighbour Jr., the man whom some have dubbed the Father of the Cell Church. His 1990 book Where Do We Go From Here? sold over 120,000 copies domestically and was translated into numerous languages. In the 1990s the cell church was a huge hit. It was hard for us to keep up with all the work of helping churches develop cell groups. Now in the US, the cell church is viewed as a fad that has passed. Sadly, during the 1990s, cell church got associated with the mega-church/church growth focus and now it has been written off as passe. Overseas, it is a different story. My former colleague, Jim Egli, spent three years writing training modules for church leaders who wanted to transition to the cell church approach. Recently we learned that Robert Lay, the leader of the cell church movement in Brazil is still using that training and will lead 1000s of pastors through it over the next year. While the tendency in America for fad hopping has led church lead...

I'm almost done with Disruptive Grace by Walter Breuggemann. In one of his essays, he writes about the need for a subcommunity that hosts an alternative world in contrast that that of the dominant community. This requires a counter-imagination than that of the dominant imagination. He identifies three things that characterize the dominant imagination of Western culture. They are: The shriveling of the human by the pressures of commoditization; The failure of the communal infrastructure , in which the notion of a 'public' is mostly driven out by devotion to the 'market'; and The nullification of holiness, in which everything is reduced to technological control that leaves nothing to the imagination. He then says "the 'missional responsibility' of a human subcommunity in response may be: The enhancement of the human in ways that energize, authorize, and celebrate our common humanity; The reconstruction of a neighborly infrastructure that re...

One of the key issues that we must address in the church is how individualism relates to community. Around the world the church is growing in unprecedented rates. For the most part, this growth is occurring in cultures where individuals define the self according to their relationships with others. They live as groups, they remain in groups and they stay connected in groups. In the West, we define the self according to our autonomy. As Descartes said, "I think therefore I am." Now, the thought is "I feel, therefore I am." We view ourselves in terms of "me", "myself" and "I" (the great trinity of individualism) and then we get to pick and choose those with whom we will relate. In addition, because many churches are being built on a steroid-induced view of the "priesthood of all believers" the individual is being taught that we really don't need each other. As a result, community is extra. Church is extra. What really matte...

I live in two worlds. On the one hand, I read theologians who ask big sweeping questions about God, what God is doing in our world and the call to be God's people. On the other, I'm always wrestling with what it means to be the church in this day and how do we actually do that? I get concerned because it seems that most of the energy in the church is spent on the pragmatic questions of what we do we as church leaders. We talk a lot about How do we get people connected? What is the latest strategy for closing the back door? How do we mobilize people for outreach? These are important questions. Don't get me wrong. But are we so focused on the pragmatics of ministry that we fail to think much about what we are doing? The focus on pragmatics seems to be at center stage in small group talk. Yes there are the introductory chapters in the primary small group vision texts that speak to why we should be doing community. But then 75% of the books focus on pragmatics. We all ne...

This wraps up the series on 9 Practices of Missional Small Groups (Community) Leaders. I wrote these to build upon my book Missional Small Groups where I introduce a way of understanding Missional Community as a story that a group tells through their life together. As I have written these posts, I have come to see how these practices and the concepts that underlie them show us how to create a missional habitat, a natural environment where the missional community story spontaneously happens. To those who are new to missional life, one might think that missional community "just happens." But life doesn't just happen. Life happens when the environmental factors are right to support that life. I grew up on a farm. My father who loved just about every farm animal imaginable. Chickens, sheep, cows. You name it, he raised at least one of them at some point. We even hatched chicks from eggs we collected from the hen house. Sometimes a hen would “nest” and incubat...

This is the last practice that I've found to be essential for leaders who want to move beyond "normal" community where small groups connect people and into "missional" community where groups experience life together that makes a difference in the world. This practice is about how the leaders of the group work with leaders beyond the group. This is essential if the group really wants to move beyond the normal small group experience. Most groups don't have enough resources—time, energy, gifts, etc—within the group to have the sustaining impact that is needed in the world. There are two kinds of relationships that groups need in order to create synergy 1. The Relationship with an Elder-Like Leader. I hesitate to use the word "elder" (I give an entire chapter to this in my book MissioRelate ), because it is so commonly used today as a label for a church governance role. Here I'm talking about the need for someone to serve as a wise guide, a ...

We live in a violent world. I wonder at times if we are addicted to violence. It seems that we like having enemies and we like winning. This is what happens when our fallen state becomes the accepted norm. We no longer call into question our fighting nature. Fighting happens at all kinds of levels, globally as nations go to war, nationally as politicians tear each other apart, and locally as neighbors let petty differences cloud their judgement. It also happens in the church. Duh! And IT HAPPENS IN SMALL GROUPS! Of course every small group leader training manual or book says as much. Some call it conflict. Others "storming." M. Scott Peck calls it chaos. When people get to know one another, someone is bound to cause offense. Sometimes it's as minor as an innocent comment taken the wrong way. Sometimes it's as big as a yelling match. A few years ago, a small group leader asks to meet with me. He told me that while I had been out of town over the weekend, his co...

What do you think about this video: This video of the imminent Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann is poignant because it gives us an imagination about the kind of people God was calling the Israelites to be as a contrast to life under Pharaoh's rule and the early Christians to be in contrast to life under Caesar's rule. It points us to life in the Kingdom and God's rule. It points us to missional living and it points us toward missional leadership. Three practices are identified. The first two, hospitality and generosity, relate to my post about missional leadership Make Time to Waste Time . The reason we make space in our lives is to create energy, time and emotional space to be hospitable and generous. We need to be shaped by patience so that we can demonstrate hospitality to others. They also relate to my post entitled Be Present in the Neighborhood . Hospitality and generosity shape the way we are present with people in our neighborhood. The third ...

About 15 years ago, our small group pastor challenged all the groups to do at least one outreach event or activity per month. So one month we'd play volleyball at an apartment complex. The next we'd through a cookout for some friends. The next we'd do some kind is service project. While these were good, we failed to be present in any one neighborhood. When I need an imagination about what it means to be present in a neighborhood, I have to break the my pragmatic tendency to immediately develop a list of ways to be missional. As helpful as such lists are, it's too easy to do missional things in a non-present way. In other words we do something but we fail to remain, to reveal God in an ongoing way. By contrast, imagine that you were a part of Paul's entourage in the first century as he began ministering in Ephesus. Pull out a study Bible and look at a map of Ephesus. It was a large city for the time but small in size, only about five miles long. The houses wer...

It might seem counter-intuitive to say that leaders of "missional" community need to practice the art of wasting time. After all being missional usually means being active. However to be on mission means that we are offering people a Kingdom-like way of life, not just a message that will save them from immorality and get them to Heaven one of these days. It means we embody the ways of the Kingdom, which the Apostle Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit. It's what the Old Testament calls shalom , which means peace, wholeness, and communal well-being. Aaron's benediction is helpful here: "The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace ( shalom )" Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann reflects on shalom , connecting it to an experience of God's presence ( see my post on Presence ): "Shalom is perhaps perhaps the quintessential mark of infinity, a counting stat...

Imagine if you were to read the Bible just to read it. You are not preparing for a sermon or a Bible study. You are not trying to figure out the meaning of some difficult theological question. You are not even trying to read it devotionally. You are just reading it like you would a epic novel, where you allow the story to take over and let your imagination be shaped by that story. Then after reading it through—yes all the way through—imagine that you tell a friend about it. Now this person is not a Christian and has only been observed churches from the fringe. But she has read her fair share of novels. She does not ask the normal kinds of questions that we church people might ask. Instead she just simply asks, "What makes the story work?" She's intrigued as to how such a long book could keep anyone's interest. Your immediate response is "God." This answer might even surprise you at first because it's so simple but yet so true. He is the on...