Recently, our church was privileged to host our denomination’s Summit for Evangelical Justice and Leadership. Tom was the keynote speaker on the first day, and after his presentation, there was a common thread to the questions of many church leaders. In various ways from several different people, they wanted to know how to successfully transition an established, traditional church into a missional, discipleship-driven environment.
Before beginning to answer this question, we need to address a couple of its underlying assumptions. If we agree that missional, discipleship-driven environments will exist in healthy congregations, and the lack of said environment is a sign of spiritual sickness, then the issue is not that the church is traditional or established, it’s that it is sick.
It is important to name this reality, because we otherwise run the risk of being viewed as simply replacing one church structure with another, which will invite pushback from those heavily invested in the system we are trying to replace. Understanding that all is not well allows us to say that, at one time, the church was healthy and had effective systems for making disciples. Somewhere along the way, something changed that was no fault of those who had invested so much in the ministry, and that, while their contributions should be honored, that sickness must be addressed to preserve the vibrancy of the ministry. Whether we really believe any of that to be true is immaterial. The prevailing perception of those we need to be on the side of change will be that all was once well, and we must act accordingly.
Not only do we not want there to be a perception that we are simply changing structure, we also don’t want that to be the reality. Another underlying assumption of the above question is that new structure is the answer. It is not. I AM discipleship is not produced by STRUCTURE, it is produced by POSTURE. Posture must be modeled by leadership before it will be adopted by a congregation. In other words, if you want to lead a missional, discipleship-driven church, you must be living a missional, discipleship-driven life in full view of those you lead.
With the leaders we provide coaching to, we STRONGLY advise against standing in the pulpit and announcing a new ministry posture. We do this for two reasons: 1.) It won’t work and 2). It invites conflict. Instead, what we suggest is a more covert approach. When dealing with physical illness, some medicines work by directly attacking the problem. This would be akin to the pulpit announcement. However, other medicines work by undermining the conditions that cause the illness to thrive. In upcoming posts, we will outline what this looks like. We recognize that the word “undermining” can carry a negative connotation. However, we are not talking about undermining people. We are talking about undermining systems. More on this later in the week.
In the meantime, what evidence of spiritual health or sickness exists in your context?
RE:FORMATION 