The Missional Leader | Book Review

Reviewed by Thomas Scarborough

The emphasis of this book is in the title -- it is on the "missional" leader. The adjective that will be familiar to most people, of course, is "missionary". What, then, does "missional" signify? The authors explain that mission is "not a program or project some people in the church do from time to time". Rather, "the church's very nature is to be God's missionary people". In order to "mark this big difference" (and, for the uninitiated, it is a big one), the word "missional" is used. The subtitle of the book refers to a "changing world", and this further signals its focus. It is not so much about anything that might have gone wrong within the Church. It is about "enormous changes across our culture".

WHAT HAS GONE WRONG?

The problem in the Church is illustrated with a "Three Zone Model" -- I shall label these Zones 1 to 3. This model serves as the "coathanger" for what would seem to be a well portrayed dynamic of decline and renewal in Churches. The authors consider that a pioneering congregation exists in "a period of maximum experimentation" -- Zone 1. Typically, it will then transition to a zone which is characterised by "organizational structures, skills, and capacities required to perform well in a stable environment" -- Zone 2. A congregation may then, however, begin to depend on "what has been learned and proven to work", and this may be "insufficient to navigate in [a] new environment". This takes a Church into a "reactive zone" -- Zone 3. In this third zone, established responses are "making no difference", and this may lead to serious crisis. The proposed solution is that such a congregation should re-establish the stability of Zone 2, for the purpose of re-entering Zone 1, so that there should be "stability to cultivate the creativity and innovation required to rediscover missional life".

HOW SHOULD LEADERS CHANGE?

In each of the above zones, leadership will have its own special characteristics, both for the good and for the bad. This is dealt with under a separate model -- the "Missional Change Model" -- which provides "the framework for navigating . . . new waters". The authors draw an analogy with "sailing a turbulent ocean". The destination is unknown, the context is ever shifting, and leaders need "a new set of skills and capacities". Broadly speaking, in such a situation a leader needs to introduce "adaptive change", not "tactical change". A tactical change may miss "the fundamental nature of the challenges facing the congregation", while an adaptive change "requires us to design a new approach to the challenges we face". However, adaptive change takes time. With this in mind, the "Missional Change Model" suggests five steps, which I am only able to refer to in passing here: awareness, understanding, evaluation, experimentation, and commitment. To summarise these steps in a sentence -- a Church needs room to understand more deeply what is coming to pass, then to become more experimental and proactive in its approach.

HOW IS SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION RELEVANT?

One would have thought that internal, spiritual transformation would be important to a Church which is suffering stagnation or decline. However, in this respect the book is vague. It suggests instead that the fault lies in "organizational culture". It holds up the Church in sub-Saharan Africa as "vibrant . . . growing and vital", yet strangely fails to devote more than a few lines to this phenomenon, and would seem to bypass it altogether in spirit. It states that it is "critical . . . to live in the biblical narratives". In keeping with this, it has a deliberate emphasis on biblical language. "Language . . . forms us in a way of life". We must have "the language to name the narrative controlling [us]". Yet central biblical language is completely absent from the book -- inter alia sin, repentance, salvation, sanctification, and eternal destinies. This would seem decidedly strange. On this basis, I would question whether its diagnosis or its remedies could bring about the "transformation" it desires, or whether it might merely perpetuate the malaise it identifies.

SYNTHESIS

The book is written in a lively and readable way, and surely describes the dynamics of decline and renewal better than most would do. At the same time, I would consider it to have little biblical or spiritual content, and it is full of heavily laden theological jargon, much of it being "signature" vocabulary. Some examples are "missional ecclesiology", "forms of life", "emergent future", "narrative memory", or "indwell". The word "ideology" springs to mind. From my point of view, a balanced spiritual treatment would seem to be obviously lacking. This would surely be the bottom line for well-rounded health in the Church.

CITATION OF REFERENCE

Roxburgh, Alan J. & Romanuk, Fred. The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World. San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass, 2006.

Thomas Scarborough is a Congregational minister in Cape Town. His is currently studying for an M.A. through Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. The Missional Leader is required reading.