Leadership Network

How does someone transition to becoming that kind of missional leader?

It's difficult, but possible. Many of us will mess up a lot more times before we get it right. We're so used to our scorecards that track how many people we can bring to a meeting. I was recently in a church, and they were trying to figure out how many hours a week a really committed leader should give to the church. Talk about not getting it! Clocking hours is the wrong motivation. The challenge is to experiment until we learn how to turn our people loose for ministry.

How do leaders transition their leadership style and the style of those around them?

Most people do only what they see their leaders doing. If we're not personally developing missional expressions and experimentations, we should find ones that take us into uncomfortable places. We can't ask other people to do what we're not doing ourselves. We have to start saying, "We're going to limit the hours per week that you spend working on the machinery at church." Or at the least, we'll look at every leadership component, asking that it include a leadership role in the community or through some other missional expression.

I hear you saying that authentic disciples view their role as being dispersed in the community, in the world for God's mission.

Carol Childress

I don't like the word disciples any more. It has lost its meaning. Suppose we substitute with "followers of Jesus," which means you actually follow Jesus. You're wanting to know, literally, "Where's Jesus?"

The problem is very simple: We don't know how to live missionally because we are not doing it. Too many hold the notion that we will somehow become missional when we finally become mature. "We'll get to the second-mile stuff after we get people ready," we say. It leads to an endless round of stoking information on people and expecting them to shift behavior because they finally have enough information.

Our discipleship and our people-development processes should start with service--serving other human beings. So as soon as people are being drawn to Jesus, and even as they are being drawn, they are serving other people.

How can we continue to develop this perspective among people?

It's going to take some radical loving and going out of our way. I was recently in a city, meeting with a compassion coalition from four churches who said, "We want a better community, and we know that none of us alone can do it." We met in a homeless shelter. This combination of tall steeple churches and storefront churches are talking about how they can work together to improve their city.

What gives you the most hope that we will see this shift in our church priorities?

There are people in almost every church who are sitting, waiting for someone to sound the charge. Their response is, "Well it's about time!" That's my experience all the time. That's why I'm not giving up on the institutional church. It's a great place to call out the troops because they are there.

The point is that nothing is deeper than people. Just ask Jesus. And helping other people is as deep as it ever gets.

McNeal has authored two books in the Leadership Network/Jossey-Bass series: The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church and Work of Heart: Understanding How God Shapes Spiritual Leaders (www.leadnet.org/josseybass). McNeal's latest book in the series, Practicing Greatness, will be released in May.