David Fitch is doing some excellent work on the area of missional church and what church means in our culture. His book The Great Giveaway is highly recommended, and his blog (linked below) is good too.
The following is the introduction to an entry David wrote about how we can ask congregations to refocus themselves from inward to outward. It’s worthwhile reading for leaders.
How do we lead a church community to engage mission as a way of life? How do we steer a congregation out of evangelism programs into everyday missional living? How do we train a congregation out of Christendom habits and instill post Christendom virtues (character for living faithfully in post Christendom)? I think leaders walk along and among their communities. Along the way, they lead by consistently (and kindly) rejecting some old habits and directing the imagination towards other possibilities. This is the never-ending work of cultivating missional habits of imagination among a people. Here’s my list of what to reject (slowly put to death in a congregation) and what to direct (nudge people forward) a congregation’s imagination toward. I’ve learned a lot of these things from missional thinkers/practitioners but have found all these things to be surprisingly simple and possible in my own life.
pat loughery 
Leave a comment