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5 Ways To Kill The Missional Movement In Your Church

What is hindering the missional movement within your church?

We all long for our churches to grow through people being saved and disciples of Jesus Christ being made. You likely found Verge because of their resources to assist you in thinking, practicing, and developing others to live missional lives and hopefully be a missional movement as a church for the good of your city.

I’ve seen churches be excited about mission, try to implement different methods and ways to create a missional movement only to fail. There are 5 missional killers that are deadly for your missional movement and there are ways to overcome them.

1) Bypass the Message for the Method

Leaders too often bypass the stage of investigating the truth and theology behind a method and try to implement the method without the theological framework to train and sustain it. Missional Community is not just a method of small groups to be implemented, it’s a theological framework to form and make disciples. [pullquote position=”right”]Implementing a method without the scriptural and theological vision dooms it to failure.[/pullquote]

2) Implement without an Assessment

Too often leaders jump at a new method of engaging the church and the world without assessing their current situation. An assessment provides an honest review of what is going well in the church that must be celebrated and identifies the true obstacles to a missional community movement in your church.

Every church should assess themselves regularly to evaluate how well they are in line with God’s mission and calling for them. An assessment is needed even more in a situation where the church is lagging in mission and needs to transition to a new approach altogether.

3) Copy and Paste Someone Else’s Method

This is joined closely to number 1. In an effort to move quickly to remedy a problem, we also accept the first or seemingly best solution on the surface to fix it. There are plenty of people who would love to sell you their method and guarantee success in your context.

This rarely goes smoothly as an adjustment to every approach and method must be made to fit the leadership, the people, and the context God has called you to. Every family is different, so why would every church do the exact same thing?

4) Have No Vision for Leader Development

Missional Communities require an increased focus on caring for and developing leaders. Many churches lack a vision for developing and empowering leaders in general let alone to go and make disciples. Most missional community movements fail to transfer their vision and leadership well to other leaders which creates multiplying communities.

5) Give Up Too Soon

I am always asked how long a transition takes to missional communities. Unfortunately, you never stop transitioning, either people from the church or people far from God learning what it is to follow God. In a world that expects instant results, too many people want to avoid the hard work of transition.

Where to go from here?

This is the primary reason I began coaching. I learned by hating missional communities, wrestling with theology by reading just about every book imaginable on the topic, practicing it myself, failing at evangelism, and learning to develop leaders who multiply their communities to make disciples and plant churches.

Missional Coaching Giveaway!

10 Free Missional Coaching Sessions!

In partnership with Verge, I am giving away 10 free coaching sessions. I will select 10 people at my own discretion who will receive a free one-hour telephone/video coaching session. Submit the form below to enter. We will receive entries to the giveaway through Thursday, May 29th at Midnight EST. If you are selected to receive the coaching giveaway, you will be notified by email on June 1st when we announce the winners here on the Verge Network site.

I’ve led churches and ministries to transition to missional communities and begin their missional community movement from scratch. I’ve coached Lead Pastors, Missional Community Pastors, Leaders, and members of churches seeking to implement missional communities and missional living in their church. At times is has been coaching churches through transitioning to missional communities, while others it was coaching to overcome obstacles and objections to missional communities. Coaching is for both church and business leaders who long to start, grow, develop leaders, and multiply their missional communities to spread the gospel.

How does coaching address these 5 missional movement killers?

Coaching is a one-on-one relationship coming alongside leaders to assist them assessing, developing, and implementing their vision with greater success. I emphasize “their vision” because you can read about all the methods and practices of a church, but every church is unique in their people, mission, vision, and context. Coaching uniquely exists to help leaders develop their plan for their church in their context.

1) Coaching Provides a Context to Process Your Thoughts on Missional Communities

As you consider missional theology and practice, do you find yourself having pushback, confused as to how it could work in your context, wondering how to get others to understand it? Does it seem “just right” to you but you find it hard to explain to others?

Coaching is a great place to push back against what is being taught, wrestle with the implications and begin to formulate your understanding of the theology and practice in order to lead others.

2) Coaching Helps You Make an Honest Assessment of Good and Bad

If you are moving toward being a missional church, there will be things that must be celebrated and kept, but others that must be evaluated and discarded. How can you tell the difference between what is the good ingrained culture in your community and what needs to be addressed?

Coaching provides a safe and protected environment to be honest about your concerns, your hopes for the future, and a place to celebrate and confirm what is already healthy and good. This will help you know where to start and chart a course forward for yourself and your church.

3) Coaching Assists You to Adapt Methods to Your Ministry

Every church is unique, so how do you adapt the principles and methods that you hear from around the missional movement to be on mission in your context? How do you develop the vision, strategy, and practices that fit with your people, your church culture, and your city’s context?

Coaching assists you to evaluate what methods seem most effective and what must be adapted for your context.

4) Coaching Can Increase Your Vision and Ability for Leadership Development

Most leaders were trained to lead, but not develop other leaders. Cultivating a missional movement requires developing a multiplication culture in leadership. This involves taking the intuition of your approach and creating training that is transferable and empowering that leaders are developed and make other leaders.

Coaching guides leaders to identify their strengths, their vision, and to develop a plan for empowering other leaders.

5) Coaching Counsels and Guides You Through the Ups and Downs of Missional Movements

Whether you are transitioning your church to missional communities or seeking to establish more of a missional movement there will be setbacks, frustrations, and challenges while you see many things to celebrate.

Coaching gives a context to evaluate these challenges while also celebrating the successes as you move forward to implement your missional movement in your church.

2 Easy Steps to Enter the Giveaway

 

STEP 1:

Share this post on Facebook and Twitter:
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Click to Tweet: I just entered the @VergeNetwork Missional Coaching Giveaway from @logangentry #missional

 

STEP 2:

The Coaching Giveaway has closed, but if you are looking for coaching in missional communities, you can contact Logan and find out more here: Coaching.