--Alan Roxburgh, reflecting on a consultation with leaders in the Denver Area (UMC)
Has the missional conversation come to this? Has it been derailed and coopted, at least in the popular awareness of it, by the same old same old church growth, church vitality and church types conversations we've been having in North American Protestantism for the past century or more?
Of course part of the answer is, "Yes." And part of that "yes" is inevitable in a market economy. What gets press gets impressed into our minds. And what gets press is typically those who dominate the press, who have large publishing contracts, show up on the right shows and podcasts, and generate a sense of "guruship" the most effectively.
And what gets published and remains in the press is what is or is at least thought to be "popular." And what is most popular-- as it has ever been-- is the promise of a quick fix that will turn whatever condition you have around if you just buy it. Marketing 101.
So yes, in the marketplace of perception, the missional conversation has come to this.
But that doesn't mean the missional conversation IS this!
It's not.
And the missional conversation is unlikely ever to sell well or get the breakthrough that its populist proclaimers (wrapping it around their real goods-- which are as attractional and anti-discipleship as ever) have gotten.
Why?
Our work doesn't make headlines. It's too small to be seen on most radar screens. And in this environment it's hard to start it and hard to maintain it-- at least until it takes root, and that takes years. Years-- not 40 days or three months, or even a quadrennium. When Alban and others note it takes at least six years for real pastoral effectiveness to emerge, they're still only talking about effective institutional leadership in congregations. Double that, and we might be closer to the right scale to see significant results. Maybe. If we work at it every day and diligently do so over all that time, bringing others on board with us along the way as we can.
Roxburgh talks about this as investing the time and effort to develop "parallel cultures" in his book, Missional Mapmaking.
Now, we can certainly see significant results in the lives of individuals and small groups of Christians sooner than that-- but not in congregational cultures. My sense has continued to be that if we invest well in both, maybe just maybe we could move the dial back from 12 to maybe just 6 years on the congregational scene... that is, if we invest heavily in missional groups connected to but not programmed by the congregation. Roxburgh is not alone in being leary of this "parachurch" approach, fearing as many do that it's just one more way of outsourcing congregational work. But I've noted that in fact the core work of discipleship and mission got outsourced centuries ago-- and remains that way. If it will impact the culture of congregations now, it has a far better chance of doing so if developed in healthy connected ways from the outside than trying to generate it inside alone.
So yes, the missional conversation has been coopted.
That just means we need to keep working, keep talking and keep pulling folks into the real thing-- not a veneer covering the 'same old thing'-- ourselves.
Peace in Christ,
Taylor Burton-Edwards
6 comments:
I don't know if this is relevant, but just today I heard on the radio an ad for a new church that is starting in Columbus, Ohio. The pastor is talking about this church and makes it clear that in this church they have no corporate board, no assimilation process, no capital campaign. Instead, the focus of this church is simply to help people become better Christians by establishing personal growth plans with benchmarks and then helping each other become accountable. I will have to listen closer next time so I can remember the web address of this new church. Anyway, this relates to your original post because it sounds like a real attempt to build a church that is intentionally away from church growth models.
It will be interesting if the "missional movement" now develops a "back to the origins" submovement just as Wesley advocated New Testament Christianity.
I have three thoughts and I hope they might be helpful.
First, movements are always subject to the "reversion to the mean" pressure brought by the culture. They will be interpreted by the culture in such a way that they will be subverted to support the status quo.
Second, things made out of people are always falling apart. Movements are made of people, and moving them together in one direction is worse than herding cats. Ask Moses about it; it will not be the founders but the people born on the journey who will eventually bring about the Promised Land.
Third, I'm always surprised to see no reference to or inclusion of ideas from the Diffusion of Innovations by Everett Rogers or Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore, which map out a very clear process for systemic change.
David,
I think all of us would be glad to hear any insights you have from these resources...
Peace in Christ,
Taylor Burton-Edwards
I wrote about this a while back on how the free market engine has ironically consumed the missional conversation.
I do'nt think it's devolved, I think parts of the conversation have been assimilated by the evangelical appetite for new books to consume.
At ground level the mission stays the same. So your practitioners get it, even if some of the books are fluff.
The "Diffusion of Innovations" by Everett Rogers is the primary text for basic sociological research into the process by which an innovation (hybrid seed corn, solar water purifiers, missional church, Jesus is Lord) is adopted or rejected by a cultural group. It is the second most cited work in the social sciences.
Most people have heard of it through what I call the adopter framework: innovators, early adopters, middle adopters, late adopters, laggards. Many don't realize that it also presents a process methodology for social change which has been tested with so many innovations and in so many cultures around the world that it can be claimed that the diffusion of innovations presents a basic theory of cultural change that is generally universally valid.
When you look at the process, you discover that most of the advice considered standard in bringing change directly results in preventing change by stirring up systemic resistance. The basic failure rate is near 90%.
I'm assuming that what you describe as the missional movement in the blog article is a textbook case. (I'm not in any way an expert on "missional" - but the concerns expressed about it "devolving" ring many bells for me.)
Geoffrey Moore in "Crossing the Chasm" adapted and refined Rogers work for high tech innovation markets, and identified exactly what happens in order to introduce complex, discontinuous, very expensive innovations to an entire market/culture. The chasm is the gap between early adopters and middle adopters where an innovation fails or "falls into a chasm." This basically occurs because the innovative minority (my term) are very knowledgeable about their innovation but clueless about how to "contextualize" it to persuade the pragmatic majority (my term) to adopt.
As becoming a Christian is a significant change which churches will systemically resist, you can see the relevance for disciple making. This material then became one of the anchor foundations for my DMin research project.
Some links to my stuff:
1.
http://www.disciplewalk.com/parable_light_bulb_2.html
Point: when you bring "missional" or any planned change to a vote, it is defeated 84% to 16%. So change should never be introduced to the whole culture at once. It should not be "broadcast" through media, but shared only with those interested via conversation along networks. It's the publication of missional ideas that led directly to their being co-opted and neutralized by the system. After the "fad" comes the "phony" substitute which has the attributes but is missing the active ingredients; the system has successfully prevented change again.
2.
http://www.disciplewalk.com/parable_stainless_steel_church.html
Point: most innovative ideas -i.e. "missional" - seem about as practical to the majority as a "stainless steel church." Visionaries must contextualize the vision - which sullies its purity - if they wish to see it adopted. This requires them to communicate in an entirely different way contrary to their nature; few are willing to adapt. Change must come "slow" to churches but inexorably, by the "wisdom of small cuts" from the many teeth on a saw, not the mighty whacks from an innovator axe that shakes the whole tree. Small cuts means thousands of tiny changes, any one of which cannot be prevented; it's the love of "big change" for it's own sake that dooms many visionary plans.
There's a lot of good stuff on the net about Rogers & Moore, but mine directly applies it to evangelism and disciple making in church cultures. Seminar Two can be downloaded at
http://www.disciplewalk.com/files/Seminar_Two_Dialogue.pdf
"The Dialogue Seminar consists of five modules on organizational change with the same
format as the previous seminar. The information in these modules is based on blending insights
from Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline with the sociological research into cultural change
known as the diffusion of innovations as described by Everett Rogers and Geoffrey Moore." The footnotes are a rich window into other matierals that people might find helpful.
Ironically, one of the best resources on how this plays out is a classic novel from the '50s - "The Ugly American" by Burdick & Lederer. When we perceive the unchurched as a culture of their own, the parallels with church settings are striking. (Ignore the movie; it's worthless.)
http://www.amazon.com/Ugly-American-Eugene-Burdick/dp/0393318672
Thank you for the invitation to share; I hope it is helpful.
Post a Comment