Comments on: ★ Missional Leadership Culture – Decision Making and Change

By: Todd

Todd — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:33:34 +0000

yeah josh. i think a church that does this will be guilty of both under and over-contexualization..

also, thanks :) i like to think I’ve learned directly from the guys who popularized it. i dont know what i would do if i were accused of bastardizing the term. it might kill me :)

By: Josh Rowley

Josh Rowley — Thu, 13 May 2010 23:31:47 +0000

Thanks for responding to my question, Todd. I suppose a church that never takes risks will frequently be guilty of undercontextualization.

I appreciate the way you use the word “missional”–faithful to what the persons who popularized it had in mind.

By: Todd Hiestand

Todd Hiestand — Thu, 13 May 2010 16:35:58 +0000

Adam, good question. Basically, I have a document that has all these things in it and we revisit it a lot. Sometimes i send out parts of these out ot my leadership team over e-mail as a reminder. Actually writing this down is pretty new so we haven’t done much in terms of communicating this to the rest of the community but that will be part of a new member / welcome class in the future.

Josh, regarding contextualization and over-contexualization the best answer I can give is that we continually wrestle with this. Because we are a church in process, I just figure we’ll always be over or under contextualizing things. That’s just part of the experimentation process and taking risks (that is in tomorrow’s post). Of course other aspects of this is knowing history well (in regards to theology and mission), learning from other’s mistakes and constantly evaluating our life together in light of the scriptures. so, basically, i this isn’t a cut and dry scientific process, even though some people want it to be.

By: Josh Rowley

Josh Rowley — Thu, 13 May 2010 15:46:22 +0000

Hey, Todd–

I appreciate this post. I was a student of Al Roxburgh’s for four years; your definition of “rapid, discontinuous change” does sound like something he would say.

On the subject of contextualization, I have a question: How does your community guard against undercontextualization, on the one hand, and overcontextualization, on the other hand?

By: Adam Gustine

Adam Gustine — Thu, 13 May 2010 14:37:07 +0000

Todd, maybe this is part 4, but how is this kind of leadership culture communicated to everybody? Obviously, for this kind of thing to take root in a community, people have to buy into it…how do you cultivate that?

By: tony sheng

tony sheng — Thu, 13 May 2010 13:21:04 +0000

hey tood — really appreciate #4 on your list. you are so right, most of our faith communities have too much mass and are not nimble enough in a fast changing, dynamic culture.

this is a great series – thanks for sharing it.