Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV…
All this discussion about being a missional community comes with the challenge of finding “Missional Leadership” that “Equips God’s People for Mission.” An important point in this chapter is comes back to the idea that the church is shaped and led by the Spirit. If this is true, than we need leadership that is the same. “Missional Leadership requires a spirituality that lives in close relationship with and reliance on the directions of the Father through the Spirit. The practice of regular spiritual disciplines (the ecclesial practices) is essential for a life in Christ’s footsteps.” (186) As we move from Christendom to post Christendom we need different kinds of leadership (priest, pedagogue, professional). (190-198) In our current situation, to form missional communities, we needs “leadership whose attention is directed to making concrete and practical those practices that form covenant missional communities.
This chapter outlines a model of community life and organizational structure that calls for us to build centered set communities that are “on a journey towards as set of values and commitments” (206) which these values and commitments would be defined as God’s reign. In this centered set community we would need to find a bounded set community that will form around shared commitments and practices. Everyone would be welcome and invited to join the community on the journey. “While the direction of the journey is the reign of God, the community is where people can discover and encounter the meaning of this larger journey. This journey, as a pilgrim people, calls for commitments to practices of the reign of God that can be made only in covenants.” (207) Leadership in this covenant community would be about cultivating the spiritual disciplines of common life, learning and mission. (208). Leadership in this setting also calls “into being a covenant community; second they direct attention out toward their context. Its obvious from this discussion of bounded and centered set groupings that “creating, forming and cultivating new forms of church will require far more than merely managing its present forms.” (214)