A Living Alternative

As we continue to prepare to plant and pastor our new church plant, I am becoming increasingly aware of how important it is that understanding and establishing our community as God's missional strategy for His people must be the our first priority. To begin with the nature of missional leadership fails to recognize that the pastoral role (as with other leadership roles) are sub-vocations of the over all general vocation of the church.

Of course, this is a far easier premise to begin with when you are planting a new community. When you are leading an existing community, making the transition to a genuinely missional community identity is not only vast more difficult, it is often resisted by the very assumptions and expectations that established and empowered the leadership in the first place.

In these circumstances, those in leadership are faced with the challenge of using their position and authority to empower the community in a way that does not make their role central to the nature of the missionality. It can be a very challenging experience for all involved. And yet I am convinced that discovering how to forge this new path will help usher in a move of God through His Church like not seen for some time.

How have you seen this transition done well? What questions do you have about the process?

Missional, Missional Community, Leadership, Christianity