Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Reggie McNeal serves as the Missional Leadership Specialist for Leadership Network of Dallas, Texas. McNeal is the author of A Work of Heart: Understanding How God Shapes Spiritual Leaders and the best-selling The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church and Practicing Greatness: 7 Disciplines of Extraordinary Spiritual Leaders from Jossey-Bass.

To learn more go to www.missionalrenaissance.org

ABOUT LEADERSHIP NETWORK The mission of Leadership Network identifies and connects innovative church leaders, providing them with resources in the form of new ideas, people, and tools. Contact Leadership Network at www.leadnet.org.

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Praise for MISSIONAL RENAISSANCE

“Any new book by Reggie McNeal is something of an event, and this book is no exception. Not only is this an excellent introduction to missional Christianity, but it establishes a much-needed metric by which we can assess the vitality of this highly significant new movement.”
Alan Hirsch, author, The Forgotten Ways, Rejesus, and The Shaping of Things to Come; founding director, Forge Mission Training System, and co-founder of shapevine.com

“In this book we are challenged to consider what it means to be in the heart of the pivotal new work God is up to in our generation. Read this book, but only if you are willing to let go of the inconsequential ways of evaluating what it means to be a success in God’s kingdom.”
Neil Cole, director, Church Multiplication Associates, and author, Organic Church, Search & Rescue, Organic Leadership, and Cultivating a Life for God

“This is Reggie McNeal’s gift to the church of the twenty-first century and his finest and most thorough work to date. This book clearly defines the shifts necessary to gauge what matters most for the missional people of God.”
Eric Swanson, coauthor, The Externally Focused Church and Living a Life on Loan

“There are spheres of human activity in which gold medalists rule the Olympian heights. In the sphere of church renewal, Reggie rules. Missional Renaissance is a must-have resource in helping every church keep its ‘eyes on the prize’ of God’s high missional calling.”
Leonard Sweet, Drew University, George Fox University, www.sermons.com

“If you are a pastor or church leader ready to get down to the raw specifics of turning a Christendom club into a missional community, you will love this book. The concepts are as easily understood as they are radical and breathtaking. There are a number of brilliant missional theorists, but no one can speak the language of our American context and put the rubber on the street like Reggie McNeal. “
Victor Pentz, pastor, Peachtree Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Georgia

Aus dem Klappentext

MISSIONAL RENAISSANCE

When Reggie McNeal's best-selling book The Present Future was published, it quickly became one of the definitive works on the "missional church movement." McNeal helped to define the widespread movement among churches that wanted to become more oriented toward the culture and community around them. In that book, McNeal asked the tough questions that churches needed to wrestle with to begin to think about who they are and what they are doing.

In Missional Renaissance, the much-anticipated follow-up to his groundbreaking book, Reggie McNeal shows the three significant shifts in the church leaders' thinking and behavior that will allow their congregations to chart a course toward becoming truly a missional congregation.

To embrace the missional model, church leaders and members must shift

• From an internal to an external focus, ending the church as exclusive social club model
• From running programs and ministries to developing people as its core activity
• From church-based leadership to community-engaged leadership

The book is filled with in-depth discussions of what it means to become a missional congregation and important information on how to make the transition. With an understanding of the nature of the missional church and the practical suggestions outlined in this book, church leaders and members will be equipped to move into what McNeal sees as the most viable future for Christianity.

Missional Renaissance offers a clear path for any leader or congregation that wants to breathe new life into the church and to become revitalized as true followers of Jesus.

To learn more go to www.missionalrenaissance.org

ABOUT LEADERSHIP NETWORK The mission of Leadership Network identifies and connects innovative church leaders, providing them with resources in the form of new ideas, people, and tools. Contact Leadership Network at www.leadnet.org.

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Missional Renaissance

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

The missional renaissance is under way. Signs of it are everywhere. Churches are doing some "unchurchy" things. A church in East Texas decides that its next ministry chapter should be about building a better community, not building a better church. "No child will go hungry in this county," the pastor declares in his "vision" message, a time usually reserved for launching new church initiatives. A church in Ohio passes up the option to purchase a prime piece of real estate that would allow it to build a facility to house its multisite congregation. Instead, it votes not to spend $50 million on church facilities but to invest the money in community projects. A congregation located in a town housing a major correctional facility has taken on the challenge of placing every released inmate in some kind of mentorship and sponsorship upon leaving prison. These efforts are resulting not just in cooperation from the prison but in a drop in recidivism rates as well. Another group of churches is collaborating on bringing drinkable water to villages in the developing and undeveloped nations of the world.

New expressions of church are emerging. One pastor has left a tall-steepled church to organize a simple neighborhood gathering of spiritual pilgrims. He is working at secular employment so that he doesn't have to collect monies to support a salary; rather, he and his colleagues are investing in people on their own street. A church planter who left an established church to start one of his own has decided to set up a network of missional communities to serve as the organic church in every sector of his city. Another entrepreneurial spiritual leader has opened up a community center with a church tucked inside of it. He has a dozen other ministries operating in the shared space.

The impact of the missional renaissance extends beyond the church into the social sector. The head of a homeless shelter in the Deep South has shifted his strategy from a food-and-counseling model to a coaching-and-employment model. Rather than relying on the "mouths fed and beds occupied" scorecard, he is insisting on new metrics to measure the life progress of the people he serves. His staff of "life coaches" are throwing themselves into people development, not just delivery of a ministry service.

Individual Jesus followers are also increasingly unwilling to limit their spiritual lives to church involvement. They are arranging their lives around their convictions and taking to the streets. A young husband and wife decide to live in a low-income apartment so they can serve as community developers for the complex. The complex owner does not mind that they are followers of Jesus or that they hold Bible studies and prayer meetings along with their pool parties and life skills workshops. A local businessman retires and calls on all his former business connections to contribute to a construction ministry he starts to help poor people fix up their homes.

The missional renaissance is changing the way the people of God think about God and the world, about what God is up to in the world and what part the people of God play in it. We are learning to see things differently, and once we adjust our way of seeing, we will never be able to look at these things the way we used to.

A similar dynamic has happened before. During the 1400s, the most gifted and passionate artists, writers, architects, and mathematicians of the day converged in Florence, Italy, and other cities across Europe. With the sponsorship of the Medicis and other wealthy patrons, their cross-pollination of ideas and practices gave rise to the Renaissance. Their fertilized thought was both disruptive and creative. Old ways and beliefs were abandoned, forsaken for something better, something promising, something hopeful.

Once the Renaissance was begun, there was no going back. The trajectories of literature, religion, art, science, and even economics and political theory would all be altered by Renaissance thinking. A Ptolemaic view of the universe yielded to a new Copernican reality. The application of mathematics to drawing resulted in the development of perspective in art. Real-life representations in paintings replaced medieval iconic figures. It would be impossible for people to think about things post-Renaissance the same way they thought pre-Renaissance. Every part of culture was changed, including the church.

Similar forces are driving today's missional renaissance. Elevated educational levels, heightened technology, and increased wealth have combined to create a huge pool of talented activists and sponsors. A growing number of people are willing and able to engage social issues with new solutions and the power to make a difference. The combination of wealth, talent, and creativity is resulting in ideas and practices that are both disruptive and hopeful for the church. New ways of being church are being born every day. There is no putting this Humpty Dumpty back together. That's the good news. Church will never be the same.

The missional church renaissance is not occurring in a vacuum. Just as in the fifteenth century, larger social forces are at work that conspire to create conditions ripe for this kind of development. The confluence of three significant cultural phenomena is fueling the current collaboration and creativity:

The emergence of the altruism economy

The search for personal growth

The hunger for spiritual vitality

These three elements anticipate the three shifts that people and churches must make to engage the missional renaissance. They serve as a starting point in our exploration of the missional church and how you can get in on it.

Emergence of the Altruism Economy

Wealthy patrons bankrolled the initial Renaissance. The altruism economy is sponsoring this one.

The March 9, 2008, edition of the New York Times Magazine was titled "Giving It Away." Various articles chronicled the evolution of altruism, celebrity chefs' cooking for charity, four stories of individual twenty-somethings' efforts to change their piece of the world, and an interview with Dr. Larry Brilliant, head of corporate giving at Google. The thread that ran throughout the magazine is that we are witnessing something truly phenomenal in both the magnitude and the creativity of people's determination not just to share their wealth but to make a difference with it. The Times edition came a few months after the release of Bill Clinton's Giving and hit the stands during the Oprah's Big Give television series. Celebrities like Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett, Bono, and Angelina Jolie target disease, Third World debt, illiteracy, and other social ills on a global scale.

But we also discover in every community nameless heroes who volunteer in soup kitchens, tutor struggling kids in English and math, build houses for people who can't afford them, and perform innumerable acts of kindness and generosity. And they give money-a lot of money. Charitable giving now comes to around $300 billion a year and is rising.

Altruism shows up in every sector of the economy. Every major corporation, and most minor ones, assign their managers community service obligations. A growing number of businesses dedicate a certain percentage of sales to performing altruistic work,...