Reggie McNeal, Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church. Jossey-Bass / Leadership Network, 2009.
- Prequel: McNeal, The Present Future
- Sequel: McNeal, Missional Communities
Referenced in: Missional Communities – Missio Dei
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
Reggie McNeal is a strong and authoritative voice on the missional movement. In what may be called the sequel to his bestseller The Present Future, where McNeal described the six new realities that churches must address in the post-Christendom era, here he presents the three important criteria for measuring missional effectiveness. Below are the three criteria:
- From an internal to an external focus, ending the church as exclusive social club model – This does not do away with internal concerns when needed, but moves increasingly toward involvement outside the church building. The older attractional model of great music and preaching to draw people is replaced by “Let’s go out this week and practice being the people of God.”
- From running programs and ministries to developing people as its core activity – This means creating a people-development culture by asking, “Are people better off because of what we have done?” In some churches, people are merely resources for getting jobs done. McNeal would rather the questions be, “How many have figured out a way to love their neighbor?” instead of “How many have showed up to support our stuff.”
- From professional leadership to leadership that is shared by everyone in the community – This means leaders acting more like apostles sent into their communities rather than serving as institutional managers. Instead of saying, “I’m pastor of First Church,” a minister would, “I’m pastor of the community and my support team is First Church.”
Each criterion has a full chapter devoted to it, followed by a chapter laying out practical strategies for activating the new scorecard.
McNeal describes the effect of these new criteria:
These three shifts call for a new scorecard for the missional church. The typical church scorecard (how many, how often, how much) doesn’t mesh with a missional view of what the church should be monitoring in light of its mission in the world. The current scorecard rewards church activity and can be filled in without any reference to the church’s impact beyond itself. Since it is a fundamental truism of human nature that ‘what gets rewarded gets done,’ it is completely understandable that the current scorecard promotes the internally focused, program-based, church-based side of the ledger. We must develop a scorecard that supports the other side of the shifts: externally focused ministry, people development efforts, and a kingdom-oriented leadership agenda. This new scorecard, more dimensional than our current one, will highlight new behaviors that will support and accelerate the rise of the missional church in North America. (xvii)
He explains the implications on a practical level:
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…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….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. (1)
Given the pragmatic orientation of most church leaders, this book may be one of most helpful tools to help those steeped in traditional or church growth models understand the dynamics of the missional shift. It answers the question of “how will I know if I have succeeded?” “What do I/we need to aspire to and how do we measure progress?” This text, alongside The Present Future, may be the most helpful reads for success-driven church leaders who are steeped in the orientation of bodies, buildings, and budgets to reorient themselves to a missional perspective.
From the Publisher
Reggie McNeal’s bestseller The Present Future is the definitive work on the “missional movement,” i.e., the widespread movement among Protestant churches to be less inwardly focused and more oriented toward the culture and community around them. In that book he asked the tough questions that churches needed to entertain to begin to think about who they are and what they are doing. In Missional Renaissance, he shows them the three significant shifts in their thinking and behavior that they need to made that will allow leaders to chart a course toward being missional:
- 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 professional leadership to leadership that is shared by everyone in the community.
With in-depth discussions of the “what” and the “how” of transitioning to being a missional church, readers will be equipped to move into what McNeal sees as the most viable future for Christianity. For all those thousands of churches who are asking about what to do next after reading The Present Future, Missional Renaissance will provide the answer.
About the Author
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.
***For additional information on this resource, including reviews, click the bookstore links. Check the reference at page top or the links below for resource guides on related topics.***
See Resource Guides on Related Areas:
- Missional Perspectives, Introduction
- Missional Church Resources, Introduction and Index
- Church Leadership and Renewal, Index to Resources
See Resources on Over 100 Areas of Ministry Leadership: