Repackaged For a New Paradigm? A Critical Reflection of “The Missional Leader”

In 1997, Trinity Press International published a provocative little book by Alan Roxburgh as part of the Christian Mission and Modern Culture series.  The book carried the title, The Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Liminality,[1] and in it Roxburgh lays the theological, historical, and sociological foundations for what would eventually become the core content of The Missional Leader.  In the Trinity Press publication, Roxburgh makes a compelling and pervasive argument that present day ecclesiology and its subsequent pastoral leadership has currently reached a point of crisis as it finds itself at the end of Christendom.  As the church continues to experience marginality in its Western context it must come to grips with its changed relationship to power:[2]  the church no longer finds itself at the center of culture and has, as David Bosch says, “lost its position of privilege.”[3]   What is more, the church now finds that it has strained relationships with both the state and the academy, two infants that matured through the enlightenment and who have now weaned themselves away from the church in their adult years, no longer perceiving any need for the nourishment that the church once provided them previous to the postmodern epoch.

            This de-centralization of the church has led leadership in the church and denominations as a whole to adapt to their new position in culture.  Roxburgh sees a new[4] marginal consciousness[5] emerging in the current ecclesiology and in our current pastoral roles, where churches and church leadership are practicing faith and life on an almost “permission-basis” that is only granted by a post-Christendom culture.  Roxburgh and Romanuck pick up this theme in The Missional Leader as they outline in a more practical manner the operating models of leadership by using the categories of “pastoral” (which applies here to pastoral leadership at the end of Christendom) and “missional” (which applies here to leadership for the end of Christendom).[6] In the 1997 work, Roxburgh presents a helpful chart to articulate his theory of a marginal consciousness[7]:

            Themes Shaping Modernity[8]                           Themes Shaping Pastoral Ministry      

1.  Individualism                                                         1.  Care giving/ Counseling

2.  Instrumental Rationality                                        2. Technique

3. Fragmentation into groups of self-interest              3. Community/Body Life

 

In Roxburgh’s opinion,

 

            “This marginalized consciousness of the churches has resulted in a variety

            of movements seeking to reintegrate the church into a perceived cultural

            center, even though in late modernity this no longer describes the actual

            social location of the churches.”[9]

 

The rest of The Missionary Congregation… seeks to introduce in a very brief way a “model that enables the churches to see their current situation and reflect appropriately on how they may reconfigure their life for mission in late modernity.”[10]

            While The Missionary Congregation… only scratches the surface by introducing that model, The Missional Leader develops the model in more thorough manner.  Teaming with Romanuck, the pair seeks to equip and encourage the leadership elements of the church to view their de-centralized situation with a little more seriousness and instead of reacting to “cultural-permission-granting,” they encourage churches and their leadership to move in directions of pro-activity that embody the core identity of the church as a “community of God’s people who live into the imagination that they are…God’s missionary people living as a demonstration of what God plans to do in and for all of creation.”[11]

            To that end, Roxburgh and Romanuk introduce a model of leadership that they dub “The Missional Change Model.”  The model “offers leaders a way to cultivate an environment in which missional imagination can thrive.”[12] To get there, Roxburgh and Romanuck take the readers through three important processes so that the readers may (1) get a sense of the fluidity and discontinuity that the church finds itself in at the end of Christendom; (2) understand the context of one’s particular/local congregation; and (3) become familiar with some of the important moves by way of narrative, experience, and truth discovery missional congregations can make as they seek to live out their missional vocation in the world. 

            As they move into the Missional Change model (MCM)[13], they set it up using the images of climbing stairs:                                                                        Commitment

                                                                                    Experiment

                                                                Evaluate

                                    Understanding

            Awareness

“At the beginning,” they write, “skipping a step subverts the process.  As the process is learned and more people become involved, it becomes less linear and more like sailing as the congregation learns to go back and forth across all steps.”[14]  The process is very orderly and organized.  This makes sense when one considers that the core issue that Romanuk and Roxburgh want to deal with is the discontinuity and the “identity crisis” that the church faces as Christendom is waning.  The church, like a ship lost at sea, needs a new map.  This model is that map which will create space for dialogue, evaluation, and experimentation “within a field of rich biblical and theological dialogue.”[15]  

Only after Roxburgh and Romanuk lay out this model do they begin to introduce the nature and characteristics of a missional leader.  One of the most helpful aspects of this section of the book is the table they produce to demonstrate a movement toward missional imagination.  The logical direction here is far from the “common leadership thinking” of top-down implementation, which includes the church building as the central focus of community life, the church as the dispenser of religious goods and services, and the minister as “expert” toward a “missional imagination.”  Missional imagination, in contrast to the common thinking, will create a space to hear the people’s story of God working in and through their lives.  It will build deeper relationships and allow for community life outside of the building. It will create opportunities for spiritual formation, and will understand that every person is a participant in the story that God is telling in the world.[16] 

            What Roxburgh and Romanuk have done is produce a top-rate strategy and plan that is deeply rooted in their missional theology; a plan that is very thorough, organized, and well thought out.  This is in and of itself quite an accomplishment – it displays a rare combination of theology and praxis in a Christian culture that usually presents one aspect as separate from the other.  And while they are very clear and articulate in directing the leadership enterprise toward congregational ownership and not adapting the plans and purposes of one singular leader,[17] there still a technique driven tone throughout the book.  It begs the question: are the authors simply repackaging techniques for a new paradigm?  Are Roxburgh and Romanuck the next Dulles or Maxwell, the next Hybels or Warren? 

Regardless, I do believe that this book is absolutely crucial for churches and the leaders of the local church to engage with, implement, and reflect upon.  The strategies are theologically sound, socially relevant, and ecclesiologically prudent.  However, I wonder if Roxburgh and Romanuk are nonetheless guilty of practicing the same technical rationality that is implicitly viewed in a pejorative light throughout their book?  In other words: can any of us escape our place in this technological society that is driven by technique and utilitarian pragmatism?  Can we truly conceive of the church as an organism instead of an organization?  What’s more, is it even possible to embody a missional theology that is not dependent upon either the linguistics or theory of the technological society, organizational rationality, or institutional productivity? Have the authors merely offered up another technique to make sense out of the church’s displacement from the center of culture?  And if so, is that Okay?    

My hunch is that Roxburgh and Romanuk can not help themselves in regards to this issue.  They can not escape our culture of technical rationality – after all, it is their “home culture.” What they have produced, however, is one of the more thoughtful books on leadership – the best effort yet for anyone trying to discern what it means to be faithful and fruitful in today’s age at the end of the Christendom.  Yet, I wonder if there is something more.  Can there be faithful praxis of missional theology that avoids the individualism, technical rationality, and/or fragmentation of body-life that is so prevalent in the church today?  Or is technical rationality not such a bad thing?  Perhaps discipleship as it is lived and breathed in the world is the technical rationality of the Gospel.  These questions are important for us as we continue to embody God’s future, because we want to embody God’s future alone and none other.  Maybe technical rationality, leadership books, post-Christendom theology and ecclesiology are a part of that future…and maybe not.  What, then, is the hermeneutical key we need to unlock these questions listed above? 

            I believe the key is found within the dialogue the church participates in with itself, the gospel that claims the church, and the world the church is called to love.  In that process, as the right questions are asked and the right steps are made (the MCM), the church and church leadership can develop local theologies that lead to local praxis that lead to local change.  To that end, Roxburgh and Romanuk’s work equips the church to be engaged with this process as they set up the practical parameters, guidelines, and movements one can make in their quest to be faithful to Jesus Christ in a post-Christendom and postmodern world.     

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[1] Roxburgh, Alan, “The Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Liminality,” (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 1997).

[2] Hall, Douglas John, “The End of Christendom and the Future of Christianity,” (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 1997), p. 4.

[3] Bosch, David, “Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission,” (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Press, 1991) p. 364.

[4] Certainly there was a marginal consciousness in the first three centuries prior to Constantine’s Edict of Milan.

[5] Roxburgh, “The Missionary Congregation,” p. 15-22.

[6] Roxburgh, Alan, and Romanuk, Fred, “The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World,” (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006), p. 12-13.

[7] Roxburgh, “The Missionary Congregation,” p. 22.

[8] My interpretation of Roxburgh’s use of the word “Modernity” equates to the world at the end of Christendom. 

[9] Roxburgh, “The Missionary Congregation,” p. 22.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Roxburgh and Romanuk, “The Missional Leader,” p. XV.

[12] Ibid., p. 104.

[13] There is a helpful Table (5.2) on page 105 that serves as a “recap” for the model. 

[14] Ibid, p. 83.

[15] Ibid., p. 104.

[16] Ibid., p. 147.

[17] For example, p. 42 of “The Missional Leader,” “Missional Leadership cultivates an environment in which the people of God imagine together a new future rather than one already determined by a leader.”

~ by tony313 on July 10, 2008.