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| Image credit: Amazon.com |
I opened
Missional Moves by Rob Wegner and Jack Magruder expecting "hey, we're a megachurch, look at us and copy what we did." In some ways it is that. But more than that, I found this book to be full of challenging and thought-provoking ideas about how the methodology of church that seemed to work in the past needs major renovation.
With creative examples and personal anecdotes, the authors present 15 reasons why and how the local church's view of missions needs to change. I was impressed with many of their ideas, such as:
- Instead of just throwing money at missions organizations, we have to
learn how to build relationships that will transform lives with the
gospel of Christ.
- With an understanding that missions is not just for "professionals" but
the job of every member of the local church, everyone needs to know the
vision of their local church and how to be involved.
- Our gospel impact will be much deeper if it is focused in a few areas instead of spread thin across many ministries.
I think every Christian should read this book to truly understand the extreme makeover needed in today's churches to reach the lost. However, with it's visionary thinking and technical jargon, it appears to be geared toward
church leaders and most people probably will not attempt to read it. I think their "Seven Metaphors of the Fractal Core"(p. 215-217) are a good summation of the major points they are teaching and would be helpful to everyone trying to catch the vision. So, I would recommend this book to church leaders who are ready to think outside the box and lead their local church in creative, yet focused ministry.
Disclosure: I received this book free from
Cross Focused Reviews as part
of the Missional Moves Blog Tour in exchange for my honest review.
For more information on Missional Moves, visit their website at:
http://missionalmoves.com/
Taryn,
ReplyDeleteThanks for being a part of the Missional Moves blog tour. You're absolutelly right that the book is geared more towards church leaders, but I really appreciated that you mentioned there's something here that laymen could benefit from.
Shaun Tabatt
Cross Focsued Reviews
Thanks for writing this review! Did it make you want to seek out your church's vision for missions?
ReplyDelete-AR
Our church currently lacks a vision for missions - in the past they just have randomly selected missionaries/organizations to support. This book was timely, as we are currently reevaluating all our missionaries and trying to implement some of these ideas into having a focused vision for missions.
DeleteTaryn! Okay, okay, full confession: i'm a tea freak. There. I said it. That said, i'm always happy to find someone else who enjoys a good cup as well, so we'd have that in common as a starting point if we had the chance to talk in person over a cup of macha or asaam.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to thank you for your careful review of Missional Moves and your insight into what is helpful in its pages. And you're right, by the way, in that we hoped that the book would be approachable for anyone, but it is really geared and engineered for ministry volunteers, leaders and staff who are attempting to practically implement significant Missional shifts in their context but might not have very many tangible hand-holds in doing so. Rob and i always say that we may not be the smartest kids on the block, but our knuckles are at least certainly really bloody from genuinely slugging it out in the muck and dirt of the real world in attempting to figure out what practical Mission for a local church might look like. If we accomplished that objective at all in Missional Moves, then we're quite pleased.
Blessings to you and your family this holiday season as we celebrate and commemorate the Advent of our King! Thank you again for your time and consideration!
All for One!
-jack magruder
Jack - 1. I am honored and humbled that you would take the time to comment on my blog - Thank you! 2. I have 8 pages of notes from the book that I have been sharing with my husband, who is a pastor, as he and his leadership have been trying to make some of these missional moves for our church. So your work in the trenches has been very useful to us because in the past this church has not has a defined vision for missions and now we are forming a clear direction we want to go in.
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