Partnership for Missional Church

Part of the work of the Steering Team during Phase One of the Partnership for Missional Church is to get the entire church praying. It’s easy for me, sitting here in my office at a university, to put something like that on a To-Do list that I don’t actually have to do! But, I imagine it’s not that easy for those of you “in the trenches.” I invite you to share what your congregation is doing to see this goal become a reality. Any insights from churches in the Central Texas cluster that have already walked through this phase of the journey are more than welcome, too!

Please contact me if you have any trouble leaving a comment in the section below.

~Greg KB

Ron Bordelon, who serves as an elder at the Skillman Church of Christ, shared these thoughts with me regarding their experience with the Congregational Timeline Event from Phase One of the Partnership for Missional Church. Feel free to share your own experiences with this important event (for those of you in the Central Texas cluster), or your hopes and anxieties about engaging in a process like this (for you folks in the Northwest cluster).

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Our congregational timeline event was a roaring success. About 150 attended (we invited the entire congregation) after worship service; light sandwiches and then on we worked.

Everyone was involved: some shouting out excited memories, some of the older members studying old church bulletins and memoirs. We stratified our history into groups: pre-1960, then one group for each succeeding decade and the teens as their own group. We arbitrarily assigned adult members to the groups, trying to align people with their date of joining the church, though there were exceptions.

To prepare: We went to members with long histories and honed in on some themes: facilities management; high school bible credit; missions; and others. We really prized earlier work on building history and weekly church bulletins (for 50 years). All of the “stuff” (paperwork, trophies, photos, etc.) was placed in a box (for each decade) and handed to the leaders (who had one planning session). What occurred that we had hoped for was for the boxes to be a rewind of childhood as people rifled through them with ah’s and wow’s –like going through an attic.

Each group had a three person leadership. We had a greeting team that expedited the seating, diluting any confusion about the program. We also had the Steering Team float around the room with two of us by microphone “running” the meeting. The 3 leaders per table were: Facilitator – the spokesperson; Scribe – noted comments on Post-it Note (the kind that adhere to a hard surface) flip charts and later (see below) noted additional comments from other “visitors” to the table; Observer – kept the flow so that the Facilitator didn’t have to halt the process (got the timid involved; engaged those who were “hung up” on a single point, impeding the overall flow).

After about 45 minutes, by design, attendees were invited to move to each of the other tables for observation and input. The scribes hung their flip charts on the wall high enough for group viewing and took notes for any new comments from these “visitors”. This process broke down somewhat after about 15 minutes so we closed with a prayer.

We had stellar photographs that continue to add to the experience.

In both the planning meeting for leaders and the main event, the beginning was met with a fair amount of raised eyebrows, “what’s this about?” etc., but after just a few minutes into the process everyone was smiling and enthused.

Really key to our success was our emphasis that the experience is not about precision or even completeness. Instead, it was a bout capturing stories, that surface meaning, that reveal our hearts and what we have in common and believe in. Example: when our long-standing facility manager was approached about mapping building improvements, etc. over the many decades as part of our planning for the meeting, his reply was a question: “Do you know what the first activity was when we added the East Wing?” Answer: His own wedding reception (large smile).

We are still unfolding the exact process of disseminating the information captured on the flip charts. We don’t really know yet, but we are expecting an implicit benefit from this experience is that members who might otherwise be resisting the missional church initiative because they naturally dislike change will see, without any prompting, how much they have already changed as a church.

Thanks, again, to Rosco Pirtle from Vancouver for documenting our kick-off event in June:

Thanks to Rosco Pirtle from the Vancouver Church of Christ for these great shots from the February PMC Orientation Event.

Since July 2006, Abilene Christian University has been partnering with numerous congregations in the Partnership for Missional Church (PMC). Essentially, PMC is a network of local churches joining together in a process of congregational transformation: listening to God’s call and letting him send us and empower us to participate in God’s mission in the world.

Each of the clusters of congregations, comprising 10 to 15 congregations (one in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex and one in the Pacific Northwest), will spend three years discovering, experimenting, and evaluating and implementing the things they have learned while on this journey.

Why “Partnership for Missional Church”

The PMC is a Partnership in that it involves individuals and congregations working together with educators, consultants, and staff from various institutions. Through the sharing of stories we are all supported and encouraged. Times of worship, of prayer, fellowship, these all serve to bind us together on this journey. We are all taking risks, but we’re not alone!

It is Missional in that we are focused on participating in God’s mission of reconciling, restoring and redeeming the world. The process of spiritual discernment helps us discover just how God is sending us into our communities, so that we may be better partners.

The word “Church” is used because we are building on the traditions and strengths of our congregations, not trying to build some new organization from scratch. The central location of mission in this growing world is the local congregation, and this project depends on the dedication of folks in church, both those in the pews and those in leadership roles.

Discovery, Experimenting, Embodiment

The first phase of the process is Discovery. This could best be described as a time for learning to listen. We listen to the witness of Scripture and the leading of the Spirit of God in allowing ourselves to be shaped and formed for sending into the world. We also learn to listen to our partners, those who help us understand ourselves and the context in which we live and work. A number of inventories, self-studies and evaluations will be used to take the pulse of each congregation, which will aid in the second phase of the project.

Experimenting follows Discovery. After learning about who we are, where we live and who we are sent to, the next logical step is to take action. The information uncovered during the first step will hopefully lead us in developing plans of action for innovating missional transformation. This involves more risk taking, and while not every risk will be rewarded, there is as much to learn from the mistakes as from the successes.

In the last phase, Embodiment, congregations will begin moving toward living in God’s preferred and promised future. After discovering and learning from the successes and failures of the experimenting phase, churches and their leaders will develop plans for congregational transformation, and will better know how to focus attention and energy toward attaining those goals.

Of course, the last phase is not truly the last phase. Congregations will need to constantly evaluate their situations and experiment with new actions and activities as their contexts change. As the church moves toward this promised future of being partners with God in his mission in the world, the process and learning and growing will be ongoing.

Follow Along

Since July, a cluster of ten congregations in Central Texas has been hard at work in the first phase of the PMC. A cluster of fifteen congregations is scheduled to begin in February of 2007. We hope to use this space to share some of their stories, to learn from their successes and failures, and to be blessed by looking in on their journeys.

Feel free to drop in and “take a peek” at what these congregations are doing, and join in the conversation. Ask questions about what these churches and their leaders are experiencing.

We hope you’ll come back often to find out what’s going on, and we hope you’ll feel free to contact us if we can answer any questions or concerns you may have.

Jerry Wolfe, elder at the Federal Way Church of Christ in Washington, has written these rich words about the spiritual practice of lectio divina on his personal blog. He has graciously given us permission to reprint them here.

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Listen. Listen. Listen. That’s what our first Partnership for Missional Church weekend was about. In the three year process the entire first year is dedicated primarily to listening. We listen to Scripture — Luke 10:1-12. ‘Dwelling in the Word’ is new language for most of us. If you wanted the ancient church language it would be ‘lectio divina‘ which means ‘divine or spiritual reading’.

Our practice of reading Scripture is to read a passage, figure out its meaning, perhaps, although not always, make some application to our personal life or the church, and then move on to another passage. And then when we have done that we ‘know what is in the Bible’. Now get this. This is a good and important way of reading Scripture. This is not something we want to lose. Knowing what is in the Bible is vital.

However, knowing what is in the Bible is a far different thing than having the Bible know what is in us. Knowing what is in the Bible, if we are not careful, turns the Bible into little more than a tool for our own purposes, to prove our own points, to set our own agendas, to create our own categories. That doesn’t have to happen, but if we are honest, we have all done it.

Dwelling in the Word — lectio divina– on the other hand is a way of reading that refuses the approach of ‘figuring out the meaning’. Not that we don’t find meaning in lectio divina, but we allow meaning to surface over time and space. We read, slowly, thoughtfully, pausing over words, phrases, thoughts, allowing them to speak deeply to us. And after reading we sit, quietly, reflectively, with the Spirit, avoiding distractions and allowing the Spirit in the text to sink in and to work on our human spirits. Over time that way of reading will bring multiple meanings to the surface and will open us up and enter our hearts and minds in deep places that a Bible class reading of Scripture will seldom find. Lectio divina — dwelling in the word — is simply listening to God tell us about Scripture rather than us telling him about Scripture. As I spoke about on Sunday, it is counterintuitive.

‘Dwelling in the Word’ is not a replacement or a substitute for our more familiar methods of reading Scripture. To exchange one for the other would be a gross mistake. But used in concert with one another they give us a richer experience of being ‘people of the book’.

Listen. Listen. Listen. Where better to start than Scripture?