At a recent forum in Louisville, Ky., the church consultant recalled the Presbyterian pastor who told McNeal his church was growing so fast it didn’t have time to do evangelism.
"This has a lot to do with us not doing an action but recapturing who we are," McNeal said. "It has authenticity and you can’t ignore it. The missional renaissance is the biggest reshaping of the Church since the Reformation."
Affiliated with the Dallas-based Leadership Network, McNeal warned pastors and staff members that shifting to this mode means more than completing an annual community service project.
Instead, he said it calls for an incarnational mindset where pastors and other church leaders live transparently, discipling others through close relationships and accountability.
A new vision
Not only does it mean shifting one’s emphasis to the community, the missional church requires a new vision and scorecard to measure how it is doing.
Instead of worrying about how many people attend Sunday school or worship services, McNeal pointed to one church whose mission is insuring all students in its county will able to read English by the third grade.
The reason: when kids don’t read by that grade, it leads to higher crime rates, gang membership and other negative social indicators.
"That pastor is saying he’s no longer going to record how many kids are in VBS, he’s going to record statistics outside the church," McNeal said. "If you’re saying, ‘We’re not going to have any hungry kids in our county,’ you won’t be able to do it by yourself. It opens up a whole different way of thinking."
He mentioned the church staff that wasn’t sure how to make such a change. So, McNeal suggested they go sit in places like Wal-Mart and Starbucks for an hour and pray, "God, help me to see what You see."
That experiment so changed the staff’s outlook they sent the congregation out to do this one Sunday morning, then had them return that evening to share what they learned.
One way every church can touch its community is to volunteer at a neighboring school. McNeal mentioned Kids Hope USA—which seeks to match adult mentors with at-risk students—as an excellent resource.
"As you go out to do good, people will come alongside you," he said. "You’re out there painting the school and a guy says, ‘Why are you doing this?’ This is a very different place to start an evangelistic conversation. Good greases the skids for God."
For those who don’t think schools will welcome assistance, McNeal mentioned a church in California that started tutoring students after the superintendent said their help wasn’t needed. Less than a year later, the superintendent sent the church a current "wish list."
Three needed shifts
McNeal spelled out three shifts needed for a program-driven church to become missional:
1) Changing from internal ministry to an external focus.
This isn’t an "either-or" situation, but a movement towards involvement outside the building. In the past, church-centric world, the assumption was excellent worship services and great preaching were the keys to drawing people to faith in Christ, McNeal said.
Today, it’s much different. In the missional world, it’s not about "doing" church but "being" the church. This is why house churches are growing so fast, because the point is who they are, McNeal said.
"Instead of an evangelism strategy, why don’t we have a blessing strategy?" he asked. "It’s biblical. God wants to impart a blessing to the world. I tell people, ‘Let’s go out this week and practice being the people of God.’"
2) Asking, "Are our people better off because of what we’ve done?"
The heart of this question aims at creating a people-development culture where improving people’s lives is more important than running them through a program, McNeal said.
The consultant described this as the most challenging change, because in the program-driven model so much attention has been directed at numbers, be that baptisms, donations or supplies.
"Are the programs helping or are people just a resource to get our programs done?" McNeal said. "Wouldn’t a fair scorecard be, ‘How many better marriages do we have in the church this year than last?’ (or) ‘How many have figured out a way to love their neighbor instead of how many showed up and supported our stuff?’"
3) Moving from church-based leadership to apostolic leadership.
Though "apostolic" has had bad connotations because of extreme examples, McNeal said his emphasis is on pastors moving away from acting as institutional managers toward leading a movement.
In this model, instead of a minister saying, "I’m pastor of First Baptist," he or she would proclaim, "I’m pastor of the community and my support team is First Baptist," McNeal explained.
"In a people-development culture your time is going to be spent differently than in a program culture," he commented. "You’re going to be engaged with people far more conversationally and you’re going to have to figure out how to disciple people."
For years, pastors screamed at people and were happy if a couple responded to their invitation, but in a missional church relationships reign supreme, McNeal said.
What that means is that a pastor has to be led by the Spirit so he or she can detect when another person is receptive to the truth.
"Any leadership is not positional, it’s personal," McNeal said. "People want to know: do you live this stuff and are you willing to be accountable?"
