Creating A Missional Culture.

Book Review.

Woodward, JR.  Creating A missional Culture.  Equipping the church for the sake of the world.  IVP Books 2012.

JR-  church planter, activist, consultant, missiologist, speaker and writer.  He cofounded Karios Los Angeles and the Ecclesia Network.

Comment.  Henry.

The role of the church in our culture is a very relevant topic about which many books have been written.  Leadership is a common church topic.  The thesis of this book is a particular type of leadership labelled “polycentric” leadership that stresses “equipping”.  That equipping targets certain gifts of leadership, the offices of the apostle, the prophet, the evangelist, the pastor and the teacher.  Herein lays the answer to creating a missional culture.

“God created the church as a sign, foretaste and instrument by which more of his kingdom would be realized here on earth.” (28)  Knowing the basic elements of culture is fundamental to creating a missional culture, i.e. “language, artifacts, narratives, rituals, institutions and ethics.” (44)  A guide is presented to evaluate church culture.  Leadership should be neither ‘top down’ nor ‘bottom up’.  It should be “polycentric”.  “The polycentric view of community leadership assumes that there are many centres of leadership that interrelate.” Suzanne Morse.  Such leaders are considered ‘equippers’.  An effective leadership culture is impacted by media, philosophical, scientific, spatiality and religious shifts.  Polycentric leadership “makes a theological statement to the church and to the world.” (96) 

Missional culture is created by equippers through the offices of “the apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher.” (121) 

Part of developing a missional culture must include a priority for “cultivating an equipping ethos.” (197)