Will Mancini

I have been reminded many times this week that great leaders know how to stop things that aren’t great in the organization. I just heard this snippet from a message by Alf Halvorson in Bethlehem, PA:

If you are an Indian you bury a dead horse
If you are a church leader you might…

-Buy a stronger whip
-Change riders
-Appoint a committee to study the horse
-Visit other places to see how they ride dead horses
-Lower the standards so that dead horses can be included
-Reclassify the horse as “living impaired”
-Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse
-Harness several dead horses together to increase speed
-Show we need lighter riders through productivity studies
-Declare that dead horses require lower overhead and therefore contribute more to the bottom line

Today I decided to find the best video clips that would define and explain the idea of being missional in 15 minutes or less- total. Six clips made the cut including four leaders (Ed Stetzer, Michael Frost, Mark Driscoll and Tim Keller) and a comedic take-off. The videos are listed to the left under the header Missional Crash Course.

The last reflection I wanted share on my time with Alan is twofold: First I wanted to share how much I appreciated Alan’s personal presence. Evangelicals too easily evaluate an individual’s ability by their skill to communicate only. But Alan’s impact was ten times more powerful through his personal presence. What I appreciate about Alan is his laid-back demeanor couple with the thoughtfulness of a nutty professor and the heartbeat of a kingdom visionary. His visionary impulse came through in two ways: first he reminded us that world history hinges around small gatherings of believers that dare to dream big. Second, he repeated often the following assertion: “Every believer contains the potential for world transformation.” Most vibrant thinkers who have lived more than 48 year might find this statement overly optimistic. Do you?

Secondly, I want to urge you to read “Forgotten Ways” and wet your appetite with the premise that great apostolic movements have six irreducible elements. Here they are:

– The center and circumference is driven by a simple confession: “Jesus is Lord”
– Disciple making is the irreplaceable core task
– The movement seeds and embeds the gospel with a “Missional-incarnational Impluse”
– Apostolic Environments constantly push initiation and innvation
– Organic systems must be embraced over broken structures
– The movement experiences Communitas, not Community…you will have to read about this yourself!

While at PGF, I co-lead with Alan, author of The Shaping of Things to Come and Forgotten Ways. Alan mentioned that Shaping was really written for church planters. They had no idea that it would become the foundational missional work that it has become. Following that work which was co-written with Michael Frost, Alan did the solo project entitled Forgotten Ways which focuses on the nature of missional movements. Here are a few quotes from his speaking:

–”If everything becomes missional than nothing is.”
–”We design our buildings and then our building design us.”
–”The best way to change is not revolution or evolution, but to tell an alternative story.”
–”You have to challenge the system for the sake of the gospel.”

If you want a little taste of Alan or you are new to the missional conversation, click here for an Out of Ur interview with Leadership Journal on the definition of “missional.”

Yesterday I shared a coaching platform with Alan Hirsch and throughly enjoyed the opportunity to learn and dialogue. We are at the PGF conference (Presbyterian Global Fellowship) My favorite quote of the day was, “There is no silver bullet, but there is a silver imagination.” “Constantine is still the emperor of our minds” when it comes to how we think about church, Alan states. The silver imagination is about re-calibrating to our founder- Jesus; a process Alan calls radical traditionalism. He urged the presbyterian leaders wrestling through missional transformation to think like beginners and not experts- “we have to be OK with not knowing all of the answers.”