On Monday I read "Present Future" by Reggie McNeal during a cross country flight from LAX to Atlanta. I heard Reggie speak on the topic of "Missional Leaders" last Friday night at the Organic Church Movements conference in Long Beach and was intrigued to buy his book in order to dig deeper. Several assumptions long held by many in North American churches are challenged such as: "If you build the perfect church they will come", "Growing your church automatically makes a difference in the community", "Developing better church members will mean better evangelism", "The church needs more workers (for church work)", "Church involvement results in discipleship", and "Better planning will get you where you want to go (in terms of missional effectiveness)".
"The current church culture in North America is on life support." This is the first sentence of the book. McNeal is not saying that the church is about to die, but that the unique culture that we know as "church" is an endangered species. He makes the assessment that our church culture over the years has become confused with biblical Christianity.
McNeal identifies six wrong questions that we have been asking for years, and replaces them with six tough questions that we need to ask to fulfill our missional calling. This book will make you think and might cause you to reevaluate many areas of church ministry.
5 comments:
You know I thought I read that book, but it turns out that I actually have not. I had it confused with a book named "Future Church" by Jim Wilson (a very good book which speaks somewhat to the same subject). Now I'm gonna have to buy "The Future Present". I was intrigued and challenged by Reggie's session at the conference. I look forward to digging further into what he has learned.
Thanx for sharing this!
I picked up the book today. Hope to start on it this week. Thanks for the talk today. God used you to push me over the edge today. I can't wait to see where it might lead.
Read the first chapter last night. Heavy stuff. Unfortunately, I have a feeling he is going to be long on diagnosis and short on remedy. On the other hand, the first step is admitting you have a problem. Looking forward to reading the rest of the book.
Hey, Russ. The anon comment above was mine. I'm not sure why it posted anon. I thought I was logged in. I am quite sure it was not a user malfunction.
Jeff, I'm not sure what happened to make your comment anonymous. Might have something to do with me switching over to moderating comments on the blog.
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