MattGlover.com

Some of the Melbourne based blogs have been a bit quiet over the weekend as we’ve been attending the Forge intensive on Pioneering Leadership. Some good stuff so far - I’ll reflect on them as I get a chance…

On Friday night, Mark Sayers presented a talk called “How to be an emerging church leader without turning into a too cool for school, mega-church bashing, arm chair critic, who basks in their own sense of self-superiority.”

By the time he had finished saying the title, there was no time left for anything else so we all went home…

Kidding…;)

Anyway, this guy is seriously smart! And while I think he can make some simple things sound overly complicated, his main points on the dangers of emerging/missional leadership are worth reflecting on:

1. We can become so immersed in conversation about new forms of mission that we rarely engage in mission.

I see this a lot and it’s one of the reasons I’m glad Forge uses ‘practitioners’ (awful term) for most of their teaching. I would suggest, though, the the bigger danger is talking just about church and its form/structure rather than mission. This simply repeats the mistakes of the past.

2. In a celebrity obsessed, brand driven culture, it s tempting to brand yourself and ’spin’ your mission and ministry.

Replace the word ’spin’ with ‘blog’ and I’ll think you’ll get a better idea of what Mark is talking about! Again, we can talk a lot of talk and this quite naturally leads to using the right jargon words and making things sound more ‘emerging’ than they really are.

3. It is easy to be seduced into the use of power when fighting the misuse of power.

It is almost frightening how many people jump on the bandwagon when it becomes known what you’re trying to do. One of the good things about my community keeping it’s traditional name is that it doesnt sound new or trendy or missional or any of those things and thus keeps the tourists away. Most people that have no church background don’t care what we’re called anyway so it’s made no difference to our mission.

The names communities are given are oftewn a power play, saying more about what they think of others than describing who they are. If you call yourself misisonla, you’re really saying others are not. If you call your self charismatic (ie spirit filled) you’re really saying that others are not. The list goes on and we get sucked into the power play.

Why not just call yourself ‘church’?

4. Emerging Church leadership becomes a pleasantly distracting interest or hobby.

Mark reminded us here of mission being a sacrifice of one’s whole life.

5. We reform church, culture and mind but ignore the need for a tranformation of the heart.

Mark was a little hazy here, but I think the essence of what he was saying is that the fruit of the emerging church can only be seen by transformed lives. I would add that thats the only way the fruit of any church can be viewed - emerging or otherwise.

Trying to be a little provocative, Mark suggested that the proponents of the ‘properity gospel’ have it right. God does want us to have all the good things in life. The problem though is that most prosperity folk view that thinking through the lense of consumerism and conclude that God wants us to have material things and monetary wealth. In John 10:10 Jesus said that he came to give us life abundantly - life full of purpose and meaning that is lived in relationship with God and people. THAT is the truely properous life.

So how do we be emerging church leaders? Well, I don’t think Mark even came close to answering that, but at least he pointed us in the direction of the things we should be aiming for as we lead our communities.

I’d be interested to hear what others thought who were there.