Missional Map-Making: leaders as detectives of divinity

Excerpt:

I have written elsewhere about my basic conviction that the Spirit of God dwells among  the ordinary people of God.   I have described how, by extension, God's future is among these people, not with boards and leaders with vision and mission statements. The imagination for what a local community  of Christians might be doing in their  neighborhoods is found among the people themselves,  not in programs designed for another era or deemed by leaders as essential to the inner life of a church.  The unthinkable, unimaginable new things the Spirit is gestating in a local church will be called forth in conversations among the people This is why the role of leadership is that of cultivator rather than program planner, a shaper of dialogues rather than a cheerleader for established programs  Missional map-makers do not go about looking for people to fill the programs of the church but become detectives of divinity listening in on conversations, attending to what the Spirit might be birthing, ready to be surprised  rather than bent on fitting people into predetermined categories. These are some of the new skills leaders must develop in this new space.  The map-makers are in our local churches; they are ordinary people in whom the Spirit is gestating all kinds of unanticipated futures for the kingdom . Mission-shaped leaders create environments of permission-giving and in which  these ordinary dreams might be birthed."  -p. 170, Alan Roxburgh, Missional Map-Making: Skills for Leading in Times of Transition

More book preview:

Missional Map-Making; Skills for Leading in Times of Transition by Wiley

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Entire book on PDF here


Interview with Alan Roxburgh (related to book) video below  by Chris Yaw of GrowMyChurch.com, synposis here,  AR says to forget about your mission, and get outta the building: