Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Missional renaissance - pt. 3 (from program development to people development)

Chapter 5 in Reggie McNeal's book Missional Renaissance describes missional shift #2: From Program Development To People Development. He says to foster a people-development culture we need to move:
  • from standardization to customization
  • from scripting to shaping
  • from participation to maturation
  • from delivering to debriefing
  • from didactic to behavioral
  • from curriculum-centered to life-centered
  • from growing into service to growing through service
  • from compartmentalization to integration
  • from age segregation to age integration
Some of my underlined notes from this section:
  • p. 89 - "Are people better off for being a part of this church, or are they just tireder and poorer?"
  • p. 91 - "God is not more interested in developing people inside the church than those outside it."
  • p. 93 - "Loving God and loving our neighbors cannot be fulfilled at church. Being salt and light can not be experienced in a faith huddle. Engaging the kingdom of darkness requires storming it, not habitually retreating into a refuge."
  • p. 97 - "People are no longer going to let the church or church leaders provide the template for their spiritual journeys. Postmoderns do not know why they should have to search for God on church time or church real estate. Nor do people automatically believe that other people know what's best for them or that one organization can meet all their spiritual needs."
  • p. 100 - "In a people development culture, the key issue is maturation. Are people growing in every aspect of their life? Are they becoming more like Jesus? Are they blessing the world as the people of God?"
  • p. 101 - The asthmatic illustration...
  • p. 102 - "Intentional debriefing should be part of our routine gatherings, whether in worship experiences or in small group encounters. You may have to fight your physical and programmatic architecture to pull this off. People lined up in pews have to be given specific permission and instruction ("Turn around and tell someone close to you the best thing that happened to you this week"). People in classroom settings need help in moving past simple chitchat or discussion about the curriculum to specific encounters designed to help them unpack their lives. You can come up with a revolving question of the week to do this. "What was the biggest challenge you faced this week?" or "What worries you most these days?" or "What about this past week is a cause for celebration?" Life debriefing requires an environment that is very differently shaped than the one crafted to focus on the delivery of information."
  • p. 102 - "After we preach a sermon, we should ask people to declare to one or two people seated around them what they will take away from the message. Or perhaps we ask them to state one or two things they will do with what they have just heard or one or two things they will do differently based on the truth that has just been shared with them. The same thing should happen in every Bible study class or small group."
  • p. 103 - "When people perform a day of community service or participate in an overseas mission excursion, we should debrief them afterward. Questions should include "What did you learn? About people? About God? About yourself? Did you find prejudices or biases you have that were challenged? What part of this experience or insights from this experience can you transfer into the rest of your life? How will your life be different from this experience?"
  • p. 104 - "The program-driven system favors a culture that creates church customers, not followers of Jesus. It makes people who can spout off all the right answers but live unaccountable to the truth. The missional church, by contrast, dares to move into the arena of life development by meddling with people's behaviors. After all, this is the crux of the matter when it comes to overcoming addictions, confronting dark sides, and pursuing more positive life habits. Cultures that shy away from helping people address their behaviors fail them as environments of growth."
Yeah... some good, yet difficult, stuff here.

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