The - [ EXTERNALLY FOCUSED ]- QUEST Becoming the Best Church FOR the Community ERIC SWANSON RICK RUSAW Foreword by ALAN HIRSCH
THE QUEST
THE QUEST Becoming the Best Church for the Community Eric Swanson and Rick Rusaw
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[ LEADERSHIP NETWORK TITLES ] The Blogging Church: Sharing the Story of Your Church Through Blogs, Brian Bailey and Terry Storch Church Turned Inside Out: A Guide for Designers, Refiners, and Re-Aligners, Linda Bergquist and Allan Karr Leading from the Second Chair: Serving Your Church, Fulfilling Your Role, and Realizing Your Dreams, Mike Bonem and Roger Patterson The Way of Jesus: A Journey of Freedom for Pilgrims and Wanderers, Jonathan S. Campbell with Jennifer Campbell Leading the Team-Based Church: How Pastors and Church Staffs Can Grow Together into a Powerful Fellowship of Leaders, George Cladis Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens, Neil Cole Church 3.0: Upgrades for the Future of the Church, Neil Cole Off-Road Disciplines: Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders, Earl Creps Reverse Mentoring: How Young Leaders Can Transform the Church and Why We Should Let Them, Earl Creps Building a Healthy Multi-Ethnic Church: Mandate, Commitments, and Practices of a Diverse Congregation, Mark DeYmaz Leading Congregational Change Workbook, James H. Furr, Mike Bonem, and Jim Herrington Baby Boomers and Beyond: Tapping the Ministry Talents and Passions of Adults over Fifty, Amy Hanson The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community, Hugh Halter and Matt Smay Leading Congregational Change: A Practical Guide for the Transformational Journey, Jim Herrington, Mike Bonem, and James H. Furr The Leader s Journey: Accepting the Call to Personal and Congregational Transformation, Jim Herrington, Robert Creech, and Trisha Taylor Whole Church: Leading from Fragmentation to Engagement, Mel Lawrenz v v
vi leadership network titles Culture Shift: Transforming Your Church from the Inside Out, Robert Lewis and Wayne Cordeiro, with Warren Bird Church Unique: How Missional Leaders Cast Vision, Capture Culture, and Create Movement, Will Mancini A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey, Brian D. McLaren The Story We Find Ourselves In: Further Adventures of a New Kind of Christian, Brian D. McLaren Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church, Reggie McNeal Practicing Greatness: 7 Disciplines of Extraordinary Spiritual Leaders, Reggie McNeal The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church, Reggie McNeal A Work of Heart: Understanding How God Shapes Spiritual Leaders, Reggie McNeal The Millennium Matrix: Reclaiming the Past, Reframing the Future of the Church, M. Rex Miller Shaped by God s Heart: The Passion and Practices of Missional Churches, Milfred Minatrea The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World, Alan J. Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk Missional Map-Making: Skills for Leading in Times of Transition, Alan J. Roxburgh Relational Intelligence: How Leaders Can Expand Their Influence Through a New Way of Being Smart, Steve Saccone Viral Churches: Helping Church Planters Become Movement Makers, Ed Stetzer and Warren Bird The Externally Focused Quest: Becoming the Best Church for the Community, Eric Swanson and Rick Rusaw The Ascent of a Leader: How Ordinary Relationships Develop Extraordinary Character and Influence, Bill Thrall, Bruce McNicol, and Ken McElrath Beyond Megachurch Myths: What We Can Learn from America s Largest Churches, Scott Thumma and Dave Travis The Elephant in the Boardroom: Speaking the Unspoken About Pastoral Transitions, Carolyn Weese and J. Russell Crabtree
[ CONTENTS ] About Leadership Network ix Foreword by Alan Hirsch xi Acknowledgments xv Introduction 1 Chapter 1 What Kind of Day Is Today? 4 Chapter 2 Focus: They Choose the Window Seat, Not the Aisle Seat 26 Chapter 3 Purpose: They Practice Weight Training, Not Bodybuilding 44 Chapter 4 Story: They Live in the Kingdom Story, Not a Church Story 70 Chapter 5 Missions: The Few Send the Many, Not the Many Send the Few 89 Chapter 6 Partnering: They Build Wells, Not Walls 111 Chapter 7 Systems: They Create Paradigms, Not Programs 133 Chapter 8 Evangelism: They Deploy Kingdom Laborers, Not Just Community Volunteers 155 Chapter 9 Creativity: They Innovate, Not Replicate 174 Chapter 10 Outcomes: It s About the Game, Not the Pregame Talk 200 Notes 217 About the Authors 231 Scripture Index 233 Index 235 vii
[ ABOUT LEADERSHIP NETWORK ] Leadership Network, an initiative of OneHundredX, exists to honor God and serve others by investing in innovative church leaders who impact the Kingdom immeasurably. Since 1984, Leadership Network has brought together exceptional leaders, who are focused on similar ministry initiatives, to accelerate their impact. The ensuing collaboration often across denominational lines provides a strong base from which individual leaders can better analyze and refine their individual strategies. Creating an environment for collaborative discovery, dialogue, and sharing encourages leaders to extend their own innovations and ideas. Leadership Network further enhances this process through the development and distribution of highly targeted ministry tools and resources including video, podcasts, concept papers, special research reports, e-publications, and books like this one. With Leadership Network s assistance, today s Christian leaders are energized, equipped, inspired and better able to multiply their own dynamic Kingdom-building initiatives. In 1996 Leadership Network partnered with Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint, to develop a series of creative books that would provide thought leadership to innovators in church ministry. Leadership Network Publications present thoroughly researched and innovative concepts from leading thinkers, practitioners, and pioneering churches. The series collectively draws from a wide range of disciplines, with individual titles providing perspective on one or more of five primary areas: Enabling effective leadership Encouraging life-changing service Building authentic community ix
x about leadership network Creating Kingdom-centered impact Engaging cultural and demographic realities For additional information on the mission or activities of Leadership Network, please contact: Leadership Network 2626 Cole Avenue, Suite 900 Dallas, Texas 75204 800-765-5323 www.leadnet.org client.care@leadnet.org
[ FOREWORD ] As a writer and teacher on missional church, one of the axioms of leadership that we can assume is that every organization is perfectly designed to achieve what it is currently achieving. This comment usually raises a bit of pushback because it seems to put responsibility for any current situation back onto those who lead the organization. And this is in some ways true, but it s only half the truth. It also suggests that there is something in the inherited ecclesial templates handed down, and subsequently adopted without serious critical reflection, that tend to factor in the propensity for either growth, or decline. So, the issues do concentrate around leadership imagination and inherent design flaws in the way we conceive of, and do, church. If your church is in decline, it is probably because you are organizationally designed for it. Don t complain... redesign! And you need to redesign along the lines that Jesus intended. You see, the Church that Jesus built is designed for growth and massive, highly transformative, growth at that. It was Jesus who said I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it (Matthew 16:18). Hang on! It says that the gates of hell don t prevail against us! It is the Church that is on the advance here, not hell! Contrary to many of the images of church as some sort of defensive fortress under the terrible, relentless, onslaughts of hell, the Church that Jesus built is designed to be an advancing, untamed and untamable, revolutionary force created to transform the world. And make no mistake: there is in Jesus words here a real sense of inevitability about the eventual triumph of the gospel. If we are not somehow part of this, then there is something wrong in the prevailing designs, and they must change. xi
xii foreword The reality is that the Western church is in a precarious situation today. Missional observation in Australia indicates that between 12 to 15 percent of the population will likely be attracted to the prevailing contemporary church growth model. This is not actual attendance, which is way below this figure (around 2.8 percent), rather it indicates market appeal or cultural connectivity. The rest of the population, most of whom describe themselves as spiritually open, will probably never find their place in a contemporary attractional church. It is simply out of their cultural orbit. If they are not repulsed by it, they are at least blasé and/or turned off to the cultural forms inherent in the model. In the United States the situation is not much better. I estimate that in the United States the percentage of people who find their spiritual connection through an attractional church is probably up to 40 percent. Again this is not attendance, which is more around 18 percent. In both Australia and the United States the demographics of the group likely to come to church are probably what we can call the inspirational middle class, family-values segment good, solid, well-educated, hard working, middle-class, suburbanites with Republican leanings. Contemporary attractional churches are really effective in reaching non-christian people fitting this demographic, but it is unlikely that it can reach far beyond that leaving about 60 percent of the population out of the equation. So the question we must ask is, How will the 60 percent of our population access the gospel if they reject the current expression of existing church? This is precisely the issue that the missional church seeks to address. My contention is that it is going to take an externally focused, missionalincarnational, church approach to reach beyond the 40 percenters. It is only when the church decides to become the best church for the community that it at least has a fighting chance to reach the majority of the unchurched/dechurched population. The attractional church is about getting the community into the church. The missional, externally focused church is about getting the church into the community. Incarnational ministry, at its heart, is taking church to people by helping believers live out their calling among people who do not yet believe and follow Jesus. The missional, externally focused church begins with the missionary questions: What is good news for this people group? What would the church look and feel like among this people group? Entering into a community through love, service, and blessing creates new proximate spaces as we become good news to the community. At the end of the day the impact of a church is not determined by who it wants to reach but by
foreword xiii who it is willing to serve. Certainly missional living affects what happens outside the church, but it also greatly affects our own spiritual formation as disciples of Jesus. The Externally Focused Quest provides a significant part of the answer to the question of how we turn religious consumers into missional disciples that can impact the world around them for Jesus cause. Building on the already significant insights from their previous writings, Eric and Rick blend years of direct leadership experience with great theological insights and a real heart for missional impact, and so concoct a really good book for our time. Our appropriate compliment ought to be to follow their advice, move into our communities, and transform them in Jesus name. Los Angeles, California January 2010 Alan Hirsch Missional author, dreamer, and strategist (www.theforgottenways.org)