McNeal’s book has not been as enjoyable a read as I thought it would be. I struggled most of the way through until the last two chapters. Almost from the first several paragraphs there was something that seemed to rub me wrong. I wondered at first if I was just struggling because I didn’t want to change, but I realized that the bottom line of what McNeal was proposing I have advocated for most of my ministry life. I have come to the conclusion that McNeal just bugged me. There seems to be an arrogant attitude that comes through in his writing. Fortunately, that attitude disappears in the last two chapters.
In the first part of the book his main theme is to convince us that the term missional renaissance is the new catch phrase for the church. I wondered if he had trademarked the term and receives a residual fee every time someone uses it. But now I am being catty. McNeal states that there are three shifts that need to be made in order to be missional: “From internal to external in terms of ministry focus,” “from program development to people development in terms of core activity,” and “from church-based to kingdom-based in terms of leadership agenda.” (p xvi) I do not disagree with any of these ideas. It has been my assumption that we have been trying to get the American church to buy into these issues for years.
The idea of dumping programs for people is interesting. How McNeal proposes to accomplish this is to adopt a new people centered…program. I think that McNeal has missed the point here. Programs are not the problem, it is the people who are administering the programs who have lost their focus. A program is only as good as the people who run them. If the people in a church are centristic in their thinking every program they do will be internal rather than external in focus. Often the leadership of a church is external in their thinking and ministry, but the laypeople are internal. McNeal did not really address how to move laypeople from internal to external. He was more interested in creating a new scorecard. After all, the title of his book suggests that a new scorecard is the goal. This idea of a scorecard is very programmatic. He is consumed with this idea and speaks more about numbers than he does how to move people into an external functioning church.
The best section of the book is found in chapter 8, beginning on page 169, where McNeal talks about self-awareness. He states, as a leader, “you need to know these things about yourself—your motivations, fears tendencies, and so on.” He then lists some specific topics: personality strengths and challenges, cognitive style, conflict style, emotional intelligence, talent, passions, and hidden addictions and compulsions. His point is that leaders need to understand themselves and be honest with themselves before they can lead a church into the missional world. He adds important areas that leaders often ignore; family development, emotional and spiritual health, physical health, and financial health. This part of the book makes reading it worth the time.
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