Reading the Bible Missionally: Essays on the Method and Practice of Missional Hermeneutics

I've collected some of my best essays in one place. For those interested in my work, I finished a book on missional hermeneutics. It will be published by Wipf and Stock and should be available in late 15 or early 16. I'll keep you updated. It will be called (re)Aligning with God: Reading Scripture for Church and World. 

Method:
Reading the Bible Missionally: A Short Guide A Methodology for applying a missional hermeneutic

What is a Missional Hermeneutic? A broad introduction to the current scholarly conversation.

Bibliography for the Study of Missional Hermeneutics. An up-to-date guide to published resources


Practice:

Crafting a Missional Ethos through the Study of Scripture

The Importance of a Missional Reading: Implications for Christ Followers Thinking through how reading the Bible missionally affects our Christian practice

Implementing a Missional Hermeneutic: Practicing Missional Community 

Implementing a Missional Hermeneutic: Understanding Your Context

Implenting a Missional Hermeneutic: Missional Holiness

From Maintenance to Missional: Transitioning Established Churches into Kingdom Outposts

 

 

The Danger of Conceit in a Missional Community

In the book of Romans, Paul presents in extended fashion his understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (Romans 1-11).  The book moves explicitly to exhortation in Romans 12.  Paul calls the Christians in Rome to present their bodies corporately as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1-2).  Transformation begins with the individual but always involves the community as a whole.  God created us to live in authentic community with one another (Genesis 1:26-31).  When we experience the salvation that God has offered to us in Jesus Christ, God calls us to be part of the body formed by followers of Jesus Christ.  Corporately, we become a "living sacrifice" to God.  We are called to no longer be conformed to the patterns of the world, but rather be transformed.  The life transformation occurs in community.

It is striking therefore that the first specific direction about the community is a warning:

NIV Romans 12:3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. 4 Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

1) Paul writes not as a person with positional authority.  He writes as a person who has experienced the grace of God.  Paul could have written: I am an Apostle and this is what I say, or I saw Jesus Christ personally on the road to Damascus or I have been a student of Scripture for all of my life.  But he doesn’t.  He writes as one who has received grace.  Isn’t this the position of us all?  None of us can stand on our own merits.  As we begin to think about community, this is the starting point.  The community of followers of Jesus Christ is a community who owes its existence to the grace and mercy of God.

Paul reminds us of this elsewhere in 1 Corinthians 1:26-31

1:26 Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things-- and the things that are not-- to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God-- that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."

2) Don’t be self-centered.  Paul’s admonition is so basic, but so profound.  Too many of us are infected with the disease of conceit.  Conceit robs us of our ability to function as healthy members of the body of Christ.  If we are puffed up, we will limit our ability to serve.  If we happen to be leaders, we will model conceit to our communities and create (unintentionally) centers of narcissism rather than the centers of outreach and evangelism.  We need constantly to remember the words of Jesus, “For the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.” 

3) Conceit is a community killer.  Our world is plagued by division: racial, economic, geographic, sex, age, and so on.  From early childhood, human beings form insular groups and cliques.  The new community created in Jesus Christ, however, is called to be radically different.  There is a profound unity in Jesus:

Gal 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Nothing kills the community that God created us to embody more than conceit.  The Church that God dreams about is an oasis in which everyone is welcome to receive God’s grace and find his or her place in the only institution that exists for something greater than itself.

4) Conceit throttles mission.  If we don’t value others and privilege our own self-interests, we will never be able to reach out beyond ourselves.  All our talk about missional church, missional reading, and radical outreach will prove to be vacuous if our communities are filled with conceit.

How do we move forward as a community?

Value the diverse gifts of the community.  Although this is obvious, it is not so easy to practice.  It is not merely a matter of mouthing the acceptance of various gifts and talents which persons possess; we must actually invite and unleash each member to deploy his or her gifts fully.  We must therefore put away “cookie cutter” and/or “fill in the blank” ways of filling out ministry teams.  Instead, we need to ask ourselves constantly, “How does our community need to change in order to utilize fully each member’s gifts?”  Leaders need to focus on mobilizing and training.

Recognize that we need one another.  In healthy communities of faith, the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.    Too many communities of faith never experience this reality.  Too many pastors function as the paid servants of the whole.  Yet pastors need every single member more than any single member needs the pastor.  We need one another.  

Consider the words of Bonhoeffer:

Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.  Into the community you were called, the call was not meant for you alone; in the community of the called you bear your cross, you struggle, you pray.  You are not alone, even in death, and on the Last Day you will be only one member of the great congregation of Jesus Christ.  If you scorn the fellowship of the brethren, you reject the call of Jesus Christ and thus your solitude can only be hurtful to you. (Life Together, 77)

Recognize and show gratitude for the contributions of each member.  As leaders we need to model gratitude and show value to each person.  The cure for conceit is the creation of a culture of gratitude.  Saying “Thank you” acknowledges the presence, value, and contribution of another member and pushes the one who shows gratitude further and further away from a self-centered life governed by conceit.

Practice a gift-based ministry.  We must learn to encourage, equip, and empower each individual in our communities to unleash his or her gifts.  This is a more difficult leadership challenge than merely trying to fill-in the blanks on some pre-packaged leadership structure, but in the long run, it will yield much more fruit.  You will gain a maximum benefit from each member.  This is the heart of Paul’s exhortation in Romans 12:6-8 –

We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.

What do you think?

© 2006 Brian D. Russell (Revised 10/2010 and 5/2015)

Implementing a Missional Reading of Scripture: Understanding Your Context

Who are the people whom God has called us to reach? What are their stories? What worldviews are held? What causes matter to them? About what do they care? A missional hermeneutic must be attentive to these questions. Obviously we are committed to encountering the Scriptures in all of their richness, but if we hope to share its message with others we must be willing to engage people at a deep level as well. Biblical studies professors often use this quotation to remind students of the centrality of reading the Bible within its literary context: “A text without a context is a pretext for saying anything that an interpreter wants to say.” But it is, likewise, true that a biblical message apart from a local context of people becomes a pretext for misunderstanding and wasted words. We must be committed to shaping our speech, metaphors, and images in light of the context to which we are communicating. When we combine a rich understanding of the biblical story with a deep connection with the people to whom God has sent us, we find ourselves in an environment in which we can truly speak to fellow humans about biblical message of (re)alignment. We find ourselves with the crucified and risen Jesus calling Christ followers to join fully in God’s mission and inviting those on the margins to become part of God’s work of ushering in a different world.

Moreover, we must also gain a sense of the gods that bind the hearts and minds of the women and men in our ministry context. Only when we understand the idols that capture the hearts of the world will we be prepared to proclaim the Lordship of Jesus in ways that subvert the claims and practices of those idols. A missional hermeneutic recognizes that idols exist within both the church and world. They are easy to spot: sex, consumerism, power, family, security, pleasure, and freedom among others.[1] But these have different localized expressions. A missional approach to Scripture listens to the text in light of the idols that reign over our culture.

As interpreters of Scripture, we learn the culture by listening carefully to the stories of the outsiders to the Christ following movement with whom we become friends. We also can learn the culture by reading the books and magazines enjoyed by the masses, and by being conversant and familiar with the popular culture of our day. In a sense, learning to exegete our context involves becoming more worldly in the sense of giving careful attention in terms of time and activities to persons presently outside or on the fringes of the Christ following movement.

A key dimension involves learning to treasure people as people. Talk of mission can sometimes involve bait and switch. We encourage Christians to befriend non-Christians principally for evangelistic purposes. But when a conversion does not follow, we move along to another non-Christian. We need to move to a more relational model of engaging the world where we build lasting friendships regardless of whether our new friend turns to Jesus as Lord or not. Authentic friendships will open up entire new networks of people whom we would otherwise never have met. This will profoundly shape the way that we read the Bible because we will unconsciously begin to see and hear the Scriptures through the eyes and ears of our new friends.  
Interested in more information about reading Scripture through a missional perspective? See my book (re)Aligning with God: Reading Scripture for Church and World (Cascade, 2016).

© 2015 Brian D. Russell 

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[1]Alan and Debra Hirsch, Untamed: Reactivating a Missional Form of Discipleship (Baker, 2010). See also Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (Dutton Adult, 2009).

Praying for Astonishment: Learning from the Ancients How to Read Scripture

Praying for a Real Meal

"Our living and loving God, astonish us anew with the riches of your Word. Astonish me and give me ears to hear all that you desire. Amen."

The study of Scripture and the proclamation of its message to the world and the Church are not accomplished merely through hard work and the application of coherent exegetical methods.  Prayer is also vital and essential to the process of reading the Bible. It is ultimately the Holy Spirit who gives life to the words on the pages of Scripture. The same Spirit who inspired the original authors and preserved these books through the millennia now brings the Word of God to us anew. I learned from Ellen Davis in her book Wondrous Depth: Preaching the Old Testament to pray for astonishment whenever I sit down to read and ponder the Scripture,

As I’ve prayed for astonishment (see opening prayer above), I’ve found some poignant and profound prayers from the ancients that I am beginning to incorporate into my own prayers for illumination as I read and ponder the life giving words of Scripture. I hope that you find them as helpful as I have.

Bede (c. 673-735) was a great scholar in the early English church. He lived as a monk in Jarrow.  Here is a prayer that he composed for use when studying the Bible:

May your Spirit, O Christ, lead me in the right way, keeping me safe from all forces of evil and destruction.  And, free from all malice, may I search diligently in your Holy Word to discover with the eyes of my mind your commandments.  Finally, give me the strength of will to put those commandments into practice through all the days of my life.  Amen.

Gregory of Nazianus (329-389) was one of the key early Church fathers who worked during the pivotal fourth century. Here is a prayer that he wrote for help in interpreting the book of Psalms:

Lord, as I read the psalms let me hear you singing.  As I read your words, let me hear you speaking.  As I reflect on each page, let me see your image.  And as I seek to put your precepts into practice, let my heart be filled with joy.  Amen.

Origen (c. 185 – c. 254) was one of greatest of the early church fathers.  He was a skilled interpreter and theologian. Here is a prayer that he composed for use in the study of the Scriptures:

Lord, inspire us to read your Scriptures and meditate upon them day and night.  We beg you to give us real understanding of what we need, that we in turn may put its precepts into practice.  Yet we know that understanding and good intentions are worthless, unless rooted in your graceful love.  So we ask that the words of Scriptures may also be not just signs on a page, but channels of grace into our hearts.  Amen.

The last prayer that I will share comes from Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274).  Aquinas was the most prominent theologian of the medieval period.  This prayer was intended for use before Aquinas preached or wrote.  I find this one particularly profound:

O Creator of the universe, who has set the stars in the heavens and causes the sun to rise and set, shed the light of your wisdom into the darkness of my mind.  Fill my thoughts with the loving knowledge of you, that I may bring your light to others.  Just as you can make even babies speak your truth, instruct my tongue and guide my pen to convey the wonderful glory of the Gospel.  Make my intellect sharp, my memory clear, and my words eloquent, so that I may faithfully interpret the mysteries which you have revealed.  Amen.

May God grant you His grace and peace this day!

All of these prayers may be found in HarperCollins Book of Prayers: A Treasury of Prayers Through the Ages(Edison, N.J.: Castle Books, 1997).

The Heart of Discipleship: Matt 16:24 the Way of the Cross and Mission

Jesus does not end his conversation with Peter with a rebuke. Rather Peter’s challenge to Jesus’ mission serves as the impetus for Jesus to make his clearest statement about the nature of discipleship in the Gospel of Matthew. In 16:24, Jesus articulates clearly and positively what it means to live as a follower of Jesus Christ.

NIV Matthew 16:24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

Verse 24 serves as the center of Jesus’ portrait of discipleship.

A Key Assumption

Before looking at the details of this verse, we need to put this passage into its proper context. The Gospel of Matthew needs to be read in a missional context. Discipleship at its heart is missional. Jesus calls disciples in order to multiply his own work of making disciples. This is clear in the climactic passage of Matthew (28:16-20). This text, better known as the Great Commission, centers on Jesus’ exhortation to “Make disciples.” Thus, we need to read 16:24 and its call to discipleship within this overarching framework of mission which undergirds Matthew’s portrait of discipleship.

Movement

Discipleship implies movement. Look at our text. “If anyone would come after me…follow me.” This verse begins and ends with words about movement. At its heart, being a disciple of Jesus involves movement. Why movement? If we desire to be missional, we have to embody a “go to” mentality rather than waiting for the world to come to us. As we read through the Gospel, Jesus was always on the move. He didn’t wait for persons to come to him. He moved around the countryside and served the people as he met them in their own contexts. Furthermore, when large crowds did surround him, Jesus slipped away and moved on to others who needed him.

Discipleship simply means following Jesus. Too often today we think of “following Jesus” as “following Jesus’ teachings.” This is correct as far as it goes. As Jesus’ disciples we are to be shaped by a Jesus ethos. Yet, Matthew goes out of his way to make it clear that the Risen Christ resides with His Church on Mission. Matthew’s Gospel is framed by two references to Jesus’ presence: 1:23 and 28:20.

NIV 23 “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”–which means, “God with us.”

NIV Matthew 28:20b And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Thus, following Jesus involves literally following our Risen Savior into the world for mission. Jesus resides with his people.

To where does Jesus ask us to follow him? As we read the Gospel we find many clues:

1) To those desperate for the things that only God can provide. Jesus routinely interacted and served those on the margins of society: lepers, blind, tax collectors, demoniacs, children, etc (see especially Matthew 8-9).

2) To the crowds who were “harassed and hurting as sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus served those neglected by the religious and righteous of his day. Jesus motivated by compassion (9:35-38) called on his disciples to look upon the fields ripe for harvest and to pray that God would send additional workers. In 10:1ff, Jesus empowers and sends out the twelve to serve the world.

3) Perhaps most radically for his original Jewish audience, Jesus reached out to all nations. This is subtle in most of the Gospel. Jesus’ earthly mission was to the people of Israel. There are exceptions, such as the healing of the Centurion’s servant (8:5-13). The Genealogy also suggests that Jesus has a wider mission by tracing his lines back to Abraham. As Son of Abraham, Jesus lived to fulfill the promise to Abraham from Genesis 12:3 “all peoples will be blessed through you.” The scope of Jesus’ mission becomes clear in 28:16-20. There the Risen Jesus unleashes his disciples into the world to “make disciples of all nations.”

Thus, we may conclude that if we seek to follow Jesus, Jesus will lead us to serve and make disciples of all peoples. He will call on us to break down boundaries that separate people. He will push us to pay attention to the very people that polite society and self-absorbed religionists are happy to ignore.

Reflection:

1) To whom is Jesus leading me?

2) Have I embraced mission as the principle function of following Jesus

3) How would my life be different if I embraced movement as essential to discipleship?

© 2015 Brian D. Russell 

Missional Leader as Sculptor of Ethos

 For the last decade, I have done much thinking about the essence of leadership—particularly missional leadership. What is it?   What does a missional leader do?

John Maxwell defines leadership this way: “Leadership is influence.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.”  Influence is a potent term.  It captures the essence of leadership. Influence is the ability to persuade or move people or institutions to adopt a certain course of action or to believe certain things to be true.  It is also, as Erwin McManus suggests, the ability to change the things that a person cares about.

In our context as followers of Jesus, missional relates to those things that resonate with the mission of God.  It involves participation in God’s actions in creation.  To be missional is to be in tune with and acting upon God’s will “on earth as it is in heaven.”  Thus, missional leadership is influence that unleashes others to participate in God’s overarching mission for His Creation.

Men and women who serve as missional leaders work to shape and create a mission-centered ethos within their communities. Such an ethos is shaped through language, environment, and actions.  We will now explore these three elements.

LANGUAGE

Secular leaders have long recognized the power of language. Bart Nanus in Visionary Leadership , wrote, "There is no more powerful engine driving an organization toward excellence and long-range success than an attractive, worthwhile, and achievable vision of the future, widely shared."

Missional leaders deploy the power of language to invite people to live in a new land—a land that evokes God-sized dreams and is permeated with the love and hope that God unleashed through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and through the subsequent outpouring of the Spirit on Jesus’ followers.  We, of course, are not describing mere rhetoric—as if human language alone has intrinsic power apart from God.  The Bible as the Word of God invites us into this new world as the Scriptures announce to us God’s mission.

I am convinced that as interpreters of Scripture we need to think about the overarching story of the Bible. Too often we have a tendency to read the Bible as a collection of fragments whose imagery we can capture for a sermon or time of teaching. Yet, the Scriptures focus on the mission of God (missio dei). 

Humanity plays a vital role in God’s mission.  In God’s original plan, humanity was created to serve as a missional community to reflect God’s character to all creation. Human rebellion (described most poignantly in the narratives of Genesis 3-11 and in Paul’s letter to Rom (Romans 1-3) created the need for God to work profoundly for the reconciliation of humanity.  This involved the creation of a new people—Israel through whom God would work to bring salvation to the end of the earth.  God’s plan of salvation for humanity reached its climax in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah.  Jesus fulfilled all that Israel was to be and unleashed his followers to into the world to share the good news of God’s salvation through the power of the Holy Spirit.  The Scriptural story ends where it began—New Creation.  Ostensibly, life in the New Creation will be a renewal of the original purposes for humanity—living as a missional community for all Creation by reflecting God’s character to it.

Thus we may outline the Bible as a whole in this manner:

Creation -- Fall -- Israel -- Jesus Christ -- Church -- New Creation

The missional leader understands, breathes, and lives for this narrative. She or he uses the power of language to help others to catch a glimpse of what God is doing. The goal of this deployment of language is simple: conversion. The missional leader seeks to establish a missional ethos through language so that followers of Jesus the Messiah may be (re)converted and (re)ignited to God’s mission and so that those non-Christ followers may be invited to live for God’s mission receiving the gift of life that God offers through trusting Jesus Christ.

ENVIRONMENT

Designers of missional worship services need to maneuver skillfully between two false temptations. The first temptation is a stodgy allegiance to a traditional liturgical service.  Traditionalists tend to forget that every tradition began as a contemporary and fresh expression of worship in some context. It is simply wrong-headed to think that an orthodox theology will translate only into one type of worship. The second temptation is to overemphasize “edginess” as evidence of missional zeal. It is a fine line between seeking to speak clearly and relevantly to a target audience (or as I like to say “to speak human”) and losing the essence of the Gospel.

Here are a couple of thoughts about shaping environment.

1) Prayer—Never underestimate the importance and power of prayer.  Missional communities resonate with God through prayer.  Leaders must lead from their knees.  The creation of environments must be birth in prayer and sustained by the prayers of the missional leaders and their communities of faith.  There is no substitute for this step. 

2) Scripture—The Bible offers to its readers a new world.  It is an invitation to experience a new life and to live the reality of New Creation in the present.  Missional leaders understand that communities of faith need to be saturated with Scripture.  The Bible is the most profound book that humanity possesses.  Missional communites need to rediscover its power and its ability to shape and create ethos.

3) Deploy Gifts Openly—Missional leaders push their communities to grow in grace and Christlikeness by celebrating and deploying the gifts of the body.  Many emerging Churches have rediscovered the power of art in worship. Dance, music, painting, video, and drama are becoming increasingly common in worship gatherings in missional communities in the Western world.  These features push followers of Christ to use their own gifts. For too long, Christian artists have been held at arm’s length by the Church. This has harmed the Christ following movement because it has stifled the creativity of community as the whole.  Any time that a person’s gifts and talents are squelched the body of Christ is harmed. Missional communities need every single Christ follower functioning fully. Deploying gifts in the context of worship encourages others to use their own gifts for the good of the whole.

ACTIONS

Missional leaders must learn to sculpt the ethos of their communities of faith.  We have already looked at the potential of deploying language and creating environments that reflect a biblical ethos.  The missional leader can also shape ethos through his or her actions.  This may ultimately be the greatest shaper of ethos. 

There are at least four areas in which our actions can model a biblical ethos for our communities to embrace and embody:

1) The missional leader can shape ethos through a commitment to a missional lifestyle.  Mission must be modeled from the top down. Our communities will only be missional to the extent that the community’s leaders embrace mission as a core value and live their lives in light of God’s mission. Our modus operandi must resonate with Paul’s poignant declaration in 1 Corinthians 9:22—“I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.”  

2) The missional leader can shape ethos through the practice of a radically inclusive ministry.  All people on earth regardless of race, sex, color, nationality, religion, or socio-economic class have been forged in the image of God. This is the message of Genesis 1:26-31.  All oppression and divisions among these groups is traceable to the pervasive and persistent presence of sin in every individual, group, and culture (Genesis 3-11). Sadly, the Church has for too long perpetuated these divisions even within the community of faith. Yet, in Jesus Christ, there is a radical newness. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the possibility of living the life that God created us to live is a reality. The old divisions are gone.  There is new creation (2 Corinthians 5). Paul words in Galatians 3:26-28 are profound—“for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

What does a radically inclusive ministry look like?

a) It empowers women for leadership roles. I fully understand that the evangelical world is divided over this issue, but I am convinced that the biblical witness supports the full inclusion of women in leadership roles within the Christ-following movement. This is not the place for a full defense of this position, but I am convinced that this needs to be part of our witness to the culture.

b) It rejects divisions along socio-economic lines. Missional leaders are willing to pay the price to allow the active participation of poor and rich alike within their communities.  James 2 gives stern warnings about acting otherwise. As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, we will continue to witness extreme poverty. If the Christ-following movement is to ever have a global impact, it needs to begin serving the poor in their own geographic locales. 

c) It develops cross cultural and interracial friendships as the presupposition for the creation of multi-cultural communities that give the world a taste of the diversity of Kingdom of God. Too many leaders lament the segregation of communities of faith, but miss the irony that the basis for desegration is not lament but the active embrace of persons different from ourselves. We need to cultivate friendships and relationships with persons from backgrounds unfamiliar to us.

An inclusive ministry is the pathway to unleashing followers of Christ to deploy fully their giftedness.

3) The missional leader can shape ethos by empowering others to serve according to their giftedness.  The biblical portraits of gifts (e.g., Romans 12 or 1 Corinthians 12-14) suggest that the body of Christ is a living organism in which each member has a crucial role to play.  The people of God need one another.  Biblical community occurs when each believer deploys his or her gifts, talents, and passions within the community.  The missional leader will work to shape the ethos of the community by (re)implementing a biblical vision of the God’s people by empowering followers of Christ to unleash the full range of their giftedness and the natural result of their relationship with Jesus Christ.  Missional leaders rather than being the driving force of every discrete ministry within a community will serve as coaches who train, empower, and encourage followers of Christ in their Kingdom work.   

4) The missional leader can shape ethos by a commitment to living a whole and balanced life as a follower of Jesus Christ.  Human beings were created to live in authentic community in which they reflect God’s character to the world.  Community, holiness, and mission are the essence of the imago dei in humanity. Missional leaders need to reflect these aspects in their own lives. The persons who listen to us and watch us will be persuaded most readily by a life that they would want to live. Following Jesus Christ is not about prosperity or material happiness, but it comes with a joy and fulfillment that cannot be attained by any other means. If we are to shape a biblical ethos for our communities, we ourselves as missional leaders must live whole and balanced lives before our communities.

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If you are looking for a resource to create a missional DNA in your community of faith through the study of Scripture, check out Invitation.

© 2006 Brian D. Russell, revised significantly June 2012 and March 2015