Reviews

I have just finished Missional and wanted to say thank-you for it. I think it is your most important contribution yet and the most significant one for me since Reaching a new Generation. I can remember my resignation message to the folk at my church. I told them about how every Sunday I would wander through the market across the road and talk with stall holders with a coffee in hand. I would wonder prayerfully what an engagement with these people would mean. Then I would have to come back across the road to run the church service. Occasionally in meetings they would discuss strategies for 'reaching' the people at the market... always with the ultimate meaning of success being how many were brought back across the road into the church services. For my church it was ultimately, always about the church. In my resignation to the congregation I told them that I was resigning for several reasons (I felt called elsewhere, etc) but ultimately because they had had five years and I still didn't live near enough to the churches' community geographically and was therefore a 'commuting pastor' and secondly because I wanted to dwell among the people of the local community who were over the road at the market while the church wanted someone whose meaning, energy and imagination was in being the CEO of the church across the road. Missional unpacked much of what was going on inside at the time. It is a systematic exploration of many conversations we have had. Thanks.
- Andrew Menzies, Principal, Churches of Christ Theological College, Australia

I just wanted to thank you for your latest book. You have awakened in me something that had been hidden under my cynicism and frustration with how our modern expressions of "church" had evolved and how we modern Christians have packaged Jesus. I think one of the most helpful aspects of the book will be a clearer description of what "missional" actually means. I've been in far too many discussions trying to define that word...all of which have been centered on the church. There is much stress in our church systems centered around budgets, butts and buildings. As we begin to discover the location of the church where God is working, those questions fade rather quickly. As I read the section in Chapter 11 about the 2 young women sharing a meal in your home, I was immediately reminded of the meal we shared in your home during the Missional conference in Vancouver last summer. That was a tangible expression of exactly what you were writing about. Thanks for not only writing about God's kingdom but practicing it as well.
- Mike Young, Missions Coordinator, Tennessee CBF