Missional Map-Making: Skills for Leading in Times of Transition

by Alan J. Roxburgh

Guidance for church leaders to develop their own maps and chart new paths toward stronger, more vibrant, and more missional congregations

In the burgeoning missional church movement, churches are seeking to become less focused on programs for members and more oriented toward outreach to people who are not already in church. This fundamental shift in what a congregation is and does and thinks is challenging for leaders and congregants. Using the metaphor of map-making, the book explains the perspective and skills needed to lead congregations and denominations in a time of radical change over unfamiliar terrain as churches change their focus from internal to external.

Offers a clear guide for leaders wanting to transition to a missional church model Written by Alan Roxburgh, a prominent expert and practitioner in the missional movement Guides leaders seeking to create new maps for leadership and church organization and focus A Volume in the popular Leadership Network Series

This book is written to be accessible to all Christian congregational styles and denominations.

Genres: Leadership, Faith, Church, Theology

204 pages, Hardcover

First published December 30, 2009

About the author

Alan Roxburgh is a pastor, teacher, writer and consultant with more than 30 years experience in church leadership, consulting and seminary education. Alan has pastored congregations in a small town, the suburbs, the re-development of a downtown urban church and the planting of other congregations. He has directed an urban training center and served as a seminary professor and the director of a center for mission and evangelism. Alan teaches as an adjunct professor in seminaries in the USA, Australia and Europe. In addition to his books listed here on Amazon, Alan was also a member of the writing team that authored "Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America".

Through The Missional Network, Alan leads conferences, seminars and consultations with denominations, congregations and seminaries across North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the UK. Alan consults with these groups in the areas of leadership for missional transformation and innovating missional change across denominational systems. Along with the team at TMN, he provides practical tools and resources for leaders of church systems and local congregations.

When not traveling or writing, Alan enjoys mountain biking, hiking, cooking and hanging out with Jane and their five grandchildren as well as drinking great coffee in the Pacific North West.

Reviews

[Rebecca Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Practical and accessible to anyone. Roxburgh analyzes changes in US culture (and its influence globally) that have produced a society today that has very different understandings of itself and of the church than what may have been true a generation ago. He critiques current approaches and unexamined assumptions and makes recommendations for a new mindset and new ways churches should interact with their neighbors.

[Richard Butcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alan J. Roxburgh is a Baptist minister, based in Vancouver Canada and has worked in church leadership for over 30 years. This book is a publication for the Leadership Network, a North American organisation supporting innovation in local church leadership.
Many Western churches are struggling to respond to radically changing post-modern contexts using traditional management practices. Roxburgh proposes a new leadership style characterised by the missional ideal of mapmaking; a process that is community led and outward focused. The book is written for local church leaders (irrespective of denomination and context) who are seeking to rethink their leadership skills through a radically different understanding of mission. Divided into two parts, Part 1 focuses on the rationale and reasons why traditional leadership approaches no longer work and the subsequent need for a map making approach and in Part 2 the book describes the ethos and practice of practical map making.
In Part 1, Roxburgh uses the map as his key metaphor for describing the often-unconscious framework through which we understand the world. The Western map was traditionally Christian but with the Enlightenment the dominant map has increasingly become that of modernity. Modernity is concerned with facts and asserts that through a process of understanding individual parts, we are able to understand and ultimately control them. The church has been significantly affected by this mechanistic understanding of modernity understanding control (expressed in ideas like strategic planning and numerical measures of performance) as good church leadership. A feature of modernity has been the dichotomisation of the public expressions ‘facts’ (science, plans and control) and the personal internal expressions of ‘values' (feelings, spirituality and teleology). Through this process humanity’s and indeed the church’s ‘means’ and ‘ends’ have become separated and the role and status of facts, as public statements, have become dominant.
Roxburgh asserts that as we are now living in an ‘in between’ or post-modern context where modernity’s ideas do not function. Like the internet, this time is characterised by unprecedented and exponential change and an uncertain final destination. Pluralism, immense global need, globalization, fast technological change, postmodernism, less confidence in primary structures, democratisation of knowledge and the return to Romanticism are powerful contemporary forces contributing to the experience of ‘liminality’ or profound change. In response Church leadership needs to be correspondingly radical, embracing the discontinuity and courageously reimagining a new understanding of church. Rather than having all the answers leaders need to know how to make maps as they progress along the journey of uncertainty; maps that can adequately explain experience, reshape missional imagination and inspire Gospel proclamation.
In Part 2 of the Book, Roxburgh briefly sets out a practical approach to missional map leadership. The first step is concerned with understanding how the environment has specifically changed the local context focusing on people’s actual experiences and stories over that of demographic information. Stage 2 is concerned with the core identity of the church where leadership is focused on cultivating an environment of trust and scriptural understanding. The DNA of the church is reimagined and with raised awareness the congregation is better able to discern God’s mission. Step 3 involves a leadership posture which does not react to context and culture but forms a ‘parallel culture’ that acts as a radical example of Christian discipleship. This parallel culture draws on ancient traditional church practices including the offices, hospitality, caring for the poor and learning. The final step connects the internal first three steps, concerned with strengthening and supporting the existing congregation with outreach and partnerships within surrounding non church neighbourhoods and communities. Listening and responding are key features of this stage and the missional map leader is asked to act as a gardener who cultivates an environment in which ordinary people are supported in generating missional actions. Critically, Roxburgh asserts, that the Holy Spirit dwells within ordinary people, and it is therefore ultimately ordinary people who are the churches missional map-makers, not traditional church leaders.

Roxburgh’s case for change, based on the churches ongoing relationship with outmoded ideas of modernity, is extremely powerful. His focus on relationship as the place to find Christ, that the Holy Spirit is active outside of the church and that the church must therefore be in deep contact with its context to be fully the church draws heavily on Bonhoeffers theology of church and ministry. This process acts against enlightenment thinking by bringing religion out of the private sphere into the world and in doing so re-linking mission with evangelism. The leadership model he builds from this place radically challenges established managerial church leadership guides such the ‘Twelve Keys’ and the simple paradigm of ‘map’ uniquely cuts through the complexity of other comparable texts, such as Mission Shaped Church and Missional Imagination, to provide a simple, robust and flexible framework for post-modern mission.
Whilst arguably essential reading the book ultimately feels unbalanced. Specifically, the case for change in Part 1 is overly developed at the expense of an insightful but underdeveloped Part 2 critically concerned with application. Roxburgh ignores validating sources which could have given his model more authority and substance including post-Newtonian relationship dynamics, liberation theology and egalitarian community development practice. Most significantly he largely ignores the experience of churches in different cultural and socioeconomic contexts discounting their potentially valuable contribution. The book as a result feels orientated towards white North America middle class suburban contexts, where ideas of community empowerment are new. Issues of equality, diversity and social justice are absent or reduced and these are key issues for successful community outreach. Roxburgh goes further, repeatedly criticising churches whose missional focus is on meeting needs; a position that assumes enormous existing privilege. The experience of many churches working in deprived urban contexts challenges his view where the focus for missional leadership is modelled on Christ’s example starting with liberation, healing and justice for the poor.
Roxburgh is critical of the church’s position and the frenetic pace of post modernity but there is an absence in the call for repentance seen in Mission Shaped Church, and the practices of contemplation and prayer at the heart of leadership, for example as proposed by Stephen Cottrell, could be developed. The focus on scripture is strong but places much less focus on worship or church tradition and the potential role liturgy, sacraments and worship therefore is under developed.

[Richard Fitzgerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Missional Map-Making is a book with some good insights. It is also a book with somewhat disappointing remedies for the problems it diagnoses. Roxburgh claims that we must replace strategic planning styles with something more decentralized. Fair enough. But, his solution is just repackaged strategic planning with an initial layer of investigation. To compound his problem, the book is written in a time-bound fashion, making it dated before it was published. As a 40-page academic paper for a particular conference, it would be five stars. As a book that should have a long-shelf life pointing readers to a new future, it is a two-star book. Because the book provides good insights into post-modern worldview changes, it just squeaks out an extra star. There are probably more helpful books on the subject.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

In keeping with the “missional” fad du jour, Roxburgh argues that the mental “maps” church leaders use for ministry are hopelessly outdated due to rapid cultural change. The first part of the book is thick with anecdotes and quotations supporting this notion, and clergy working in a seemingly hostile cultural context will warm up quickly to an author who seems to understand their dilemma. However, the proposed solution of a new map-making process is a disappointment. Roxburgh suggests that leadership and planning for God’s people must involve a theological dimension. But then he seems to bypass theological analysis, simply exchanging the modern metaphor of organization as “machine” (implying linear growth, centralized authority) for the postmodern metaphor of “internet” (implying non-linear growth, decentralized authority). He devotes a chapter to telling the reader “why strategic planning doesn’t work in this new space and doesn’t fit God’s purposes.” Then, later in the book, he outlines a “map-making process” very similar to the strategic planning process he denounces. It seems that “internal and external audits” are BAD, while a step to “assess how the environment has changed in your context” is GOOD. “Mission Description” in the form of a “mission statement” that defines core convictions and values is BAD, but a step to “focus on redeveloping core identity” is GOOD. Creating a “Vision Statement” of a generalized “preferred future” is BAD, though a step to “create a parallel culture” that “involves the resocializing of Christians into certain kinds of practices and habits” is GOOD. The alignment of the vision with “a plan that features a series of concrete, measureable actions plotted along a timeline” is BAD, while a step to “form partnerships with the surrounding neighborhoods and communities” is GOOD. The author offers some helpful criticism of strategic planning as it is often practiced, including the possibility that leaders dehumanize others who are valued only for their role in accomplishing the leaders’ plans, and that most deadlines for quantitative growth fail because the leaders who propose them cannot account for thousands of unknown details. However, my overall impression is that Roxburgh is proposing nothing new, just describing well-known phenomena and concepts with new jargon.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book for several reasons. First, Roxburgh looks to history in order to understand the present. Secondly, unlike so many books on leading change in the church, he does not try to get leaders to abandon traditional churches in favor of "emergent", "emerging", or whatever the new term is this month church structures. He points out that the old ways of planning and leading aren't working, but his solution is a shift in the way leaders think and lead rather than in the renegotiation of church structure or polity. He states that the CEO model of pastoring is becoming a thing of the past and that the changing world requires leaders who are cultivators of environments. Often this comes across as casual and less linear than strategic planning styles. I am glad to here him say this, since I have never viewed myself as the CEO type but still feel called to the ministry. More than provide new information, Roxburgh validated many thoughts and feelings (even aspirations) I have had for a while. His premise is that we can no longer rely on modern trends of statistical data collecting and strategic (from the top down) planning. Instead we must nuture congregational life with the story of the Scripture, helping them to see themselves in the story, and guide them (leading through example) to understand and engage our world. Though he does not say it in so many words he is talking about accomplishing Ephesians 4:12 by way of Romans 12:2.

[Chris Hyde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly, I think this is one of the most important books for pastors to read that I've read in a long time. It can be a tough read, almost like a textbook at times, but if you can wade through it all, what Roxburgh is saying about church leadership in the now and the future is VERY insightful!

[Rocco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Geweldig boek. Een must-read!