Creating a Missional Culture Quotes

“Henri Nouwen wonderfully describes the practices of silence, solitude and fasting. Within a world of words, silence allows us to hear the voice of God and ultimately gives us a liberating word for others. Solitude, as Nouwen says, is “the place of purification and transformation, the place of the great struggle and the great encounter.”[5] Solitude is the place where we stand alone, naked before a holy God, and learn to accept his grace and love, which set us free. Finally, fasting allows us to enter into the sufferings of Christ and walk closer with God. As Eddie Gibbs says, “The Church in the West has got to learn to suffer. We love Easter, but we don’t like Good Friday.”[6] Fasting gives a needed break to our digestive organs and sharpens our spiritual senses. As we engage in the three practices of silence, solitude and fasting, we can overcome a noisy, overwhelming, frenzied life and connect with the heart of God. Here we find love and liberation for all, responding to the suffering and captivity in the world.”
― J.R. Woodward, Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World

“The prescription for spiritual transformation has often been too individualistically oriented. We are encouraged to engage in spiritual disciplines so that we might have the power to do what we can’t do by will power alone. But what happens when people don’t have the “will power” to engage spiritual disciples on a consistent basis? Our character is left untended. “In a wild world like ours, your character, left untended, will become a stale room, an obnoxious child, a vacant lot filled with thorns, weeds, broken bottles, raggedy grocery bags, and dog droppings. Your deepest channels will silt in, and you will feel yourself shallowing. You’ll become a presence neither you nor others will enjoy, and you and they will spend more and more time and energy trying to be anywhere else.”[1] So what are we to do?”
― J.R. Woodward, Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World

“Ultimately, each church will be evaluated by only one thing—its disciples. Your church is only as good as her disciples. It does not matter how good your praise, preaching, programs or property are; if your disciples are passive, needy, consumeristic, and not [moving in the direction of radical obedience,] your church is not good.”
― J.R. Woodward, Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World

“Culture is like gravity. We never talk about it, except in physics classes. We don’t include gravity in our weekly planning processes. No one gets up thinking about how gravity will affect their day. However, gravity impacts us in everything we do, every day. Like gravity, the culture of a congregation can either pull people down to their base instincts or lift people up to their sacred potential. We create culture, and culture re-creates us.”
― J.R. Woodward, Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World

“When people come to the Table in the congregation you serve, do they remember that Jesus’ body was broken for all and that his blood was spilled for the whole world, and thus seek to be bearers of God’s saving purpose for his whole world (see Col 1:20; 1 Jn 2:2)? Or do they view themselves as exclusive beneficiaries of God’s grace? Jesus takes the table of fellowship and extends it to include the tax collectors, prostitutes and those left out by the religious system. How well does the congregation you serve do this?”
― J.R. Woodward, Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World

“Leaders need community to pursue wholeness.”
― J.R. Woodward, Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World

“A mature community cultivates a lifestyle of love in the midst of market-style exchanges: a lifestyle of joy in the midst of manufactured desire, peace in the midst of fragmentation, patience in the midst of productivity, kindness in the midst of self-sufficiency, goodness in the midst of self-help, faithfulness in the midst of impermanence, gentleness in the midst of aggression, and self-control in the midst of addiction.”
― J.R. Woodward, Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World

“Creating a missional culture is more than just adding some outward programs to the church structure. Creating a missional culture goes to the heart and identity of God, to who we are and who we are becoming.”
― J.R. Woodward, Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World

“The world is now an urban place. The resources and concerns of the church need to acknowledge this.”
― J.R. Woodward, Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World

“the illiterate of the future will not be those that cannot read or write. Rather, they will be those that cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”
― J.R. Woodward, Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World

“More than a strategy, vision or plan, the unseen culture of a church powerfully shapes her ability to grow, mature and live missionally.”
― J.R. Woodward, Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World

“Edgar Schein, a specialist in organizational culture and former professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, says, “If one wishes to distinguish leadership from management or administration, one can argue that leaders creates and changes culture, while management and administration act within culture.”
― J.R. Woodward, Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World

“Leaders of God’s people uniquely contribute to the cultivation of a culture distinct and different from the dominant culture. For it is the role of Spirit-filled leaders to create a missional culture within the congregation.”
― J.R. Woodward, Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World