Many pastors are trying to motivate the churches they lead to express “love and good works,” and would love to see a movement of discipleship and mission take off in their city. So why doesn’t it happen more often?
One of the main problems for many pastors is that the expression of the Body of Christ they lead doesn’t have a skeletal structure of leaders within it, so it’s more like a “Blob of Christ” that mostly just sits there. The best you can do is poke it with a stick (sermon) and hope for some kind of response, but you’ll never be able to build a movement unless you get a skeletal structure of missional leaders in place, so the Body of Christ can stand up and work.
You can’t build a movement without lots of leaders. This is the basic idea behind Mike Breen’s upcoming book Multiplying Missional Leaders.
Many of the concepts and ideas I’ve written about on this blog were prompted by the teachings and conversations with Mike that I’ve been a part of: the idea that structure comes before life, and that (the right kind of) centralization must happen before decentralization will be successful… Mike has put a lot of that content into this book, which I’m grateful for.
In short, this book is a phenomenal resource for pastors and leaders. It has a great mix of big-picture strategic insights as well as practical, on-the-ground tactical suggestions for raising up leaders.
Like Building a Discipling Culture (to which it makes a great foll0w-up book), it reads a bit like a reference manual. The content is dense and meaty, and probably deserves to read a few times. I’ve heard Mike teach this content several times, and I still seem to get some new insight every time I hear or read it.
Also, incidentally, Multiplying Missional Leaders mirrors and reinforces the content of the second immersion of a 3DM Learning Community, which is the best vehicle I know of to help churches develop a culture of discipleship and mission. A new Learning Community will be starting in Fort Wayne Oct 1-4, 2012. If you’re interested in exploring the possibility of your church being involved, contact me so we can chat.
Multiplying Missional Leaders will be available soon through 3DM’s website.
Good review Ben! Pre-ordering a copy today. Do you know when this will be available as an ebook (amazon)?
Thanks Worth. Not sure on when the e-book will be available, though.
It'll be available for pre-order in Amazon sometime this week. May 14 is the official arrival date.