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Some presbyteries are restructuring to support a missional focus

These people are excited. Ask any of these presbytery and synod executives to talk about their involvement in the missional movement and their voices rise with enthusiasm.

“It was as though I had a song running through my head for 20 years, and finally I knew what it was,” exclaims Bruce Stevens, executive for the Synod of the Trinity.

"The missional church is nothing new. The Bible is a missionary document."The word missional is still new in many parts of the church, but those who are promoting the ideas insist this is basically a restoration of classic Christianity.

“The missional church is nothing new,” maintains David Dawson, executive of Shenango Presbytery. “The Bible is a missionary document.”

And yet it is new for many, since American churches have been accustomed to a culture where Christian faith was widely accepted and participation in church was common. The steady decline in attendance and membership in many churches across denominational lines reflects the cultural shift — a decline that finger-pointing and blaming has done nothing to reverse.

Many denominational leaders recognize that working harder will not in itself reverse the trend either. As they introduce missional concepts to their churches, these leaders are calling for a basic reorientation.

“It’s not a different way of doing church,” Stevens explains, “It’s a different way of thinking about church.”

Because the changes in society are so pronounced, churches have to discover profoundly different ways to reach people with the gospel. This is often referred to as the adaptive challenge. Church people often look for a technical fix, such as a new program, when what is needed is for the church to adapt to the new circumstances.

“The toughest part for these churches is to discover the adaptive challenge,” Dawson says. The missional approach requires learning how to interact with a culture that is less familiar with Christian perspectives and in many respects more resistant.

While missional concepts are being applied across the country, Pennsylvania is a hot spot. The Synod of the Trinity has more than 60 churches engaged in some form of missional pursuit. Some are using a program developed by the Center for Parish Development. Others are participating in the Acts 16:5 Initiative, developed by Presbyterian minister Stan Ott. (See Ott’s article.) Five presbyteries in western Pennsylvania are using the Partnership for Missional Church, provided by Church Innovations.

“We’re trying to change the culture of the synod,” Stevens says. With a commitment of staff, program, and budget, that may very well occur.

New culture, new focus

Presbyteries are redefining themselves as well, and one of the major markers of the changes is the new focus: congregations. Alan Adams, presbytery executive of Beaver-Butler Presbytery, says his presbytery has been asking the basic question, “What do presbyteries do?”

“Presbyteries need to stop acting like they’re large churches,” he says. “The old idea was that presbyteries receive money and do mission.” But now the support is being turned toward congregations. “When churches do mission, they grow. So, we have reorganized our presbytery units, focusing on how we can help our churches carry out their mission.”

In the Partnership for Missional Church, leaders in the participating churches meet three times a year over a three-year period. In the full first year, the churches are guided into a biblical exploration of God’s missional purpose, and each church is urged to spend much time in prayerful discernment of who they are and where God has placed them. Once this groundwork is done, the second year launches a time of experiment in outreach. The third phase
consolidates the findings and prepares the churches to make more substantive decisions about their transformation into missional bodies.

“This is not a three-year program and then your membership doubles,” cautions Dawson. Nevertheless he and the other executives see the missional paradigm not as a fad, but as one of the most helpful movements to come along in
a long time.

“I see God bringing so many pieces together at one time,” Stevens says. “We’re seeing more engaged churches.”

“It’s part of a bigger transformation,” Adams says, “for the churches to get the focus off themselves and onto God’s work in the world.”

Converting the converted to a missional mind

While the missional approach is close to the heart of these leaders, they recognize that not everyone has warmed up to the idea yet. For some members, it doesn’t make sense that the church has to reinvent itself.

“We have to be careful not to say that the last 200 years have been a mistake,” Stevens says. Adoption of missional principles in Pittsburgh Presbytery has been furthered by the participation of 30 churches in the Acts 16:5 Initiative. Judith
Slater, Associate Pastor for Small-size Churches in Pittsburgh Presbytery, not only oversees the Acts 16:5 Initiative, but is a pastor herself.

“My church has participated. It has made a world of difference,” Slater says, noting that smaller churches have to translate some of the concepts, but when they find a way to apply the principles, the missional seeds begin to sprout.

Each of these presbytery leaders speaks about the importance of grounding the whole process in prayer.

“It really is about following God, not change for the sake of change,” Slater insists. Her congregation adopted the practice every Sunday of praying, “God, show us what you want us to do in this place, at this time.”

Betty Meadows, General Presbyter of Mid- Kentucky Presbytery, echoes the centrality of prayer. An early player in promoting missional concepts in presbyteries, Meadows sees the hand of God in the learning process in her presbytery that has brought them to its current missional focus. Like most presbyteries, hers had supported congregational redevelopment work, “but we were never satisfied with the result. Then, when we discovered the word missional, we tested the waters.” The presbytery invited sessions to create “mission dream teams” of five to seven members to meet regularly with their pastors for Bible study, prayer, and discernment. “Their own faith developed but without change in the church.”

But when the presbytery introduced the Acts 16:5 Initiative, “The Spirit of God just blew through the presbytery.” Twenty churches participated — large, small, urban, rural, suburban, liberal, conservative. What has made this approach so promising of good results? A year of prayer before the transformation process began.

“The whole thing has been bathed in prayer,” Meadows says. “We held each church up in prayer weekly. Part of what we are experiencing is the Spirit’s leading.”

Meadows initiated the Missional Presbyteries Project, one of the incubators that has resulted in many of today’s presbyteries exploring the missional paradigm. She recruited Darrell Guder, pioneer in the missional movement and now Dean of Academic Affairs at Princeton Seminary, to conduct a fiveyear exploration with 10 participating presbyteries. Together they asked: What would a presbytery look like if it were missional?

Today, there are numerous living examples to answer that question, and the presbytery leaders who are pressing for missional alignment are convinced they are onto something of great significance.

“As the denomination keeps shrinking, maybe we’re more ready to look back at the church in Acts and ask, How can we be the church that God envisions?” Meadows suggested. “This is one of the most exciting times to be in God’s church.” As for the missional movement, “It’s a God thing.”

Richard Carter is pastor of Faith Presbyterian Church in Medford, NJ.