Yes, the Sky Is Falling & It's OK
February 10, 2007
From "The Sky is Falling" by Alan J Roxbourgh, a comparison is offered between the skills necessary to function is the 20th century church and those for missional churches. The first set are technical skills and the second are adaptive.
The chart comes from Next Reformation which offers an excellent review and expansion of the ideas here.
Following through with Roxbourgh's notion that we must be empowering, nurturing, inviting and cultivating rather than managing, optimizing, and controlling, the greatest challenge to leaders is to allow their own thinking to change.
Drastic changes in thought processes are never easy. The defy our training and trigger involuntary looping of old tapes at maximum mental volume. Because our self-judgmental criteria for success and faithfulness is married to the old job descriptions, we must resist every negative emotion that can positively be associated with the label, "loser."
We have quite a few check-lists to throw away. We must do, as Paul suggests, "count all things as loss."
I suspect that a winner in the new arena of leadership must go through a loser phase on the road to breakthrough. This is a potentially demoralizing period of time where he/she may even find it difficult to know what to put on his/her business card. It may be difficult to explain one's job description and self image may be a blur. The alternative to utter despair is rejection of all external and internal tentative evaluations as well as the desire for short term recognition and affirmation. The missional leader must have the courage to step into an entirely new reality where his or her own importance is minimal and the mission is truly the center of attention.
In some ways, the church is ahead of the business world in this shift and in other ways behind. The question is whether leadership is going to catch up with the vast human potential of the 21st century world in the Kingdom of God as well as in the business world.
This goes beyond mere servant leadership to co-servant leadership where "we are laborers together with God" in every field of endeavor.