A Letter From the President
Friends and Partners, Sustaining Missional Leadership
By Patrick Keifert

Click here to return to the Church Innovations web site.

With the focus of sustaining missional leadership among judicatory leaders, Church Innovations and its partner Allelon sponsored another very successful conference in late April. More specifically, we focused on sustaining missional leadership precisely in judicatories that have been working on being missional and cultivating missional leadership over the last few years.

This focus did not deter a number of judicatory leaders and local church leaders who are just beginning the missional journey from attending and finding the whole conference most engaging and fruitful for them. Next year we will include more sessions directed to beginners in the movement.

A number of Church Innovations long-term partners in research and consulting were center stage at the conference. These included the Mennonite Church-USA (MC-USA), Presbyterian Church-USA (PC-USA), Reformed Church in America, and Churches of Christ. Within these groups are friends and partners.

The Mennonites turned out by the dozens, including Jim Schrag, executive director of the Executive Board of MC-USA and Stanley Green, executive director of the church-wide mission agency, Mennonite Mission Network (MMN). Several of the regional conference leaders were also present. The foci of the Mennonite presentations were the Lancaster Mennonite Conference (LMC) and Eastern Mennonite Missions (EMM). Among these leaders were Keith Weaver, moderator of the Bishop Board of LMC, Richard Showalter, executive director of EMM. These executives were joined by critical missional leaders: Merv Charles, EMM; Joanne Dietzel, LMC staff leadership; and Alonna Gautsche Sprunger and Conrad Kanagy, staff leadership for the Partnership for Missional Congregations in LMC.

Schrag used the gathering to preside over critical conversations for sustaining missional leadership in MC-USA. MC-USA has put being a missional church as the top priority and the priority within which all other initiatives function. Schrag and others described these Mennonite-only sessions as frank, engaging, critical, and fruitful for the future of missional leadership.

The Presbyterians turned out in dozens as well. The PC-USA delegation was led by Church Innovations’ good friend and partner Bruce Stevens, the synod executive for the Synod of the Trinity—PC-USA. Synod of the Trinity is the oldest of the Presbyterian synods involving 16 Presbyteries in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. Stevens was joined by Dave Dawson in the PC-USA plenary presentation. Dawson has been a part of the international conversation on Gospel and Our Culture since its beginnings and brings depth of reading and leadership experience. The two of them made a dynamic and rich presentation.

Stevens has engaged all 16 Presbyteries in the synod’s commitment to be a missional synod. He brought with him executives and staff from several of the Presbyteries engaged in the Partnership for Missional Church, including Pittsburgh, Shenango, Westminster, and Philadelphia. Like the Mennonites, the Presbyterians also held sessions just for Presbyterians in which creative, frank, and fruitful discussions about sustaining missional leadership occurred.

The Reformed Church in America had church-wide leadership front and center. Dick Welscott, longtime innovator and leader in new church development and congregational redevelopment, shared from over 20 years of this work. He spoke wisely and honestly about the fads and patterns of the past three decades and the enduring lessons for sustaining missional leadership. Wes Granberg-Michaelson, general secretary of RCA, preached in one of the worship services and engaged in fruitful conversations with other denominational executives as well as regional leadership, the focus of the conference. New leadership in the RCA offices, Kirsty DePree, also attended the conference picking up leadership as partners to Welscott and Granberg-Michaelson.

Bringing on a new generation of leaders was a pattern with most of our friends and partners. In the case of some judicatory leaders, the leaders themselves sent members of their staff, so that the overall vision and journey of missional church was being passed on to a new generation. This is an important moment in the journey.

Churches of Christ brought outstanding leaders from churches and Abilene Christian University (ACU). These included key leaders in the PMC clusters in Dallas, Texas and Portland, Oregon. Jack Reese, dean of the Graduate School of Biblical Studies at ACU, along with other faculty from ACU, provided plenary and smaller group presentations and workshops.

Along with these four longtime partners of Church Innovations, new partners from the Episcopal Church-USA, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Disciples of Christ, Church of the Brethren, United Methodist, and Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, to name those with larger numbers, joined us at this conference. Clearly these judicatory conferences are serving a very critical need within the economy of those churches seeking to initiate and sustain missional leadership and cultivating a missional church.

A number of conclusions seem clear to me.

• The initial conference two years ago was not a fluke but represents a sustainable learning conversation. Hundreds of judicatory leaders, both new and experienced, in the missional church movement look to these conferences for learning and growth.
• More materials and sessions for beginners would strengthen the event for those in attendance.
• A strong long-term partnership going over a decade now is well in place and represents the critical mass for a sustainable missional movement into the next generation.
• The next generation was present in substantial numbers, indicating that the missional movement has passed into a new generation.
• A wide variety of denominations and non-denominational systems are represented and share this movement.
• The movement represents an international membership, as several continents were represented among the leaders attending.
• Not enough persons representing the dozens of cultures and languages already a part of PMC were present. Indeed, the startling contrast between the grassroots diversity and the European and American Caucasian indicates that diversity has chosen not to, or is unable to, attend.

For Church Innovations this conference represents another indicator that we are hosting a significant missional movement along with a network of diverse organizations. We are engaged in strong, sustainable, valuable relationships with critical leaders in this movement. We have depth and breadth of relationships in congregational, judicatory, church-wide, and research organizations which trust us to provide our partners with strong, challenging, theologically sound, and socially scientific sophisticated, yet practical, knowledge, skills, and habits for innovating missional church. We are blessed by these relationships and must act faithfully upon them.

Peace,

Pat Keifert