Discovering Partners on the Journey of Spiritual Discernment
The First Year in the Partnership for Missional Church
By Jannie Swart

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In an effort to unpack and explain the PMC process in more detail we published a “50,000 feet” overview of the Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) in the March edition of the newsletter. In June we continued the series with “What is Missional Church?” This article explaining what happens during the first phase of PMC is the third in that series.  We will continue the series in the next several newsletters.

Discover the triune God as the most important partner for a missional church

Patrick Keifert writes in his book We Are Here Now, “adjusting focus from the church’s mission to God’s mission massively changes everything” (p.63). In our previous issue of the Church Innovations newsletter, we described the Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) as a journey of spiritual discernment of participants in God’s mission in the world and highlighted in our description of missional church the fundamental importance of focusing on God as the primary Subject in relation to the world. The word missional, first and foremost, refers to the mission of God in the world and not the mission of the church.

During the first year of PMC, local churches are discovering God as the most important Partner in their journey of spiritual discernment by addressing the question, What is God’s preferred and promised future for our local church? This question brings focus to the importance of faithfulness to both God’s future and God’s past, for the sake of finding the past that is useful for God’s preferred and promised future. This question is featured in a variety of ways during the first year of the PMC journey through (among others) Dwelling in the Word and focusing on whom God is sending to participate with us in God’s mission.

Discover each other within the local church as partners on the missional journey

In finding our place as participants within God’s mission in the world, local churches also discover God’s gifts among themselves. An important part of this is discovering congregational leaders with the ability to provide missional leadership during this journey of spiritual discernment. Therefore, the first year focuses a lot on leadership development and the cultivation of spiritual practices among the leaders. PMC seeks to establish habits of spiritual discernment that will enable leaders to provide the leadership necessary for the local church’s missional vocation.

During the first year of the PMC journey, local churches are provided the opportunity to identify and develop leaders on multiple levels of participation in this process. It includes a Steering Team that directs the PMC journey within a particular congregation and makes sure that the PMC process is integrated with the governance process of that local church. It also involves Listening Leaders who have the gift of listening and are able to encourage people to speak freely and then shaping these discoveries for reflection and discernment.

Discover other congregations as partners on the local church’s missional journey

One of PMC’s primary aims is to introduce congregations to others from which they can learn. The entire PMC process consists of a cluster of congregations walking the journey together and learning from one another all the way. As Keifert puts it, “we place the congregations into a process of spiritual discernment with one another that helps them discover other congregations as partners for missional church” (We Are Here Now, p.79).

The events during the first year of the PMC process are designed to fulfill this deliberate purpose of community building between congregations of different sizes and at different places on their missional journey. These congregations are mostly from within a particular judicatory system, with the blessing of the judicatory leaders and involving the building of capacity within the broader system as well. However, sometimes these congregations form an ecumenical cluster of congregations from different denominational backgrounds (as has been done in South Africa and Namibia). The community building of an average of 12 congregations happens through the cultivation of habits and practices of spiritual formation and discernment, first by the spiritual leaders of these congregations, then by other congregational leaders.

Jannie Swart, CI’s director of Partnership for Missional Church, is a PhD candidate in the Congregational Mission and Leadership program at Luther Seminary.