Will Mancini’s excellent book on missional team leadership argues that we must be cultural architects, consciously aware of our surrounding culture and purposely shaping the culture of our movement to create a preferred future.
He offers the following suggestions, which I’ve adapted to building spiritual movements of evangelism and discipleship.
Missional Team leaders do the following:
Scripture: Reveal God’s Signature
Leaders lead from the Scriptures. Look for particular passages that fuel your passion, enlarge your vision, inform the values of your movement, and distinguish your movement and its strengths. Master the exposition of these texts. Then use every opportunity to ooze the vision through the pages of Scripture (almost always “figurative” in its expression). As you do this, you’ll show the signature of God behind your vision-casting and point the movement back to the Original Visioneer.
Several years ago, I shared responsibility for the “Gateway” division of CCC’s Military Ministry. We were developing movements of evangelism, discipleship, leadership and service at the basic entry points or Gateways into the military services. I discovered several Biblical passages referring to the “gates” of ancient cities (Isa 28:5-6, Psm 127:5, Gen 24:60), all of which suggest that the gateways or entry points into walled cities were defended by the best warriors. To save a city, you sent the best warriors to the city gates to fight. Those scriptures provided a treasure of “God signatures” to encourage young enlisted men and women entering the service of their country as well as our staff who served them.
Folklore: Retell the Story
Develop a campus or movement folklore. Folklore is a special class of story–stories that speak so fundamentally and clearly to your campus (movement) vision that they have to be told, retold and told again As mission team leader, play the role of story collector and story teller. Religious people and programs are defined by preferences; movements and missional people are defined by stories. Thru your campus folklore, you can cultivate the missional imagination of your students, faculty and volunteers and thereby reorient them back to God’s vision.
For example, I still remember hearing Roger Hershey speak of spiritual movements at Miami of Ohio. He told story after story of where Miami of Ohio students were serving around the globe and cemented those stories by pulling out a “world map” out of his pocket with the names of those students written on the nations where they served the gospel.
Symbol: Mark Defining Moments
A symbol is a visible sign of something invisible. Roger Hershey’s map was a physical symbol of the impact of the movements there at Miami. When a leader expresses old familiar symbols and/or creates new ones, he or she begins to shape the culture of the movement. Every culture has essential metaphors that define and shape its ethos. Your symbols (reflections of those metaphors) can be containers of your special campus or movement folklore.
A powerful metaphor connected to these symbols and stories can cause an eruption of images, ideas, dreams, beliefs, and convictions all at one time. Erwin McManus, named his church, Mosaic, because it reflected its identity and vision. The metaphor of mosaic reflected (1) a vibrant expression of a multiethnic congregation, (2) emphasized a personal brokenness lived out in community, and (3) captured an awareness of a sovereign God who works as a master artist. Pretty cool!
Pull your team together and work on recognizing/defining symbols for your movement.
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Start shaping your culture. You might want to read/study Mancini’s book…it’s full of suggestions on how missional leaders cast vision, capture culture and create movement.
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