Wednesday, December 29, 2010

How-to versus who

“...we often look for leadership training that focuses on skills development. The questions asked in such training always focuses on the how question. The reality, however, is that leading a missional group is more about the who question. I have written this book as an invitation to be and live differently. Being missional will not result from a list of how-tos we can follow; developing the skills to lead a missional group will not occur when a person simply abandons one set of leadership techniques and adopts another.

“Leading missional groups occurs as leaders are formed and shaped for mission. We have to think and lead differently when the purpose of the group moves from simply getting churched people to attend groups to moving our experience of community back into the neighborhoods. And this us especially true when we realize that those in our neighborhoods are not that interested in coming to church as it has traditionally been conceived.” Missional Small Groups, page 163

<idle musing>
This is very true. Leadership training will never be effective by itself; the who is far more important than the how.
</idle musing>

2 comments:

Alan Knox said...

Exactly.

Modern church wisdom says that if you give someone enough of the how-to's then that person will automatically become the who. I don't think it works that way and I don't think Scripture shows this.

-Alan

jps said...

Alan,

I agree. Scripture is always more interested in the who than we are.

James