The book has some great ideas on how to be missional; however, the motivation for being missional is off. McNeal seems to put forth that the church is called to be blessing as opposed to make disciples. His scorecard contains tracking community service hours and number of kids tutored but not once does he mention people actually coming to salvation in Jesus. He simply says that when we bless others they will be curious as to why. He never seems to put that forth as a goal or something to track. He also feels the need to tear down the traditional church throughout the entire book. He will drop a sentence here and there to try and show his support for the church but the rest of book states other wise. Yes the traditional church needs to go through some major changes but the book could have lead with his positive thoughts without constantly contrasting with the shortcomings of the church. - By the end of the book I could not tell the difference between McnNeal's ideas of being missional and the local Lion's Club ( )

Overall I loved Missional Renaissance by Reggie McNeal. I agree that the North American church is off-base and in need of some change. I agree that we have lost our identity as the people of God. I agree that we need to be more outward focused, people oriented, and kingdom based. Sometimes, though, it seems like Reggie has a very narrow view of what The Church is and takes some things a little too far. In fact, I wonder if what Reggie is encouraging is a missional church or a postmodern church. Every church should be missional, but not every church should be postmodern. If we simply exchange modern for postmodern we won’t have accomplished anything, but if the changes in culture push us to be more biblical the church will be healthier as a result.

Reggie mentions personal development as a recent cultural shift. He goes on to say that “achieving abundant life will require intentional personal development.” This is simply not true! Abundant life doesn’t come through personal development, it comes through the life, death, resurrection, ascension atonement that Jesus has provided for us. Jesus came to bring life and to bring it in abundance. In this instance it seems that Reggie has confused some healthy and good shifts in our culture with the basic Christian message. Yes, if we are following Jesus we will experience personal development, but if we are seeking personal development it will not automatically provide us with abundant life.

Aside from this, I do appreciate McNeal’s focus on following Jesus being a matter of real life, not just church life. I regularly say to my church family, “Church isn’t what happens at church.” Also, his focus on our identity is important. The North American church is in the midst of an identity crisis, and many don’t even realize it. We no longer understand who we are (and, as Reggie points out, rather than asking who we are we’re still asking what we are). But the place to start finding our identity is not in the world around us, its not in our culture or even in ourselves, it is in Jesus. To this end, I appreciated the emphasis on prayer at every turn. Only when we have a burning desire to know God and His desires for the Church and the world will we truly find our identity in Christ and begin to live for him in the nitty gritty of real life.

I do wish that the book offered more concrete help in making the transition from transitional church to missional. I couldn’t help but feel like Reggie felt the need to convince the reader at every turn that missional was necessary. Hasn’t he written other books to that end? The chapters on developing the new scorecard seemed shallow at times with little practical advice and often no guidance in how the transition can occur. He mentions changing culture by changing the conversations, but he never gives any advice on how to go about doing that. He mentions new ways to “score” church, but never really says how you go about changing to the new scoring method or letting go of the old.

In the end, this book is a helpful starting point, but it seems like there is a lot missing. The total content of the book could have been presented in one-third of the number of pages; the rest of the book is him trying to make his argument convincing. However, I do think that this is a book I will go back to many times as I try to find ways of moving my own church from an internal to an external perspective.

We don’t need a post-modern church, we need a Christian church. Inasmuch as this book encourages and builds the true church, we are indebted to his work.
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