The second wave of transformation

Someone said wisdom is “knowing what you don’t know.” Courage may be “going where you have not gone without a map or compass.”

Leadership often requires wisdom and courage. Sometimes intuition, an internal guidance system, is wiser than “known facts” and becomes a leader’s best rudder.

We know things are different in the 21st century than in the last. Yet we currently find ourselves awkwardly connected and disconnected from the church’s past, craving a meaningful past expressed in contemporary terms.

We struggle to talk about a missional church. It’s a renewal movement, helping us rediscover the idea that the church exists for the world rather than itself.

A missional church sees people come to church not to be served, but to learn service. Missional congregations stop trying to host their communities and allow their communities to host them, offering church people the plea to “come live among us with your good news” (Luke 10:1-12).

Mennonite Church USA is experiencing a second wave of transformation. Transformation sounds high-minded and spiritual, but we rarely welcome it. Right now, out of their leadership intuition, the Executive Board is leading an effort to help us embrace continuing transformation.

The board’s focus on streamlining organization is best understood as tackling the incomplete reorganization efforts that formed Mennonite Church USA in 2001. Some are surprised that our organization may require changes that weren’t possible in 2001. That is why the Executive Board in 2001 asked for a “six-year review of structures.”

Church leaders see the church as an organism, the Body of Christ, not an organization. But organization, like the clothes we wear, needs updating, sometimes replacing, if it is to remain a proper wardrobe for the Body of Christ.

One hope, one spirit, one body-that is God’s intention according to Paul (Ephesians 4:4-6). This is the guiding intuition for church leaders.

Jim Schrag is Executive Director of Mennonite Church USA