Over the last several years, I have undergone an ecclesiological revolution of sorts. That is, my understanding of what the church is and is called to be has changed dramatically. This is due, in part, to personal frustration and dissatisfaction. However, this shift in my ecclesiological understanding largely comes from my deeper trust in and larger view of God and a deepening sense what it means to be a sent people.

Darrell Guder, one of the editors of the seminal work Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, gives eloquent words to the shift in thinking I have experienced in his lecture, Walking Worthily: Missional Leadership after Christendom:

From a missional perspective, the desired outcome of theological education is not the competent, well-equipped professional clergyperson… Rather than just the clergy, it is the entire missional community that is the central agency that God’s Spirit employs to bring about God’s healing purposes for the creation. The test of missional theological education is the equipped and faithful witness of called and sent communities. The people of God in concrete assemblies and fellowships must be the focus of missional formation and not merely the incumbents of ordered ministry structures. To borrow Leslie Newbigin’s now-classic phrase, it is the community that is the hermeneutic of the gospel.

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