"Church Unique" by Will Mancini. A Review.

Church Unique: How Missional Leaders Cast Vision, Capture Culture, and Create MovementChurch Unique: How Missional Leaders Cast Vision, Capture Culture, and Create Movement by Will Mancini
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There are lots of programs out on the market to make your congregation hot, hip and huge. The unfortunate side of these approaches is that (1) they function mechanistically, "Our product worked on the East Coast in an upscale New England city, it'll work wherever you are. Just follow our twenty-seven DIY steps exactly." (2) And each project also promotes, or assumes, a specific theology about Church, Christian Sacraments, Worship, and even Eschatology. You can read more about these two downsides here if you are so inclined: (http://mphilliber.blogspot.com/search...).

That's what makes "Church Unique" unique. Will Mancini, a former pastor and now founder and consultant of Auxano, takes a fresher and healthier stance in this 271 page hardback. He has pulled together some helpful tools and strategies that respect particular congregations' specific theologies. To put it simply, the author accepts that each congregation, with their liturgy, denominational connections, theology, doctrinal distinctives and so forth, has a unique place within God's larger Kingdom; and that it needs to find that unique, God-gifted role; capitalize on it and allow it to shape, drive, and define an individual church. Mancini posits some great, clarifying questions that are useful. And throughout the book I never felt pressured to throw off any of our historically distinct doctrinal, theological or liturgical positions to become squeezed into the "successful church over there" mold.

"Church Unique" is stuffed full of ideas, walking the reader step-by-step through each part of the vision pathway. One's head almost swims and spins in some confusion from the amount of information. The mantra "less is more, and more is less" (pounded all the way through the book) doesn't appear to have shaped the way the book was written. Nevertheless, there's quite a bit of worthwhile thinking that went into this volume, and that one can take away from it. I used some of the material in a recent Elder-Deacon retreat where we began thinking about our congregation's specific place within God's larger world rescue operation. I found it a challenging, thought-provoking and prayer-informing work. As long as you don't feel obligated to embrace every ounce of the author's strategy, then I highly recommend the book.


View all my reviews

Comments

Unknown said…
Having been in a "missional church" and seen its ongoing influence elsewhere, I would make the following observations. Often the most active church leaders are too busy doing what is right to create a brand and publish books which make their churches look more successful than they are (the most active church planting church in Sheffield UK is Christ Church Fulwood - their leaders don't write much but they do a lot). Secondly, if these "missional" church chaps had really cracked the code we would be seeing mass conversions, radical changes, cultural renewal and our secular enemies would be tooling up for some serious persecution. No, I hadn't noticed it either.
November 26, 2015 at 12:06 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?" (Rev. Ed.) by John Fea. A Review

Image
  John Fea is a professor of history at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, PA. A university founded in 1909 by the Brethren in Christ Church. He originally published "Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? A Historical Introduction" in 2011, and it was revised in 2016. This 328-page paperback is packed full with Colonial and American history, drawing from original sources to answer that question. It is a book written "for the historically minded and thoughtful reader who is looking for help in sorting" out this question, avoiding polemics (xix). Since we live in a sound-bite culture, Fea recognizes that it is difficult to have a sustained dialogue on this topic, but he makes a valiant effort toward having that sustained dialogue. The book reads fairly straightforward, and doesn't seem to get bogged down in the contentious mudpuddles or bogs. In the end, Fea seems to get his point across. To answer the reigning question if America was founded as a Christian...
Read more

Union with Christ - An Application

Image
  (This was my weekly letter to my congregation on Wednesday, 21 February 2024) This morning in my devotional reading, I was working through 1 Corinthians 8. Though I’ve read these words a huge number of times over the years, today one verse caused me to stop and take stock.  Paul wrote, “ Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ ” (1 Corinthians 8:12). What struck me is a couple of things. First, in God’s saving work, we are – by grace alone – united (hitched, bonded, ingrafted) to Christ so much so, that what happens to us happens to him, and what is his becomes ours (think of Galatians 2:20, for example). As Sinclair Ferguson put it, “through union with Christ all that is his by incarnation becomes ours through faith” (“The Christian Life,” 110). Let that percolate in your heart for a while. Your fear, anxiety, tears, and so forth, he feels. And his “ Peace, be still ” is yours. Second, the way we treat one an...
Read more

"Ah, Lord! We are Animated by Anger and Anxiety, Fear and Fury..."

Image
I hesitate to put this out there because of the combative environment we are in at present. But I think some souls will take courage from this, and some will also join with me as we get to the end of this little composition. I am struck by the words of God in Zechariah 8. As he rehearses the waywardness and faithlessness of his people in the past, he clearly declares that he " set every man against his neighbor " (8:10). That got me thinking long ago. I started putting the pieces together and realized that one of God's acts of judgment is division, setting a man against his neighbor. That's what happened when he divided his people into the northern tribes and southern tribes (see 1 Kings 11:26-40). Because of Solomon's turning aside, allowing his wives to turn his heart away from the God of his father, David, the Lord brings about a rift in God's people. And this pattern of divisive judgment runs throughout Scripture. On the other hand, truthful unity is the g...
Read more