I'm reading The Missional Leader by Roxburgh and Romanuk. If I stopped reading now (not yet halfway through), it's still one of the most important books I've read in the last couple of years. I'm sure much of that is because of where I am in ministry and the things I need to think about for my local church. And I don't agree with everything, but I can't say enough about what this book is working in my life and ministry. Here are a few short quotes...
A missional church is a community of God's people who live into the imagination that they are, by their very nature, God's missionary people living as a demonstration of what God plans to do in and for all of creation in Jesus Christ. (p. xv)
Missional leadership is about creating and environment within which the people of God in a particular location may thrive. (p. 6)
Today, we give up on congregations that we declare are out of touch with the culture. We run to big, successful places with marquee-name leaders to find out how to be successful. In so doing we are going in exactly the opposite direction from everything we see in the Biblical narratives. We have forgotten that God's future often emerges in the most inauspicious places. If we let our imagination be informed by this realization, it will be obvious that we need to lead in ways that are different from those of a CEO, an entrepreneur, a super leader with a wonderful plan for the congregation's life. Instead we need leaders with the capacity to cultivate an environment that releases the missional imagination of the people of God. (p. 21)