is the 'world' or the 'church' my parish?

Twenty years ago, as a young missionary, I came to recognize that I had no experience of leading a congregation, of being a pastor. That was a problem, why? because I was being asked to train pastors in Egypt, and then South Africa. I asked a veteran pastor in South Africa to point me to a useful book on the nature of the pastoral task. He pointed me to Kennon Callahan, the author of Twelve Keys to an Effective Church. Well, the book I read, at the time, was Callahan's newest book, Effective Church Leadership (1990). The book starts with this sentence:

The day of the professional minister is over. The day of the missionary pastor has come.

I knew I had found the right resource!

Callahan had other good stuff:

It is one thing to say, "the world is my parish." It is another thing to say, "the church is my parish." The former is decisive on a mission field. The latter works only in a churched culture.

The church is called to mission for the integrity of mission, not for the sake of church growth. We are called to share the kingdom, not to grow churches. The fundamental category for this time is mission, not church.

No longer does the minister train the laity, who, in turn, do the mission in the world. No longer does the pastor serve inside the church and the laity serve outside in the world. In our time, a new understanding of the nature of leadership needs to be grown forward. We need a foundational understanding that the focus of leadership will be in the world, not in the church.

within a few months I was serving in my first church as a pastor, and a few years later planting a church. Callahan's approach, articulated long before "missional" became vogue [but at the same time that Newbigin's materials appeared], shaped my understanding of the church leadership task.

So here I am re-reading it before using it as a core, required text for a course I will be teaching at Tyndale in August.

Comments

[Joel]

The "focus of leadership will be in the world, not in the church". That is intriguing. I also love the fact that this was written long before Alan Hirsch et al. came along. I'd love to learn more.