A Strategy to Move a Traditional Church to Being a Missional Congregation: An Experiment in Implementing the Roxburgh Missional Change Model in a Newfoundland and Labrador United Church

Abstract

This project focused on moving a traditional church to being a missional congregation. The Missional Change Model (MCM), developed by Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk (2006), was used as a guide to that process. The Missional Change Model is designed to assist a congregation in implementing change from the bottom up. As a methodology, it incorporates two other methodologies, action research and appreciative inquiry. To determine missional readiness at Victoria United, a congregational 360 assessment and a pastor/leader 360 assessment were completed. An analysis of the congregational 360 revealed a church that was prepared to engage the missional discussion while the pastor 360 showed a trust in the pastor to lead missional change. Following this, the implementation of the Missional Change Model-occurred over an eight-month period. Fifty people met once a month at the church to hear missional teaching, to talk, to listen and to discuss it. In the process missional awareness and understanding was created. From there, participants explored what they could do to become acquainted with their neighbourhood. As a result, nine missional experiments were initiated involving twenty-five people. Eight of those people wrote about their experiences. The missional experiments and the participant experiences demonstrated participants were motivated to move into their neighbourhood to be the presence of Christ. A by product of these results demonstrate that the MCM has been shown to be an effective tool in leading a church into its neighbourhood and enabling it to grow in its missional identity