Mega-Church Leaders and Missional Pioneers in Conversation: Creating a Space for Cooperative Work

The mega-church needs missional innovators. The church cannot put the missional label on existing programs and expect to engage the internal or external community in adaptive work. Missional innovators have the potential to bring a new rhythm to the church and move beyond programmatic approaches to ministry. Yet these two groups are often separated by their ministry philosophies and language structures.

This project seeks to create a new space for conversation by leveraging linguistic research, adaptive leadership principles and missional practices to propose a starting point for cooperative work. The result is a process that identifies boundary conditions, a proposal for a new leadership role and a process to connect missional innovators and church leaders in conversation. The work forms a foundation for innovative missional work based out of an established church community so that the congregation moves beyond a professional clergy centric existence and towards a shared life based in missional leadership.