dissertation

207
sions. 41 In the terms of practical theology, envisioning refers to the visional and obligational
levels. 42
Moreover, in the conceptualization of missional leadership which we submitted, the
content of the process of envisioning receives a focus. In this respect, the definition is normative.
In missional communities, participants can be expected to tackle the following
question from time to time: how can we remain oriented to God’s mission in this time
and context? 43 For example, the fifteen missional congregations that are discussed in the
book Treasure in Clay Jars all continually ask questions of location and identity, such as
“where they are, in a geographic, social, cultural context; when they are, in the flow of
history and change; who they are, in continuity with a tradition, re-forming it in the
present; [and] why they are, welcoming God’s call, entering God’s coming reign.” 44
8.4 Cultural Formation
The term cultural points to the fact that each community has a unique culture, 45 climate,
46 or code. 47 Although a community may also be viewed as a subculture of an even
larger culture, our leadership characterization focuses on the ‘internal’ cultural dimension.
48 The larger culture is assumed to form the context – in Browning’s terms: the ‘environmental-social
level’ – in which the missional community finds itself.
41
See on discernment, Cray, Discerning Leadership; Hahn, “Congregational Discerning as Divine Action in
Conversation”; Richard R. Osmer, The Teaching Ministry of Congregations (Louisville, KT: Westminster John
Knox Press, 2005), 43-55 and 283-302; and Luke Timothy Johnson, Scripture & Discernment: Decision Making
In The Church (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996).
42
The reference here is to Don S. Browning, A Fundamental Practical Theology: Descriptive and Strategic Proposals
(Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1991), 70 ff.
43
See also 8.9, below.
44
Hunsberger, “Discerning Missional Vocation,” 39.
45
The culture of a congregation, according to Roxburgh and Romanuk, is “how it views itself in relationship
to the community, the values that shape how it does things, expectations of one another and of its leaders,
unspoken codes about why it exists and who it serves, how it reads Scripture, and how it forms a community.”
Roxburgh and Romanuk, The Missional Leader, 63. Sociologist Penny Becker describes (congregational)
culture as “local understandings of identity and mission...that can be understood analytically as bundles
of core tasks and legitimate ways of doing things.” Penny Edgell Becker, Congregations in Conflict: Cultural
Models of Local Religious Life (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 7.
46
Jan Hendriks, a Dutch expert on congregational development, defines ‘climate’ as the way in which people
are being ‘seen’ (or not being seen) and how this is given form in procedures. Jan Hendriks, Verlangen en
vertrouwen. Het hart van gemeenteopbouw [Longing and trusting: The heart of congregational renewal] (Kampen:
Kok, 2008), 101.
47
A church’s code, Kevin Ford suggests, is its “collective personality...shaped in part by their unique histories,
experiences, and contexts.” Ford, Transforming Church, 89. Code “shapes the stories we tell, the rituals
we observe, and the unspoken rules we follow.” Ibid., 96-97. Symbolic expressions of code are myths, rituals,
heroes, visual style and architecture. Ibid., 102, 122 ff.
48
Mary Jo Hatch, with Ann L. Cunliffe, Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern Perspectives, second
ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 213.