dissertation

ship, 14 leader education 15 – or even how the basic message of the Bible is to be laid
out. 16
Generally speaking, it appears that in the EMC the term ‘paradigm’ mostly refers to
phenomena that are equivalent to “underlying assumptions,” 17 “worldviews,” 18 and
“frameworks.” 19 A few contributors to the conversation, such as Michael Frost and Alan
Hirsch, are more specific by referring to Thomas Kuhn’s 20 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
as “a tremendous resource in our attempts to reframe the mission of the
church.” 21 They describe a paradigm in Kuhn’s sense as “a self-contained and self-referential
mode of thinking in relation to scientific and cosmological problems” and as “a
way of trying to both understand our world and also to solve the problems of understanding
by relying on a set of assumptions that give rise to the solutions in relation to
the problems.” 22
71
14
“In the postmodern paradigm, leadership looks more like a design team working together to form and
construct the building together.” Rusty George and Jeff Krajewski, Herding Cats: Teaching and Leading in a
Postmodern World (Joplin, MI: College Press, 2001), 107.
15
Ed Stetzer and David Putman speak about the “paradigm of leaving one’s local church and spending
three years to prepare for ministry.” Ed Stetzer and David Putman, Breaking the Missional Code: Your Church
Can Become a Missionary in Your Community (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006), 177.
16
For example, Brian McLaren proposes a “three-dimensional biblical paradigm (creation, liberation, peacemaking
kingdom).” Brian D. Mclaren, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that are Transforming the
Faith (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2010), 171.
17
Cf. Linda Bergquist and Allan Kerr, Church Inside Out: A Guide for Designers, Refiners, and Re-Aligners (San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010), 8. See also 55-60, 99 and 110 on paradigms and worldviews.
18
For example, the influential church consultant William (Bill) Easum states that “most theories about
congregational life are flawed from the start, because they are based on an institutional and mechanical
worldview [emphasis added].” William M. Easum, Unfreezing Moves: Following Jesus into the Mission Field
(Nashville: Abingdon, 2001), 17. Concerning missional church literature, Rod MacIlvaine remarks that it is
“highly worldview conscious.” Rod MacIlvaine, “Selected Case Studies in How Senior Leaders Cultivate
Missional Change in Contemporary Churches,” (DMin thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 2009), 48.
19
Alan Roxburgh, for example, uses the word ‘frameworks’ to refer to “powerful conceptual maps – or lenses
– that we have developed inside our relational networks and through our training that determine how
we see the world and thus shape our decisions about how to act and respond to what is happening around
us.” Alan Roxburgh, The Sky is Falling?! Leaders lost in Transition (Eagle, ID: ACI Publishing, 2005), 45.
20
Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) was an historian and philosopher of science. His The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
(University of Chicago Press, 1962) became one of the most cited books of the twentieth century,
especially because of its concept of paradigm. “It is safe to say that there is not an academic discipline not
influenced by Kuhn’s paradigm,” one scholar asserts. James A. Marcum, Thomas Kuhn’s Revolution: An Historical
Philosophy of Science (New York: Continuum, 2005), 134. The Lutheran missional theologian Terri Elton,
for one, suggests that Kuhn “might be a prophetic voice for the church today.” Terri Martinson Elton,
“Corps of Discovery: A Twenty-First Century Contextual Missiology for the Denominational Church in the
United States,” in Craig Van Gelder, ed., The Missional Church in Context: Helping Congregations Develop Contextual
Ministry (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 151.
21
Frost and Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come, 7 and 190.
22
References to Thomas Kuhn can be found in many other EMC publications. See, for example, Dave
Tomlinson, The Post-Evangelical (Revised North American edition, El Cajon, CA: Zondervan/YS, 2003), 91-
92; Dwight J. Friesen, Thy Kingdom Connected: What the Church Can Learn from Facebook, the Internet, and
Other Networks (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2009), 24; Linda Bergquist and Allan Kerr, Church Inside
Out: A Guide for Designers, Refiners, and Re-Aligners (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010), 59.