Book Review: Creating a Missional Culture – JR Woodward

JR Woodward is an American church planter, organizational leader, entrepreneur, author, academic, and leader. His foremost interests are in missional theology, missional leadership, theology and film, spiritual formation, and organizational dynamics (see his website for a full biography).

The main argument (thesis) in Creating a Missional Culture is that the unseen culture of a church is what most powerfully shapes its ability to grow, mature, and live missionally, more so than its vision, strategy, and plans (Location 211). Woodward supports this thesis through four sections that each address a different aspect of that powerful unseen culture.

In the first section, he talks about the force of culture in life, society, and in churches. He then addresses how leaders need to be aware of just how powerful culture is in shaping their leadership style and the life of a church. He concludes this section by introducing the concept of polycentric leadership: leaders as apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastor, or teachers.

In the second section, he addresses how leadership imagination shapes a missional culture. He thus argues for a polycentric approach to leadership by stating that this approach best reflects the triune God and his communal nature.

In the third section, he states that Jesus is the archetypical apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher. From there, he defines each of the archetypes, elaborates on their leadership style, and then asks questions to help the reader discern if he or she is that type of leader.

In the last section, Woodward gets practical and explains how his polycentric leadership model could work in a church. He does this by explaining how a missional culture is developed, the marks of a church, how each archetype cultivates a missional environment, pointers on church structure, and an appeal to polycentric leadership.

In my opinion, the strongest section in this book is his section on cultivating five particular environments that will create a missional culture: learning, healing, welcoming, liberating, and thriving. In a future post, I’ll elaborate on how these five environments contribute to the development of mid-size communities in a church.

This book is easy to read, extremely accessible, and has important gems that will help any and every leader cultivate and create a missional culture in their church – regardless of size. What makes this book a must read on every ministry leader’s list is the fact that these are not dry academic thoughts, nor are they anecdotal musings from a practitioner. He provides solid research for his thoughts that arose out of the trenches of ministry. This guy is the real deal, so I give this book a five out of five.