The following review of Launching Missional Communities: A Field Guide was left on the amazon.com website.
"The book is divided into 5 Sections: Opening Thoughts, Key Concepts, Launch Guide, MC Life and Case Studies.
Part 1 | Opening Thoughts. The book begins with an excellent Introduction that really paints the landscape of the American church in a helpful way. What's strong about the Introduction is that it's written by someone other than the authors who stumbled upon what these guys had been doing and was able to capture that experience well. Essentially, the Introduction captures the feeling of knowing that things are broken, wanting to change it, but not even quite knowing where to start: "Many people were writing about the social theory and theology of movements and mission, but there were no clear practices for doing it. Only a few people were writing practical books on the way forward, and even then it only seemed incrementally different from what had come before. It really wasn't any more "missional." It seemed like there were a lot of thinkers who didn't practice and a lot of practitioners who didn't think."
The rest of Part 1 gives a little history as to where Missional Communities came from, a little bit about the authors (which was actually quite interesting) and then defining the terms the authors would be using throughout the book. This was definitely helpful as different people use different terms...well...differently!
Part 2 | Key Concepts. The point of this section was to show the broad principles that have shaped MCs in the past 20 years. In other words, what are the BIG THINGS the authors learned along the way that led them to MCs as they are expressed today. If you've read a lot on missional theology or practice, the first half of this section will probably be re-tread, but still helpful for setting the stage for what's to come. However, what got interesting was when they dove into the reason for the size of the groups (20-50 people). They laid out a few very compelling arguments for having groups this size. First, they said while some people define missional communities as small groups with a missional edge/focus to them, they believe it needs to be larger. Why? Because they started there as well and found that "these groups were small enough to care but not large enough to dare." Basically, it's hard to be really effective in mission with such a small group of people. It's not that it can't be, but it's difficult. The second really compelling argument was looking at research done in the 1960's by Edward Hall that showed the different "spaces" that people inhabit: Public Space (75 people or more), Social Space (20-70 people), Personal Space (6-12 people) and Intimate Space (1-2 people) and how we group ourselves in those different spaces. What I really took away was that the research showed that people derive their primary identity from the Social Space...the group of 20-70 people, which most churches don't even have. So rather than having people find their identity for "church" in the big, more anonymous Public Space (the worship service), people will naturally gravitate towards the Social Space, where it's "small enough to care, but large enough to dare." In other words, people know when you're missing, but there's still a mass of people to do something significant. Really good stuff here.
The rest of part 2 looks at Missional vs. Attractional, Leadership in MCs, the story of a Missional Community that exemplified all of these concepts (which was really helpful) and a great section on discipleship (which I thought was of particular importance as they made the case that if you don't have a way of investing in, discipling and holding your MC leaders accountable, it will all fall to pieces pretty quickly. Glad they hit on that and how they've learned to do it).
Part 3 | Launch Guide. This section is aimed mostly at people looking at making a paradigm shift in more established churches using a Sunday-centric way of being the church. But it also has a GREAT addendum for church planters launching with Missional Communities rather than a worship service, as well as a fascinating chapter on how to grow Missional Communities. Some of the Launch Guide for established churches was a little dense at times and a bit confusing, but it was heaving on details and practical help from people who have done it before. Helpful and really practical.
Part 4 | MC Life. This is easily the most practical section of the book. After you've launched Missional Communities...what do you do next? How do you do real mission? What about worship? Teaching? Kids? Finances? Can teenagers be in Missional Communities? How does it relate to the wider church well? What about leadership? How do you define the vision of the group? On and on and on. This was where the authors 20 years of experience with MCs really came to light as they addressed thing after thing. What was really helpful is that they didn't always give an exact answer but a few answers. For instance, on the issue of kids within a Missional Community. Rather than saying, "kids should be in MCs 100% of the time and here's how to do it" or the opposite of that, they listed out three different ways of dealing with kids in a MC (kids are fully integrated, kids are fully separate, kids are integrated some of the time and separate some of the time) and gave pro's and con's from their experience in doing it and helpful for suggestions for how to do each of them. In the end, they said it depends on the MC and the context they find themselves in. Things like that were very helpful and underlined the flexibility of MCs in almost any context. This section will definitely service as a resource guide for people to come back to time and time again. It's a "how-to" book without saying there is only one way to do it. There's a form, but not a formula.
Part 5 | Case Studies. The case studies were really helpful in seeing this play out in real life, but I only found the first two to be helpful. They were both church plants that had done it. The second two, both done from established churches starting to use MCs, weren't as strong as one was a newspaper article taken from a local paper about the church and the other was Q&A with the pastor. While interesting to read, they lacked the clarity of the first two case studies.
Lastly, the Appendix is full of more notes, details and information that you'd want to reference in the future.
Overall, the book was EXCELLENT. It is by far the best book I've read on both the theology and practice of being the church differently in the United States in a way that actually has worked both in Europe as well as North America. If you're at all interested in the future of the church, I'd pick up this book. "
Click here to buy your copy from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Launching-Missional-Communities-Field-Guide/dp/B004349PLO/ref=as_li_wdgt_js_ex?&camp=212361&linkCode=wey&tag=nwho-20&creative=391825
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