Think of it this way: most pastors spend years and years becoming experts in running Sunday morning worship gatherings. They go to seminary for it. Spend 15-30 hours of sermon prep each week. Many grew up attending worship services and are thus pre-conditioned to have a certain level of expertise already (through the immersion process). If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say it takes about 5 years of hard work before a pastor feels really competent in large gathering services. A lot of time and energy have gone into this.
Why do we assume that learning something like Missional Communities will be any easier or take less time? Why do we think we can learn to do MC’s faster than we can learn the worship service, something that most of us grew up with? MC’s are foreign to so many of us. It’s not like we can stick it in a microwave and pop it out.
I keep coming back to this quote from J.S. Bryan, but I think it’s so true: “Many men can build a fortune, but few men can build a family.“
Similarly, I would say that many pastors can lead a worship service, but few pastors have the patience to learn the art of Missional Communities. It’s going to take longer than a week, a month or a year!
