missional "in quotes"

Pastor Rod on his blog Kingdom Come has this quote and comment:

We are in a period that makes it impossible to have much clarity about the future and how it is going to be shaped. Therefore those leaders who believe they can address the kind of change we are facing by simply defining a future that people want, and then setting plans to achieve it, are not innovating a missional congregation. They are only finding new ways of preventing a congregation from facing the discontinuous change it confronts.
Alan Roxburgh & Fred Romanuk, The Missional Leader, p. 159

The Church in North America is experiencing a period that sociologists call liminality. The future cannot be predicted by extrapolating from the past. If there ever was a time when leaders could create their own future by sheer willpower, it no longer exists.

Leadership requires more flexibility and more skill.

True leaders will need to be able to handle uncertainly. They will need to be able to adjust to change. They will need to be able to adapt to unforeseeable opportunities.

Roxbourgh and Romanuk are right on. I think a lot of what is passing for "change"in churches is more a coat of paint than the structural changes that are really needed. I think "missional", in some cases, has become a buzz word rather than really being a changed focus on the mission of the kingdom.

Idea Sandbox has this cocktail napkin statement that fits with this.