The Church as Movement - by Jr Woodward & Dan White Jr (Paperback)

About the Book

JR Woodward and Dan White Jr. have trained church planters all over North America. In this interactive field manual, they help you and your team gain eight key competencies crucial for church planting so that you can create churches that flourish and launch their own sustainable missional and incarnational congregations.

Book Synopsis

IVP Readers' Choice Award
Missio Alliance Essential Reading List

Public gatherings are vital for movement, but too often in our approach to planting churches, we haven't paid enough attention to the difficult grassroots work of movement: discipleship, community formation, and mission. This book will help you start missional-incarnational communities in a way that reflects the viral movement of the early New Testament church.

JR Woodward (author of Creating a Missional Culture) and Dan White Jr. (author of Subterranean) have trained church planters all over North America to create movemental churches that are rooted in the neighborhood, based on eight necessary competencies:

• Movement Intelligence
• Polycentric Leadership
• Being Disciples
• Making Disciples
• Missional Theology
• Ecclesial Architecture
• Community Formation
• Incarnational Practices

The book features an interactive format with tools, exercises, and reflection questions and activities. It's ideal for church planting teams or discipleship groups to use together.

It's not enough to understand why the church needs more missional and incarnational congregations.The Church as Movement will also show you how to make disciples that make disciples. This is the engine that drives the church as movement, so that everyday Christians can be present in the world to join God's mission in the way of Jesus.

Review Quotes

"The Church as Movement is a book I wish I'd been able to get my hands on twenty years ago. I got into church planting because I wanted to be a disciple and make disciples of Jesus. Instead, I encountered a system that largely measured success in terms of attendance, budgets, and buildings. Woodward and White not only offer an alternate transformational vision, they have created an immensely practical resource. I've seen their work firsthand and am deeply encouraged by their ability to come alongside leaders and equip them to embody the way of Jesus in their local communities."

--Mark Scandrette, founder, ReIMAGINE, author of Practicing the Way of Jesus, Free, and Belonging and Becoming

"In The Church as Movement White and Woodward rewrite what it means to cultivate and grow churches in the mission fields of post-Christendom. Accomplishing the impossible, they provide an exhaustive preparation for those who dare to navigate this terrain. It's a learning experience enormous in its aspirations yet so necessary for the task that lies ahead for the church in mission."

--David Fitch, B. R. Lindner Chair of Evangelical Theology, Northern Seminary, author of Faithful Presence

"JR and Dan have produced a simple, intensely practical guide for those of us who want to shift from merely sustaining the 'religious industrial complex' to unleashing a dynamic missional church planting movement. The Church as Movement is full of ideas on missional discipleship, rhythms of life, cultural exegesis, fivefold leadership models and more, all anchored in a beautiful biblical vision of the sent-and-sending God."

--Michael Frost, author of The Shaping of Things to Come, Exiles and The Road to Missional

"What I love about JR and Dan is that they don't just write about the stuff of missional discipleship, they live it! The Church as Movement is a real gift to the church. It is not only crammed full of practical wisdom, but is written in a way that is accessible to everybody."

--Debra Hirsch, author of Untamed and Redeeming Sex

About the Author

Dan White Jr. coleads Axiom Church in Syracuse, New York, and is the author of Subterranean: Why the Future of the Church Is Rootedness.

Alan Hirsch is the founding Director of Forge Mission Training Network. He is the co-founder of shapevine.com, an international forum for engaging with world transforming ideas. He leads Future Travelers, a learning journey applying missional-incarnational approaches to established churches and is an active participant in The Tribe of LA, a Jesus community among artists and creatives in Los Angeles.Known for his innovative approach to mission, Hirsch is a teacher and key mission strategist for churches across the western world. His popular book The Shaping of Things to Come (with Michael Frost) is widely considered to be a seminal text on mission. Alan's recent book The Forgotten Ways, has quickly become a key reference for missional thinking, particularly as it relates to movements. His book ReJesus is a radical restatement about the role that Jesus plays in defining missional movements. Untamed, his latest book (with his wife Debra) is about missional discipleship for a missional church.His experience in leadership includes leading a local church movement among the marginalized as well as heading up the Mission and Revitalization work of his denomination. Hirsch is an adjunct professor at Fuller Seminary and lectures frequently throughout Australia, Europe, and the U.S.

JR Woodward is the national director of church planting with V3, a missional church-planting movement, and the author of Creating a Missional Culture.