Cultural Insights for Christian Leaders: New Directions for Organizations Serving God’s Mission

by Douglas McConnell

Publisher:

Baker Academic

, 2018

Overview

This volume helps leaders and leaders-in-training become students of culture who can then contextualize what they learn for their own organizational settings. Missiologist Douglas McConnell considers how new insights from cognitive studies in anthropology and psychology impact our understanding of the role of Christian organizations. He explores culture and human nature as the context underlying all the various worlds in which leaders serve. Cultural Insights for Christian Leaders enables readers to understand intercultural dynamics so they can shape their organizational cultures and lead their organizations in a missional direction.

This latest volume in an award-winning series that emphasizes mission as partnership with Christians around the globe will appeal to professors and students of leadership, mission, and intercultural studies; pastors and leaders of Christian organizations; and mission organizations and training institutions.

The Mission in Global Community series reframes missiological themes and studies for students under the common rubric of mission as partnership with Christians throughout the global community. Series authors draw upon their own global experiences and those of their global colleagues to illumine present realities and chart a course into the future. Series editors are Scott W. Sunquist, president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and former dean of the School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, and Amos Yong, director of the Center for Missiological Research and professor of theology and mission at Fuller Theological Seminary.

Key Features

• Provides the most recent global scholarship on key themes in mission
• Includes missiological reflections from a diverse group of international scholars
• Draws insights from recent studies in anthropology, leadership, psychology, and theology

Contents

• Thinking Missiologically: Implications for Leadership and Organizations
• Culture and Human Nature: The Complex Unity of Human Organizations
• Caring about Members and Others as People: Notions of Self and Others
• Learning Culture Naturally: Imitation and Rituals
• Authority and Culture: Whom Do You Trust?
• Intercultural Realities: Four Worlds of Christian Organizations
• Leading in Context: Cultural Influence and Intercultural Leadership
• Responding Missionally: Learning into Practice

Praise for the Print Edition

In Cultural Insights for Christian Leaders, Doug McConnell firmly locates leadership not only within the lenses of culture, but also as a critical aspect of missiology. In doing so, he helps us see the vital importance of leading missionally as it relates to God’s mission of reconciling the world. McConnell delivers a masterful book, overflowing with probing insights into the intercultural nature of leadership, practical case studies, and a wealth of personal experience in doing precisely what this book espouses. Cultural Insights for Christian Leaders is a first-rate leadership book, coming from a first-rate scholar-leader.

—Gregg A. Okesson, E. Stanley Jones School of World Mission and Evangelism, Asbury Theological Seminary

Administration is one skill. Knowledge of culture is another. Doug McConnell has both. Drawing on what he has learned through administering an academic institution and an agency, as well as listening closely to Christian leaders from many countries, McConnell explores significant organizational issues. How do new insights in cognitive studies shed light on the formation of worldview? What are member care challenges for those ministering to children at risk? From Islam to intercultural leadership, McConnell weaves together insights. As he observes, ‘Leading a Christian organization is a sacred duty. If you accept the position, you must shoulder the responsibility, and that includes being a learner.’

—Miriam Adeney, associate professor of world Christian studies, Seattle Pacific University; author of Kingdom without Borders: The Untold Story of Global Christianity

I sat down to review this book only to find a few hours had slipped by when I next looked at the clock. This book is taken from the pages of academia, experience, and the Scriptures. It is a rare combination of organizational theory and spiritual leadership, something that today's complex mission environment demands. I believe it will become standard reading for newly appointed mission leaders.

—Ted Esler, president, Missio Nexus

Product Details

• Title: Cultural Insights for Christian Leaders: New Directions for Organizations Serving God’s Mission
• Author: Douglas McConnell
• Series: Mission in Global Community
• Publisher: Baker
• Publication Date: 2018
• Pages: 224
• Resource Type: Topical
• Topic: Missions

About Douglas McConnell

Douglas McConnell (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is professor of leadership and intercultural studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. He previously served as dean of the School of Intercultural Studies and as provost at Fuller. McConnell spent fifteen years as a missionary in Australia and Papua New Guinea, taught at Wheaton College, and served as the international director of Pioneers. In addition to his leadership and teaching responsibilities at Fuller, he continues to be actively involved as a mission advisor and workshop leader worldwide. He has edited several volumes and is coauthor of The Changing Face of World Missions.