Shaped By God's Heart: The Passion and Practices of Missional Churches

This book gives keen insight as to what it means to be a missional church and solid advice on how to get there. Minatrea's presentation of the nine practices characteristic of missional churches is helpful for gaining a picture of what being missional is about, and his short assessment questions at the end of those chapters is helpful for gaining a picture of how missional one's church tends to be. Minatrea obviously has a heart for helping the church become all God designed it to be.

The more I read about the missional church, the more I want to learn. This title is the latest in a string of several on the subject. Minatrea begins by describing the need for the missional church. He then lists nine practices of missional churches: they have a high threshold for membership, they are real, not really religious, they teach to obey rather than to know, they rewrite worship every week, they live apostolically, they expect to change the world, they order their actions according to their purpose, they measure growth by capacity to release, not retain, and they place kingdom concerns.While the explanations of the nine practices of missional churches are useful, the best part for me was Part 3. The author in this section gives some very practical ways in which these new approaches to ministry can be incorporated. Overall, this book is superb!

I recommend this book for those interested in moving a church from being just surviving to becoming a thriving missional community. The author offers many innovative and practical methods for accomplishing this goal. He demonstrates the effectiveness of these methods through practical examples of churches that have become missional churches. The methods not only involve the pastoral and lay leadership but involve every member in the process. The book is not for the non-committed, inactive member. I highly recommend this book for every pastor, lay leader and church member who has a sincere desire to impact the local and global communtity.

There are a lot of good basic concepts in this book that you will find in lots of business and nonprofit leadership literature. My problem with this book is that, even as much as it tries to stay away from it, it quickly falls into the idea that we have to do this things in order to grow and growing is our number one priority.

Good book. Will transform the church as a whole. Missional is exactly what Jesus Christ's ministry and the early church werr all about.

Not easy reading but has some really good thought. Not easy to do, but I think the right things to do.

Helpful resources for groups/ teams

Shaped by God's Heart is an excellent read and the principles should be used by all within the church. Your congregation should follow God's Heart and think of changing the mindset by growing thru missional community involvement. You will loose those peoples who are set on maintenance but will gain following God's Heart.

One of the best books i have ever read - it does take some studying but so well worth doing so - totally recommend this book