Our Year in Review
Looking back at our first full year of work in 2021, and laying the foundation for what's ahead.
Hey friends, Happy new year.
It’s the first week of the year, and I’m spending it getting set up for 2022. We recently opened a small office in a co-working space in Brooklyn, which will give us more room to work this year, as we move further into a “new normal.”
As we head into 2022, I’ve been reflecting on the first full year of operations for Missional Labs, which launched in late 2020.
We launched during Covid, in a time where disruption and disorientation were the norm. It felt like we were watching a once-in-a-generation moment for the global Church, both in terms of the crisis and the opportunity. All of our existing paradigms around leadership, discipleship, ecclesiology, mission, networks, technology - all of it seemed to be exploding.
Leaders have responded since then in a number of ways. I’ve seen efforts toward caring for beat-down pastors, efforts toward prayer and revival, efforts toward digital ministry, and efforts toward equipping younger leaders. On the edges of those efforts have been, in our view, various forms of survival mode, anger, or deconstruction.
The question, and the opportunity, in our hearts was simply: Who is going to build what’s next?
From the beginning, we’ve been anchored by Newbigin’s vision of advancing a “missionary encounter with culture” - the idea that to reach modern culture as it changes quickly, we need to recapture the missionary way of seeing the world.1
What’s more, we need to equip today’s leaders with those principles and tools - to start again, to see with fresh eyes, and to contextualize the Gospel into credible, plausible, and desirable2 communities and experiences that are built for a new world.
At the “church leader” level, this task includes thoughtful missiological reflection on the Gospel and culture. This is where most of the action is, whether it’s more academic (e.g., missiology forums like SEND), or more practical (e.g. Q Ideas).
But it can’t stop at missional reflection. We believe that through history, missional movements are the fruit of the dense societies, networks, collectives, and “scenia”3 that prayerfully equip, send, and support leaders on the frontiers. Missiological reflection needs an ecosystem of action.
As we’ve thought about “missional ecosystems” from first principles, we’ve become committed to a few key guiding anchors, for us:
Finding Missional Leverage: We’ve become committed to the idea of missiological leverage. This means finding the most upstream, high-impact, strategic frontiers of modern mission from a global perspective. This echoes the Apostle Paul’s instinct to work at the frontiers, moving from Jerusalem, to Antioch, to Rome. This has been the instinct of the long tradition of “frontier” missionary societies through history.
Recent expressions of “leverage” abound.4 In our global, digital moment, we’ve developed our own hypothesis of high-leverage mission, including:
Focus on global cities, as the key to broad regions
Support the development of digital technology and distribution for mission,
Identify and nurture emerging pioneer leaders5 globally.
Build innovation capacity in mature networks.
Popularize stories and models of effective mission.
These guardrails shape our focus.
Shaping Design-Minded Leaders. We’ve also spent a lot of time reflecting on the kind of missionary leaders that we think will shape the future. We think these leaders will be people that (1) cultivate a theological and missional imagination, and (2) will also be radically formed into people of the Spirit under the Lordship of Jesus, instead of the many modern unsustainable cultural scripts. We also think they will be (3) “design-thinkers,” who are able to bring tools of empathy, cultural intelligence, and innovation, and blend them with a courageous commitment to reach the un-reached.
These leaders, in our view, are uniquely positioned to shape the future. This isn’t just entrepreneurship or church planting, it’s an integration of word, spirit, and innovation. We need to recover the tools of thoughtful missional architecture.
Global Mission for a New Era. In the 21st century, the concept of “global mission” has lost quite a bit of cache. At the risk of being perceived as colonialist, we have reverted back to a local mood, content with mission in our neighborhood (if that). We need to recover a 21st century paradigm of global mission as a networked phenomenon, with western institutions still having a very important (though much specialized and collaborative) role to play. We want to make sure that we have a philosophy and vision to equip ministry networks in each of the major missional “spheres” of our world today.6 Global cities and the internet, incidentally, are where the spheres primarily overlap.
Encouraging new “sodalities.” A sodality, in anthropology, is a non-kin based association around a purpose, usually spanning geographies. This is how so many of our “para-church” and “nonprofit” and “mission” agencies function. Churches (modalities) and these sodalities live in a constant tension, between a commitment to community and formation, and an instinct for risk, innovation, and expansion.
We believe deeply that mission will take more than just new churches (although church planting is highly strategic). We believe churches need to learn to play a , catalytic role, as stable, long-term greenhouses for new ministries that can serve their city and their region. Encouraging pastors and planters is important, but it’s actually short sighted by itself. We need to encourage churches to be launchpads for vocational mission in all sectors of society.
This means mission is a discipleship issue, for those in ministry as well as those in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. We think missional entrepreneurialism will look like new forms of evangelism, discipleship, and spiritual community - and we will prioritize those - but it will also look like new forms of redemptive media, new products and platforms, new social impact programs, and more.7
This has set the agenda for Missional Labs - to build a focused team and community, building an ecosystem of support for a new generation of missional leaders at our cultural frontiers, and the networks that support them.
Our Early Operating Model
To move in this direction, we felt that a modern mission society would have a few obvious mandates. We’ve built these into our emerging lines of activity - some developed, some just in seed form. Here’s where we’re putting our energy:
Train Leaders - We work with churches, ministries, and networks to help them form and equip their people for dynamic missional leadership8, in the context of church ministry, para-church ministry, and public vocations at large.
Launch Ventures - This is ministry incubation. We get hands-on with new projects, initiatives, campaigns, and ventures that we think meet a need, respond to a gap in the market, or take “new ground” in a meaningful way, and help bring them to life through mentorship, community, and strategic support.
Accelerate Movements - This is our ministry design & consulting practice. We partner with existing movements, networks, and organizations, and bring interdisciplinary innovation and design methods to help them navigate complex challenges, and cultivate organizational health, meaningful innovation, and fruitful growth.
Build Tools - We’re developing scalable content, resources, and tools to help develop mission-minded leaders, and to help them bring a missional imagination to their churches, ministries, and movements.
This outline has set the framework for us for year one, and remains our primary roadmap for year 2 and beyond. Here’s a little bit of what we’ve done in year 1:
Looking Back at 2021
With all of that preamble, here’s a quick sampling of some of the projects and initiatives that have kept us busy this year:
Love Listens / Alpha USA
We’ve been working closely with our friends at Alpha USA, to help them develop and launch a new Church engagement strategy called “Love Listens.”
The idea was to convene a space for pastors and church leaders at a city level, to host a roundtable-style conversation on reimagining evangelism for the post-Covid moment. We built around the book of Nehemiah, and the narrative of “Rebuilding from the ruins,” and invited leaders to step into the post-Covid reality with a posture of listening. We invited leaders into conversations around listening to our cities, to the next generation, to one another, and to the Holy Spirit.
I (Tyler) was able to attend a few of the Love Listens workshops, and give a talk on the future of mission.
The Love Listens campaign met across 5 cities in 2021 - Fort Lauderdale, Dallas, Memphis, Chicago, and Portland. They’ll gather in a number of additional cities 2022, including Columbus, Seattle, New York, Washington DC, and more.
We love Alpha as a global movement, and believe in their capacity to equip the church for evangelism. For more info, go to their website.
Searock Sessions
Searock Sessions was a collaboration of a few pastors, including Jon Tyson (Church of the City New York), John Mark Comer (Bridgetown Church / Practicing the Way), and Dave Lomas (Reality San Francisco), among others. These pastors are primarily younger church planters, working in secular urban contexts in the Western world.
We designed a 6 month learning experience for about 100 pastors and leaders, oriented primarily around a shared set of 7 convictions, and the commonalities of their ministry context.
The cohort kicked off in San Diego in September, and has since had zoom calls with mentors and “sages,” and smaller live gatherings in Portland and New York (with one in San Francisco coming up soon). For more info, see the website.
The Missional Life Course
I’ve been working closely with Jon Tyson at Church of the City New York to further develop our missional discipleship course, called “The Missional Life Course.” We believe this is a big step forward in helping local churches equip their congregations for everyday mission.
I’ve written extensively on the course previously, but 2021 was a big year, as we (1) re-filmed the core talks, (2) developed the 100+ page PDF product, and launched a pilot program to test the curriculum in churches around the world.
You can see the pilot kit here, available for churches everywhere.
A few other projects from 2021:
World Vision International
We worked with the team at World Vision International, and helped them design an innovation workshop process, to run internally with their global resourcing offices (US, Canada, New Zealand, etc). This was aimed at helping them innovate around their models and programs for Church Engagement in various markets.
Movement Leaders Collective
We teamed up with our friends at Alan Hirsch’s Movement Leaders Collective, and developed a new training module called “Building Kingdom Movements,” designed as a blend of training on missiology, ecclesiology, culture, and leadership for young leaders.
We piloted the new modules with our friends at the Recruits Network in Belgium, an affiliation of young missional leaders spread throughout Belgium.
Prayer Current
We’ve been working closely with our friends at Prayer Current, a Canada-based prayer training network, to help them reimagine their brand, web, and product strategy. They work with network leaders in countries around the world, equipping them with prayer training and resources.
You can learn more about them here.
OneHope
We ran a small project with our good friends at OneHope (I used to work there), doing a market research and landscape study on all of the ministries working in the Faith and Work sectors - including vocational discipleship, redemptive entrepreneurship, and business as mission - to help inform their education and training initiatives with ministry leaders.
Looking ahead to 2022
As we look at the year ahead, here’s what we aim to do:
Expand the Missional Life Course. This is our most mature training product, and it’s already being piloted at close to 100 churches around the world. We’re going to continue to support churches and leaders working on installing it into their discipleship pathway, and will help churches go deeper with it.
Deepen our Ministry Design consulting practice. We aim to continue working with key organizations, networks, ministries, and denominations, to help them with strategic innovation. We’re continuing to develop our Design Sprint process, and are working on a field guide around how to understand ministry design.
Launch our Incubator program. We’re planning to launch our new incubator program, for emerging leaders that have new ideas, ministries, initiatives, or ventures. This will be a rolling program, with bi-weekly zoom calls with mentors and experts, and a live gathering in New York City. (More info to come, but if you’re interested, let me know).
Formalize our NYC chapter. We’re planning on further establishing city-wide resources for New York City, including network gatherings, the Missional Life Course, and leadership training for pastors and professionals in New York City.
Develop our digital resources. You can expect more digital content from us in 2022, including primarily our newsletter, as well as a podcast in development.
Thanks + Get In Touch
A huge thanks to all of our friends, stakeholders, and supporters out there!
If you are interested in working with us, partnering with us, or getting more involved in our community, write us an email! We’d love to chat.
Tyler Prieb + Missional Labs Team
This was most recently popularized in much of Tim Keller’s ministry philosophy, which he wrote about at length in Center Church, and also distilled in How to Reach the West Again.
This framework comes primarily from Paul Gould’s “Cultural Apologetics,” which I highly recommend.
The idea of “scenius” was first popularized in the church by Alan Hirsch, but has echoes in much of network theory. The linked blog is a great secular overview.
One of our favorites is “The Great Opportunity,” commissioned by the Pinetops Foundation, which highlights planting churches, reaching youth, digital mission, caring for the poor, and Christian education. Another great example of leverage is Tim Keller’s philosophy that church plants are typically better at evangelism, so we should focus there.
Particularly in media and technology, which have extraordinarily high network effects. A case in point - Billy Graham preached to over 2 million people in New York City in 1957 over 16 weeks. The Bible Project by contrast, has well over 2 million YouTube subscribers.
Frontier strategies, for what it’s worth, look different in a western secular context than, say, an Asian or African one. We think of the world primarily in terms of (1) The secular west, (2) The emerging global south, and (3) The least reached frontiers.
This is where the good folks at Praxis are world class (disclosure, I worked there in 2015-2016). The focus on Redemptive Entrepreneurship is a key exemplar of an ecosystem supporting high-leverage missiology for public-facing ventures.
The Missional Life Course has been our best attempt at a ground-level curriculum for the everyday follower of Jesus, to equip them to think and act “missiologically.”