Roger Helland and Leonard Hjalmarson, Missional Spirituality: Embodying God’s Love From the Inside Out (Shapevine Series). IVP Books, 2011.
Referenced in: Missional Spirituality
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
The authors content that the need is not to disdain the organized church and other attempts at missional, or to execute more leadership development or church growth, but to recover “a dynamic spirituality, theologically grounded and connected to mission, and discipleship with practices that cultivate love for God and others.” (31-32) They define this spirituality as “an attentive and active engagement of embodied love for God and neighbor expressed from the inside out.” (31) Below is how the chapters unpack this definition (adapted from their own summary, p. 32):
- In chapter two, we provide an overview of challenges to a missional spirituality that are largely rooted in disenchantment derived from an Enlightenment ethos.
- In chapter three, we suggest four theological foundations that will ground and provide a practical framework for a missional spirituality: (1) the Trinity, (2) the incarnation, (3) the priesthood of all believers and (4) the Jesus Creed/Shema of the Great Commandment.
- In chapter four, we show missional spirituality in action as seen in classic Pietism expressed through the Moravians, the Methodists, and the Christian and Missionary Alliance.
- In chapters five through nine, we offer practices for cultivating a missional spirituality that are tied to each of the elements of the Great Commandment to love the Lord our God from all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves. With these practices, we develop a missional spirituality through which we embody and express God’s love from the inside out.
- In chapter ten, we conclude with how a missional spirituality that is played out as we embody the gospel as missionaries to our own communities and workplaces, and how we can exegete and engage our culture.
- Finally, in our appendices, we offer suggestions for equipping a missional spirituality in the church and academy and an example of missional spirituality in action with a local church.
From the Publisher
If all of the earth is God’s domain, why are Christians so terribly provincial? We rarely leave our church buildings, and our spirituality rarely takes us beyond ourselves.
Veteran church leaders Roger Helland and Leonard Hjalmarson observe that Jesus begins his mission in the temple, where he wows the religious elite and chides his parents by saying, “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” But Jesus doesn’t stay in the temple; indeed, in Christ the temple of the Lord is on the move—even to the ends of the earth.
In this book the authors helpfully reconnect spirituality and mission, showing you how the spiritual life, when lived properly, follows a similar progression: we “come home” to Christ, loving him from our heart and soul and mind and strength. And then we set forth to love our neighbors as ourself. Discover how through this process you can reclaim the whole of God’s kingdom for his glory and the fulfillment of your heart’s longing.
About the Authors
Roger Helland (D.Min., Trinity Western Unversity, Langley, B.C.) is district executive coach for the Baptist General Conference in Alberta, Canada.
Len Hjalmarson (D.Min.) is lead pastor at Aylmer Evangelical Mennonite Mission Church in Aylmer, Ontario, Canada, and serves as missional navigator for the Ontario region of the EMMC. Len is a founding member of the Resonate network and sits on the board of Cultivate in Ontario. He is also part of the adjuct faculty at Northern Seminary in Chicago.
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