Book excerpt: For generations most churchgoers have been encouraged to see the responsibility for the life and mission of the church in the hands of the trained clergy. A church embracing God’s call to mission requires these same worshipers to see themselves as ‘missionary disciples’ with a vital part to play in the church’s ministry. How is a change of this magnitude to be accomplished? Drawing on the discipline of adult education and his own research into the way people learn, David Heywood explains how churches can become learning communities in which people grow as disciples and find their place in a collaborative pattern of ministry. He challenges the prevailing approach to ministerial training as overly theoretical and individualistic, and points towards a model of training based around shared reflection on practice.