Alan J. Roxburgh - Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our Time

Joining God,
Remaking Church,
and Changing
the World

The New Shape of the Church in Our Time

ALAN J. ROXBURGH

Copyright 2015 by Alan J. Roxburgh

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Morehouse Publishing, 19 East 34th Street, New York, NY 10016

Morehouse Publishing is an imprint of Church Publishing Incorporated.
www.churchpublishing.org

Cover art 2014 Brian Whelan; www.brianwhelan.co.uk
Cover design by Laurie Klein Westhafer
Typeset by Rose Design

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Roxburgh, Alan J.

Joining God, remaking church, changing the world : the new shape of the church in our time / Alan J. Roxburgh.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8192-3211-3 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-0-8192-3212-0 (ebook) 1. Mission of the church. 2. Church renewal. I. Title.

BV601.8.R6885 2015

253--dc23

2015009370

T his book is written out of a community of men and women whove been on a journey together for more than a decade. Together, we are seeking to understand and practice gospel life in our time. We are church leaders, teachers, consultants, parents, mothers, and fathers who connected in a common search for ways of being Gods people in this time. We believe Gods abundant Spirit is bringing new life to the church in North America, but it looks a lot different than we imagined when we started. We sense the Spirit calling us into a new imagination about being Gods people.

Collectively, weve been involved in North American churches for more than one hundred years. Over that time weve participated in and witnessed fundamental changes in the ways church exists in our cultures. So many of the assumptions about church, such as it having a central place in peoples lives, no longer hold. The questions churches are askinglike How do we attract people?are not connecting with the actual people in our neighborhoods. Its clear to us that things are not going to go back to the way they were, either in the church or in our daily lives.

One natural and popular response is trying to fix the problems and make the church work through strategic plans, new techniques, and better programs. These approaches take up more and more energy but produce fewer and fewer results. This book is an invitation to join a different journey: to join what God is doing ahead of us in our neighborhoods and communities.

In these pages I hope to describe what we mean by joining God in the neighborhood and why it is so important. The Spirit is busy re-founding the church for our time, and every one of us is being invited to participate and discover what God is up to ahead of us. This begins with a commitment to place and discerning the presence of God in the everyday contexts where we work and live. These are the holy grounds where God is at work remaking our society and reweaving the fabric of our communities. Our role as followers of Jesus is joining the work God is already doing in the world.

There is great hope for the church in this movement, but its a different imagination. We are confronted by a historic break from what church has meant for the past five hundred years. Its not so different from the break that occurred with the demise of the Roman Empire or in the European Protestant reformations. Such breaks call for the cultivation of a fundamentally different imagination, and this has huge implications for the rhythms of life and worship for Christian communities. Congregations are being invited to enter this open space and to confront the need for a changed imagination. This book describes what Ive observed is required.

Change in Gods Time

God worked through Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Leah to shape a people who would become Israel. Their story took a dramatic turn when they were sent into slavery. It took another turn when, upon their release from captivity, they lost a generation while wandering in the wilderness. When their story seemed most hopeless, it turned one more time: A long time passed, and the Egyptian king died. The Israelites were still groaning because of their hard work. They cried out, and their cry to be rescued from hard work rose up to God. God heard their cry of grief, and God remembered (Exodus 2:2324). The words announced a change in the world, and the message came to those with no reason to hope. God broke into their groaning and weeping, with news of a change.

In City of God, St. Augustine wrote: God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are always too full to receive them. Like those Israelites, our hands can be too full with our fears and sense of loss for us to see or receive the good things God is doing among us. Can we trust and open for these good things, even in the midst of our fear?

I would argue that, far from fearful times, we live in extraordinary times. I returned recently from a retreat weekend with our church, which meets at a house near our own in Vancouver. It is composed of people who live in the neighborhood as a way of being Gods people. There are other such neighborhood-based Christian communities around the city, and we join together to listen, pray for our communities, and worship God. Im continually surprised by the people who join. Were of all ages, from young children to people in their sixties. Many have come from congregations where we had to drive to church and where we were deeply invested in church programs and committees that obsessed with keeping the church itself going.

Why have we gathered? Not to get away from churchmuch of what were learning has helped us to reimagine what church can be. We simply had this sense that God was stirring life in our neighborhoods, that the Spirit was moving within and beyond our conventional churches. We wanted to figure out how to join with God there. We love this journey of discovering what the Spirit is up to in our neighbor.

There are extraordinary, similar stories all around about how the Spirit is ahead of us, moving in the everydayness of our neighborhoods, if we just have the ears to hear them. These stories are taking place right next door and across the street, and I have the privilege of hearing and seeing them as I travel across North America, Europe, and the United Kingdom. Its not that any one of them on its own is world-transformingthats not the point. But if you sit and listen to whats happening under the hype about church growth or the lament about denominational decline, you can hear the music of the Spirit, sounding a chord many of us dreamed of but never imagined would happen.

In one circle, I heard the story of a couple who had spent years being busy in their church to the extent that they had, literally, lost touch with the neighbors on their street. In a simple act of prayer and Scripture reading, they decided it was time to cross the lawn and knock on the door of the people whod been living beside them for years. They baked cookies, arranged them on a plate, and made the odyssey across the lawn. They were greeted with total surprisethe neighbors had to wonder, What do these people really want? But they also heard gratitude. Thank you so much! Its a bad time for us just now. J (the husband) has been diagnosed with cancer, and were in the midst of chemotherapy. There was welcomed prayer at the door and, in Gods amazing ways, the transformation of a neighborhood had begun.