Paul writes – A friend of mine, Alan Roxburgh, has written a number of very useful books in relation to mission IN (Post-Christendom) Western culture. One of the most useful for me was his (sadly out of print) co-written Crossing the Bridge: Church Leadership in a Time of Change. Other key texts include his: Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Liminality; Reaching a New Generation; The Missional Leader; and The Sky is Falling: Leaders Lost in Transition. Out in Nov. 09 is his (again co-written) Introducing the Missional Church. While I don’t like the title, it is a great introduction to issues of mission in Western culture; specifically as they impact and shape the local congregation. You can pre-order it, and if the topic is relatively new to you I couldn’t recommend a better place to start (other than Steve Taylor’s book). However, a caveat from Al:
“...I was struck again by how easy it is for all of us to quickly shift the conversation into one about the church. It made me aware again of how much a mistake it was ten years ago to name a book Missional Church. The connections have stuck in very deep ways that are extremely difficult to disembedded. The idea that the church is not the subject, object, goal or purpose of the missional conversation creates consternation. When one points out that the missional conversation, especially in Newbigin’s later writing, is about the interface between the Gospel and the culture(s) of late modernity people agree but want to go back to conversations about the church...”
If you’re leading a local congregation, particularly a typically aged one, I would highly recommend Alan’s book. Start with Reaching a New Generation and The Sky is Falling.
Also worth a read is a recent reflection written by Al. It’s titled Entering the Unthinkable World and can be found here. If can get your hands on a copy of Missional Church (pub 1998 / edited by Darrell Guder and Lois Barrett) Al’s contribution, chapter 7 is excellent and remains a “must read”.
Here’s an excerpt from Entering the Unthinkable World:
We are in a world of the unthinkable where accepted categories of leadership and how things work can no longer be assumed...
...A decade ago a new word entered the conversation of North American churches - missional. It was intended as a call to missio-dei, a kingdom-shaped church. Today, the word is as common as a sneeze and means about as much...
...Anglicans in the West are suggesting the old parish system is not working in a postmodern culture of networks and the communications revolution. It is, some claim, unable to connect with the emerging generations of young people and immigrants now shaping our world.
While it all sounds reasonable in the new-speak of the connected world, a visit to the local Catholic church in my neighborhood raises a lot of questions about these assured claims. This parish church has five services on a weekend - all of them packed. When I sat in a series of those services over several months I was struck by the range of generations in that room. It was as full of young adults and young parents as it was with the middle aged and seniors. What was equally striking was the extent to which the nations where also gathered in that room. As I looked around it was with the question: Who said the parish was no longer relevant? Don’t tell these Catholics about it...
A primary obstacle to leading in an unthinkable world is that we keeping thinking in terms of the thinkable - our established categories of how leadership works and how the church ought to function. We default to them as if they were permanent and absolute. This has struck me many times over the past six weeks in all kinds of venues. One of the points I seek to make in consultations is that the church is not the subject, object, end or goal of the missional conversation.
The primary interactive dialogue has to be around the question of what God is up to in the world and how God’s great capacious story (the Bible narratives) engages with the culture(s) of late modernity. I find that in hearing me say this, people quickly default back to church conversations as if the church is the subject and object of what God is up to in the world. Despite continuing declarations that I love the church and believe in its vocation to and for the word but that it is not the focus of God’s purposes, people still hear me as if I am somehow undermining the church. They default back to measures that will cause us to know how to make the church work or be more effective (certain kinds of small groups, multi-site churches, moving from inward to outward focused, etc.); they talk about the end of Christendom or want to discuss Calvin’s three marks of the church or how to develop a set of ‘missional’ indicators for the church.
But note how all these conversations are about the same old thinking - how to make the church work. I am struck by how easily and quickly the default mode kicks in and all conversation leads back to the church. This is why leaders believe the keys to the church’s relevance are going to found in working harder at improving things like worship, preaching, teaching, and spirituality and so on. Note, again, these are all about our defaults to the categories we have known and in which we have been trained. I am not saying they’re unimportant, but that in an unthinkable world, the obvious, taken-for-granted categories are not going to give us the clues we need about how to engage this new space...”
Again, you can read the whole reflection here. You can find out more about Al and the work he is doing by going here.
The next post in “God’s Distinctive Alternative?” series will be posted tomorrow. Part 1, here.
Also worth a read, if you haven't already discovered it, is Al's brief reflection "Listening Among Denominational Leaders" written in May 09.
http://roxburghmissionalnet.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47:listening-among-denominational-leaders&catid=40:executive-journal&Itemid=89
Posted by: Paul Fromont | Wednesday, 08 July 2009 at 05:26 PM