Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood

Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood (Baker Books: 2011) is by Alan J. Roxburgh.  He is president of the Missional Network.  Click this line to reach the website for the Missional Network.

I finished the book this morning and was glad to get in a non-required book prior to getting back to my seminary reading.  This has been on my shelf for a little while and I've been wanting to see what Roxburgh has to say.

The book came at a good time in my life having recently taken a workshop on "Joining God's Mission II" at SOULfeast 2013 and also hearing Bill Easum talk to our church recently about backyard missions.

The book rang true to things I have been sensing and some things I've attempted, yet simply didn't get very far with it.  Maybe it wasn't the time then.  Maybe the time is closer.  We'll see.

I'll share some of what stood out to me in the book.  It's a paradigm shift, shifting focus and thinking to a different place.  Because of that, it's exciting.  Yet, it can also be scary because it's "different".  There isn't exactly a road map for all of this just yet.  This reminds me on another one of Roxburgh's books that comes in very handy here: Missional Map-Making: Skills for Leading in Times of Transition (Jossey-Bass: 2010). I read this one in January 2011.  This book was crucial to helping me understand where I was in ministry and where I felt I was heading.  I think it still is and can be.... it's just that this is not where most ministry is and it seems so foreign, so alien.  I think I need to re-visit my notes from this book. [I wrote a post about this book back in May 2011.]

Back to the original book...

There are three parts to the book:

Part 1-- The Cul-de-sac of Old Questions: Why We Have to Stop Thinking about the Church
Part 2--The Language House of Luke-Acts: A Narrative for Shaping Our Time of Missional Formation
Part 3--A New Language House

There are 13 chapters total in the book, 190 pages of reading with 6 pages of notes at the end for the entire book. 

The practical application steps are found in chapter 13, but you really need to read the book to get the foundation for these, though you could probably read the last chapter and get some ideas for action if you're already on the same page with Roxburgh's ideas.  However, even if you are on board, it is likely that you will need the rest of the book to help you prepare yourself to help prepare others to be on board.

The book is part of a series and in the series preface by Mark Priddy and Al Roxburgh, the point is clearly made: "This is not a "how-to-guide" as much as a handbook for leaders wondering how to empower and energize a community seeking to witness to the kingdom in the midst of their lives." (10)

That sentence grabs me.... anything to empower and energize folks who are seeking to live this out.... great!

As I read the section "A Slow Death" (pages 20-22), the image that Bill Easum shared with our church of a frog slowly being boiled in water (and therefore not knowing he was dying) was in my mind. 

Roxburgh makes it plain that the situation is this: "we need to be asking radically different questions: What is God up to in our neighborhoods and communities?  How do we join with what God is doing in these places?" (22)

"When we are truly seeking to know what it means to be God's people, we will want to know what God is up to in our neighborhoods and communities and what it means for the gospel to be lived out and proclaimed in this time and place.  The matter of getting someone to church is utterly secondary to these insights." (26-27)

Roxburgh speaks quite a bit about Lesslie Newbigin in this book and Newbigin's example of living into a cross-cultural missionary.  Lesslie Newbigin's The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing: 1989) is mentioned in the text and is a book I've read (well, most of it). [Chapter 19 was most relevant to me when I read it because I was contemplating taking the Director of Missions position and there were things in that chapter that spoke to helping people see their place of missions in their daily lives in the workplace and how missions starts with daily discipleship.]

Sometimes when change comes, people think that something has gone wrong.  I love how Roxburgh addresses this: "What if the life-giving Spirit is saying to us that nothing has gone wrong but that he is breaking apart the five-hundred-year-old boxes in we have so conveniently placed the movement of God since the European Protestant reformation?  What if the period we are in is another one of those times when the boundary-breaking Spirit is pushing apart the settled, managed, and controlled ecclesiologies that came out of a specific period of European history with its nation-states and the emergence of its hegemony over the world? [...] What then do we do when the Spirit breaks the boundaries?" (84)

The book brings up the concept of table fellowship and sharing meals and conversations with others in order to get to know one another.  This time of eating together is sacred.  Roxburgh says: "The table is a symbol of where God is taking all of creation.  More than a symbol, it is a sacrament that can engage us directly in the life of God." (144)

Table fellowship is another one of those themes that keeps coming back in my life.  It is around the table that we talk and share and get to know one another.  Lives are shared and shaped.  This takes time and commitment, all very well worth it!

What if the Spirit is breaking out of boundaries?!?!  That is exciting to me!!  It is also a little scary.  As my daughter has phrased it-- "I'm 'nerv-excited."  I don't know what it means for me.  I don't know what it means for the community, the kingdom, etc. 

What I do know, however, is that if the Spirit is moving, I want to be a part of that movement.

Where is God working in my neighborhood?  I need to spend some time on that.  I spent a little bit of time on that a few years ago.  Maybe I'll start there, reflect on what I learned from that, and go forward.

What about you?  Where do you see God working in your neighborhood?  How do you sense the moving of the Spirit?

Blessings on your journey,

Debra