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Missional (Allelon Missional Series)

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If anyone doubts whether anything new could be added to the missional conversation - doubt no more! Roxburgh, in his new book, Missional - Joining God in the Neighborhood, both propels the conversation forward, and rescues it from being derailed, absorbed, held hostage by the church growth/church-centric mindset. Roxburgh convincingly argues that in order to discern and detect God's activity in the world - specifically in our neighborhoods - we need to situate ourselves incarnationally in our communities, with humble hearts and listening ears ... surveys, demographic studies, etc. will not do. Using Luke 10 as the text for our context, Roxburgh shows us the way forward - "If you want to discover and discern what God is up to in the world just now, stop trying to answer this question from within the walls of your churches. Like strangers in need of hospitality who have left their baggage behind, enter the neighborhoods and communities where you live. Sit at the table of the other, and there you may begin to hear what God is doing." His use of Luke's material to forge a way forward for God's people - to missionally enter our ever-changing world is both refreshing and convicting. I am grateful for this book, and do believe as one endorser put it, "to be a tour de force for the missional conversation."

[ This review originally appeared in
THE ENGLEWOOD REVIEW OF BOOKS - 27 April 2011 ]
Alan Roxburgh, in his new book Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood, sure knew how to stir up the fire of my inner critic. Longtime readers of The Englewood Review will know that ecclesiology is pretty important to me, and that I regularly challenge a lack thereof in books I review here. So, when Roxburgh launches into the first part of this new book, which he titles, "Why we have to stop thinking about the church," you can bet that I was ready for a vehement reaction. Even as I started reading this part of the book, I was still pretty skeptical of the way in which he wanted to de-emphasize the church and "church questions" in our following after God. However, I continued to hear him build his case and began to see that he shared a deep love for the church, and actually in de-emphasizing the church, was naming a particular problem that is a pointed challenge for us at Englewood Christian Church, as I imagine it is at many other churches - viz., the pursuit of church as an end in itself and way of life together centered around attractional techniques. This problem is epitomized in a conversation that Roxburgh recounts in the book:

" `From what I've seen,' she said finally, `the church is closed to the community. We push the annual denominational missions offering. To some extent we push Samaritan's Purse. But when it comes to a local child in the community, we're less likely to help.' She added, `I visit a lot of churches in this area through my volunteer work, I think ours, like most, is self absorbed'" (91 emphasis retained from original).

Roxburgh emphasizes that God's Mission in the world is not just about us as churches. Indeed, it is clear that he is working from a reading of Scripture that has a deep sense of God's reconciliation of all people and all creation. From this reading of Scripture, Roxburgh calls us to seek the particular sorts of reconciliation that God is already orchestrating in the places in which we dwell, and from this pursuit to become engaged in deep and significant ways with our neighbors. What he offers us here is not the sort of random "external focus" that others have proposed for churches to adopt, but rather an intentional way of being with and caring for our neighbors in ways that bear witness to the particularities of God's reconciling mission in our specific locations.

After challenging us to let go of our church ideologies, Roxburgh sets the stage for the book by offering an overview of Lesslie Newbigin's work and an accompanying explanation of why Newbigin's work has been so helpful in understanding the "Missional Conversation," between church, gospel and culture. He contends that too often our undue focus on church drowns out the voices of gospel and culture in this conversation. He follows this introductory material with an "intermezzo" that overviews philosopher Charles Taylor's concept of "social imaginaries," which serves as a foundation for introducing the concept of a "language house," the linguistic set of stories, practices and expectations that help a community live within in particular social imaginaries and acts as a sort of interpretative lens.

The key point at the heart of the book is that even as churches begin to use some new terminology such as "missional" or "emergent," we are still bound by the language house of the (institutional) church, and we have an urgent need to make the shift to a new language house that is "far more radical and transformative." (The use of the modifier "institutional" here is mine, for I fear that abdicating or minimizing the terminology of church altogether will only play into the prevailing individualism of the age.) Roxburgh proposes the narrative of Luke-Acts as a way forward toward shifting our language house. Following the reading of noted missiologist David Bosch, Roxburgh observes that Luke-Acts was written for a Christian audience in a time of upheaval that is not unlike our own. At the heart of Roxburgh's reading of Luke-Acts is the story of the sending of the seventy in Luke 10; he highlights the facets in this story of radical discipleship, of leaving baggage behind, of the journey to which we are called and finally of the ordinariness of those who were sent out.

The irony of Roxburgh's reading of the Luke 10 story is that despite his suppression of church language throughout the book, his reading seemingly offers a fuller and a richer ecclesiology that that of those against whom Roxburgh is reacting. The propagation of the church as an institution is often centered on and driven by its leadership, and in contrast, what Roxburgh is offering is vision of the church community in which every, ordinary member plays a role. The vision he offers here is of a church in action, not just a church existing within its own intellectual confines. He says:

[I]n these times of huge transition where our language houses are being overturned, we will not know what God is up to in the world by huddling together in study groups, writing learned papers, or listening to self-appointed gurus (133).

Instead he recommends that we get out and share meals with our neighbors, listening to their stories and hearing within these stories what God is up to in our particular place. Roxburgh's emphasis on sitting around the table, as a place for "deep communion" was one of the book's highlights for me. Noting that we culturally have lost the sense of the table as a place of sharing both sustenance and stories, he calls us to recover this practice, saying:

The table is a symbol of where God is taking all creation. More than a symbol, it is a sacrament that can engage us directly in the life of God. That is, perhaps, one of the reasons the world of modernity has created the belief that fast food, quick meals, and busy lives are the symbols of success - they release us from the sacraments and rhythms that restore and root us in our humanity and personhood. But for humans to flourish, we need to be embedded in such a life (144).

In the final part of the book, Roxburgh sketches some "contours" of how this missional reading of the Luke-Acts narrative might begin to be embodied among local gatherings of Christ's disciples. Some of the steps he describes here resonate with our own experience here at Englewood Christian Church, including:

* Develop New Eyes for Your Neighborhood
* Teach Radical Neighborliness
* Map the Neighborhood
* Listen to Neighborhood Stories
* Discern what God is up to in the Neighborhood
* Get involved

For us at Englewood Christian Church, the philosophical framework (or "language house") of asset-based community development has been particularly helpful in making the sorts of theological shifts that Roxburgh describes here. ABCD has given us a tool set (and a philosophical undergirding) for adopting practices of neighborhood engagement like those from Roxburgh, listed above. And as Roxburgh argues here, we have found such practices to resonate with a reading of the scriuptural narrative that seeks to understand what God is doing in the world, even in times of broader cultural uncertainty and upheaval.

Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood is a brilliant and challenging book whose roots run deep, and yet it - very intentionally - is not an academic work, but rather a theological work that demands our attention, our reflection and our transformation as communities gathered for life together in the way of Jesus. If Roxburgh's message here is taken to heart by Western Christianity, as it should be, it will undoubtedly have a transformative effect, guiding our church communities from the stale recesses of institutional survival to the vibrant conversational life (as if around a table) of a gathered people who bear witness to our neighbors of God's work reconciling all creation!

Missional is an intriguing book on many fronts. The premise is counter-intuitive to say the least. It is a book about the missional thrust of the church except that the author, Alan Roxburgh, would make the case that the conversation of the book isn't necessarily about the church. That's akin to writing a cook book but not deciminating recipes or even swapping cooking ideas. That's the point and that is the brunt of Roxburgh's argument. As paradoxical as it sounds he's right on.

In the interplay between Scripture, church, and culture, our predisposition is to think first and foremost in terms of church questions - Scripture and culture have become secondary to and a function of the church effectiveness questions. Like a frustrating computer program, we keep returning to the preset position, assuming it's the correct place to be. (45)

In the book Roxburgh walks the reader through the narrative of Luke 10. However, more than a mere commentary, he does a remarkable job of pealing back the layers of our assumed etymology and instead brings forth what he calls a "new language house." Meaning, we've come to the text with a preset lens, filter, and language house that informs and shapes what we see taking place in the story. "A language house predetermines how one sees the world or reads a text." (65) We're stuck in an outmoded language house that no longer fits the cultural milieu of the day as well as subjugates Scripture and culture to the domineering questions and conversation regarding "making church work." Instead, the beauty is to find God already at work in culture outside the bounds and confines of the church. He is wooing humanity and working in our neighbourhoods and cities and yet most often we miss it. This is where Missional does a great job in challenging our thinking.

The strength in the book lies exactly in this counter-intuitive approach. Far from techniques and how-to's it opens the readers' eyes and ears to seek and discover where God is already at work in our midst. It is a call back into the neighborhood and elevates the local and the simple. "The primary way to know what God is up to in our world when the boundary markers seem to have been erased is by entering into the ordinary, everyday life of the neighborhoods and communities where we live." (133) We need to leave our language house baggage behind, enter the neighborhood, sit at the table of others, and hear and learn what God is doing. (135)

On many fronts this book is a challenge to me personally as well as encouraging. First, to recognize indeed that our language house is off and we're in need of a new one. I believe that we're still giving answers to questions that are not being asked ... except by ourselves "in house." We're still dominated by, as Roxburgh calls, church questions. Instead of asking what is the vision of our church we ought to be asking instead what God is doing in our neighbourhoods and in our culture. Then church questions can form around that. Second, Roxburgh elevates the simple, the common, and of course, the neighbourhood. So often we've enlarged our scale or scope to be city-wide, regional, national, or continent-wide, but what about the local? The neighbourhood? The simple, common, and mundane? Are we missing out on the locality of God at work in the smaller scale? Lastly, which builds off the second, the work of God in our neighbourhoods is not confined to the elite, the superstars, or anything like that. God works through the everyday lives or everyday ordinary people ... like the unnamed 72 who were sent out in Luke 10.

I'd highly recommend this book. It's a fast and fun read. Very stimulating, challenging, and at the same time encouraging.

"The Spirit is out there ahead of us, inviting us to listen to the creation groaning in our neighborhoods. Only in the willingness to risk this entering, dwelling, eating, and listening will we stand a chance as the church to bring the embodied Jesus to the world." (151)

While sitting in a coffee shop filled with people one Sunday morning, Roxburgh asked himself the question: How might we create the kinds of safe spaces where the real stories shaping people's lives become the ones we own an address in our churches? How do we do church better on Sunday so that it is more relevant to where these people are? How do we get these people in the coffee shop to church on Sunday? Then I realized my questions were all wrong. (p.25)

He goes on to make the observation: A problem we face is that since the sixteenth century our questions have been shaped by the Reformation...the Reformation resulted in a focus that still controls our imagination - a focus on church questions that are no longer helpful in the missionary situation that confronts us. (p.27)

Roxburgh identifies the period between 1970 and 2000 as a time when the church rationalize technical success while the culture was shifting around them. It was an era of religious winners and losers as evangelicals and charismatics win the culture wars in terms of growth. The primary approach to the emerging cultural upheaval of post-modernism was to adjust, renew and fix the church through such movements as church growth, church effectiveness, and church health. (p.47)

In the 1990's people began to dialogue about becoming missional, with its three-way dialogue between the church, the culture and the gospel. Roxburgh tells the parable of three long time friends who reunite after years apart. Rather than it being a time of mutual sharing, one friend is totally consumed in his own needs and desires, much to the disappointment of the other two who soon go home saddened by the encounter. Later the author explains the three friends are the culture, the gospel, and the church, with the church being the self-centered one who tries to mine the other two for whatever can help make him more successful, rather than being truly interested in them. The church has become self-centered and infested with consumerism, careerism, and individualism. The church has learned to use the gospel to live its "best life now," and it has studied the culture to design the best marketing strategies with which to lure people into attractional services.

The second part of the book shows how Luke wrote his gospel and the companion work of the Acts to a generation of Christians who had somewhat lost its mooring following the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and in the midst of intensifying persecution from the

Romans. Roxburgh claims that Luke Chapter 10 takes us on a "journey that moves from a primary focus on the church to the place of making the church work again in the neighborhoods and communities where we live so we can ask what God is already doing ahead of us in these ordinary places. (p.71) The world proposed in Scripture is about a way of being in the world in the world that attends to the concreteness of everyday life rather than romanticized idealizations of what the church or the culture ought to be...The world of the biblical texts propose is not about the selling or marketing of a product but the re-forming of a world in the midst of the ordinary...the God of Scripture is known in the ordinary and the everyday. (p.77)

Roxburgh writes: Our situation in North America today can be seen as very similar. For many of us the promises and expectations of the gospel seem to have failed. Just as Luke does not offer the Gentile Christians forms of adjustment, so our own crisis of meaning as Christians will not be addressed with ome more set of tactics. Much of what is being offered today as "missional" are tactics for making the church more successful or effective...the need of our time is to allow the story of what God is doing in the world to reform us all over again in a different way. (p.89) Still shaped by a Eurocentric Reformation, christians in North America address a deepening identity crisis by continuing to wrestle with fundamentally ecclesiocentric questions about how to make the church work in the midst of cultural space of multiple narratives where the dominance of a settled, denominational, Eurocentric ecclesiology has less and less relevance. (p.100) Luke will show that the issue is not God's faithfulness but the narrow ways in which the gospel had been understood. (p.115) God's Spirit is breaking the boundaries of ecclesial life in the Western churches because they can no longer contain the ways in which the spirit is at work in the world. (p.118)

For Roxburgh, "the narrative begins in the context of discipleship" which is "more radical than anything anyone has imagined. It is not about fixing or adjusting small areas of one's life...it will probably not align with our expectations or fit with the categories of meaning that have shaped us to this point in our lives." (p.121) There are going to be lots of people who want to follow the Jesus movement as long as it fits with their settled assumptions of how things should turn out. But when the directions Jesus takes diverge from the expectations of what God is doing in the world, resistance is prompt and fierce. (p.122)

Another main point Roxburgh says that Luke makes from Chapter 10 is that we must leave our baggage behind. They were not to take a lot of baggage with them on their journey. In essence they were not to depend on their own resources...the mission of God moves forward in the world when disciples of Jesus choose to become strangers in the towns and villages so they will be dependent on the hosts. It appears there is a connection between being in the place of the stranger in need and being able to discern God's working in the world. (p.124) By this Roxburgh means that we must become listeners and learners, rather than people with set plans and all the answers. Unless we release such baggage, we objectify people...we can't listen to the person who stands before us as a human being - he or she is the object of our plans. (p.126) We cannot ask the questions of what God is up to in our neighborhoods and communities when we think we already know...The language house of Eurocentric churches cannot provide the dominant story for being God's people in a post-Christendom, globalizing world. (p.127)

Luke's vigorous counternarrative...says that the mission is still central but not in the ways anticipated. (p.127) The overall sense of this story is that Jesus sends his followers out on a counterintuitive journey of mission for the sake of the kingdom. (p.128) It is among ordinary men and women, whose names will not be recorded or remembered, that God shapes a future. (p.129)

Roxburgh sets out a set of new practices for the church in the post-modern world that are derived from Luke Chapter 10. The revolve around the call to enter the homes and lives of the people who live around us. It is about "entering deeply into the life of the other on his or her terms, not your own - eat what is set before you."...This is where we are invited to plant ourselves in the local, aming a commitment to the long haul. (p.140) Our calling is to enter into their homes (dwell with and among them) and stay with them for quite a period of time without any plans to talk off if they or their ways don't suit us. (p.141) It is our honor to be welcomed to someone's table...Luke is saying that one of the primary places where disciples should interact with others is at the table of the others. (p.143) The Spirit is out there ahead of us, inviting us to listen to the creation groaning in our neighborhoods. Only in the willingness to risk this entering, dwelling, eating, and listening will we stand a chance as the church to bring the embodied Jesus to the world. (p.150)

Jesus' work is about being sent out, about leaving places of familiarity, control, and security. (p.155) The Lord of creation is out there ahead of us; he has left the temple and is calling the church to follow in a risky path of leaving behind its baggage, becoming like the stranger in need, and receiving hospitality from the very ones we assume are the candidates or our evangelism plans...the only way we can understand and practice again this kingdom message is by getting out of our churches and reentering our neighborhoods and communities. (p.162)

Roxburgh ends his book by enumerating ten rules for radicals and giving some practical suggestions for beginning this sort of ministry in the local church. I found this book to be deeply insightful and definitely worth the read.

Purchase the reviewer's book on Amazon:
Seeing God's Smile

I read the draft of this book about four years ago. I found myself making another paradigm shift as I read it. As I followed Alan's personal struggle with what it means to be missional, I realized that I had missed what "missional" actually means. I had thought, along with most, that missional is about a new way of being the church. After all, the church is our "mother" and God's bride.

At that point, I was working with Alan to get this book published. As I pitched the idea of this book to the editor, he said that it sounds like it is "putting mission into missional." This is exactly what it does. It challenges our church-centric focus and invites us to join God in his mission to redeem all of creation. Of course the church has a role in what God is doing in the world, but God's dream is much bigger than just having missional churches. He wants to empower his church for the sake of engaging the world on mission.

To do this, Roxburgh invites us to think about more than the church. He challenges us to enter our neighborhoods and listen to what is going on there. Instead of assuming that the goal is to get more and more people into our church activities, let's engage people where they are and then offer them the Gospel in that setting.