Mark Lau Branson

Alan J. Roxburgh

Leaders in congregations and Christian organizations wrestle with an unraveling of the world in which they have little experience and training. While they are offered unending resources by experts on leadership, some with claims to biblical blueprints, the challenges seem mismatched to those methods. Branson and Roxburgh frame the situation as one in which "modernity's wager"--the conviction that God is not necessary for life and wisdom and meaning--has defined the Western imagination. Because churches and leaders are colonized by this ethos, even when God is named and beliefs are claimed, approaches to leadership are blind to God's agency. Branson and Roxburgh approach this challenge as a work in practical theology, attending to our cultural context, narratives of God's disruptive initiatives in Scripture, and a reshaping of leadership theories with a priority on God's agency. With years of experience as teachers, consultants, and guides, they name practices which lead to more faithful participation. Leadership, God's Agency, and Disruption is wide-ranging in cultural and biblical scholarship, challenging in its engagement with numerous leadership studies, and practical with its focus toward the on-the-ground life of churches and organizations.

Confronting Modernity’s Wager

Leadership, God’s Agency, and Disruptions

Fred Romanuk

In The Missional Leader, consultants Alan J. Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk address two questions: "How do we do missional?" and "What does missional leadership look like?" Drawing on their many years of experience, the authors show readers how to bring God's word into the community outside the church's walls. They focus on how to lead missionally on the ground, in the local setting, even amid leaders' experience of massive change within the church and in the wider world. The challenge for many church leaders is that they are not equipped to lead a church in shifting from a consumer model of church to one that is missional. They were trained in a Christendom mindset--to meet the needs of the church's members. This book assists leaders in shifting from dominant models of leadership rooted in strategic planning--with mission and vision statements, desired outcomes, measurements along the way, and determined goals. It provides a praxis for beginning where people are, rather than where the leader wants them to go. Roxburgh and Romanuk give frank recognition to the fact that the shift from a consumer model to a missional mindset will almost certainly be stormy, disruptive, and disorienting. This is not a book of quick fixes and slick slogans, but one that sets out a comprehensive and in-depth treatment for a different way of leading. The Missional Leader is a critical commentary that needs to be read in the light of today's realities.

Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World

The Missional Leader

Exhausted with trying to "fix" the church? It's time to turn in a new direction: back to the Holy Spirit. In this insightful book, internationally renowned scholar and leader Alan Roxburgh urges Christians to follow the Spirit into our neighborhoods, re-engage with the mission of God, and re-imagine the whole enterprise of church. Joining God, Remaking Church, and Changing the World can guide any church -- large or small, suburban or urban, denomination-level or local parish -- to become a vital center for spirituality and mission. * Distills the best of mission wisdom for laity and clergy today * Roxburgh is a leading voice shaping church life ecumenically and globally Alan Roxburgh offers deep hope and concrete steps forward for churches struggling with life in a post-Christian culture. By entering more deeply into the stories of the Bible, our own stories, and the lives of our neighbors, we join God's life in the world. This is one of the most helpful books I have read, full of clear analysis and practical wisdom. -- Dwight Zscheile, associate professor of congregational mission and leadership at Luther Seminary and author of People of the Way and The Agile Church Joining God invites you to embark on the journey you always wanted to take. In this book you will find: Courage: Alan Roxburgh is unafraid to admit the unraveling of what we've been and calls us to move into new places. Faith: The Spirit is going ahead of us into our neighborhoods. Ancient/future: The answer isn't flashy promotions but deeper discipleship and community. Hope: When we dare to move outside our walls, we'll find work to do and our calling renewed. -- Philip Clayton, scholar, activist and author of Transforming Christian Theology Drawing on his years of experience with missional church theology and practice, Roxburgh outlines our attempts to end church decline and opens up fresh vision: What if the unraveling of the church is God's way of leading us out of bondage to American culture into God's new Exodus? What if God is inviting us to shift our focus and to discern and join God's presence and work in our neighborhoods? This book outlines practical steps congregations can embrace to experiment with this new/old way of living the Gospel locally. Engaging these practices will not be easy. And learning from God and neighbors how to participate in local missional experiments might actually transform both congregations and society. Don't just read this book ... gather a group to experiment with this "way" in practice! -- Gordon Scruton, Retired Bishop of the Diocese of Western Massachusetts Drawing on his work as a consultant, researcher, sociologist and teacher, Roxburgh invites congregations to build bridges between their churches and their neighborhoods. He outlines a way for congregations to reclaim their apostolic roots, a process that is rooted in scripture and grounded in prayer. His is a challenge to be faithful to the Gospel and to reap the benefits of commitment and creativity. -- Mark Beckwith, Bishop of the Diocese of Newark

The New Shape of the Church in Our Time

Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World

The burgeoning missional church movement is a sign that believers are increasingly feeling the call to impact their communities, which is a good thing. But, says Alan J. Roxburgh, these conversations still prioritize church success over mission--how can being missional grow my church? But to focus on such questions misses the point. In Missional, Roxburgh calls Christians to reenter their neighborhoods and communities to discover what the Spirit is doing there--to start with God's mission. He then encourages readers to shape their local churches around that mission. With inspiring true stories and a solid biblical base, Missional is a book that will change lives and communities as its message is lived out.

Joining God in the Neighborhood

Missional (Allelon Missional Series)

Martin Robinson

• Speaks to the bewilderment and helplessness many churches feel in the face of current events • Practical new interpretation of changes in the West Throughout its history, the church has faced crises of meaning and identity in all kinds of changing contexts. The crises facing the churches of the western hemisphere today are no different. At their best, churches have recognized that their challenge is not their own fixing or even “reformation” but a deep engagement with the ways the gospel transforms society. This book explores how this can happen again in a radically changing western world.

The Missional Challenge of the West

Practices for the Refounding of God's People

Our world has changed dramatically in the past quarter century. People are losing faith in technology. Our society has lost consensus and is dividing into competing tribes. There are "new realities" and new values. We are passing into an unprecedented situation with few familiar landmarks to guide us.

Strategies for Tomorrow's Church

Reaching a New Generation

The urgent question for Christian mission in North America today has to do with churches and congregations and the crisis of their identity in the culture of modernity. According to Alan J. Roxburgh, the church has shifted from the center of culture to the margins. This text examines this shift and explores Victor Turner's work on liminality (a term describing the transition process that accompanies a change of state or social position).

The Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Liminality

The awareness that the churches shaped out of the European Reformations are in an advanced process of unraveling is becoming increasingly sensed by many. This book proposes a way of addressing this unraveling based on the experiences and knowledge of people who have always had to struggle with the unraveling of their own communities and worlds. It takes us outside the circular conversations of the Euro-tribal churches into dialogue with people who have been marginalized to see how they have learned to reenter their formative stories to discover ways of remaking themselves in the unraveling. The book then turns these discoveries into ways the churches can engage their own massive unraveling.

Alan J. Roxburgh

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