The Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Liminality (Christian Mission and Modern Culture)

Rating:
Summary: A Double Challenge
Review: Alan Roxburgh has written a small book (aprox. 67 pages), but it is the best use of paper and ink I have read in a long time. He sets forth a description of the double challenge facing the modern/postmodern and un-christendomed church, in clear, crisp and stark tones. Using a paradigm of "marginality," Roxburgh explains how that, within the matrix of modernity-modernization, the church was marginalized (pushed from the center) into a chaplain's role, but that with the onset of post-modernity (or hyper-modernity) the church now faces a culture that has been marginalized as well (now there is NO center). He calls this "double-whammy" facing us the experience of "liminality." This book offers a description of depth unlike the "five easy answers to ten difficult problems" approach we are usually given. It is a breath of reality we desperately need, a wake-up call to the complexity of the issues we face. But, by far, the most fruitful aspect to this work is his description of the pastoral leadership that the "missionary congregation" needs before the church will become a new community of faith. If you are a pastor, the images Roxburgh gives us here are deeply thought-provoking and as such they are an extremely helpful motif.

Rating:
Summary: A Double Challenge
Review: Alan Roxburgh has written a small book (aprox. 67 pages), but it is the best use of paper and ink I have read in a long time. He sets forth a description of the double challenge facing the modern/postmodern and un-christendomed church, in clear, crisp and stark tones. Using a paradigm of "marginality," Roxburgh explains how that, within the matrix of modernity-modernization, the church was marginalized (pushed from the center) into a chaplain's role, but that with the onset of post-modernity (or hyper-modernity) the church now faces a culture that has been marginalized as well (now there is NO center). He calls this "double-whammy" facing us the experience of "liminality." This book offers a description of depth unlike the "five easy answers to ten difficult problems" approach we are usually given. It is a breath of reality we desperately need, a wake-up call to the complexity of the issues we face. But, by far, the most fruitful aspect to this work is his description of the pastoral leadership that the "missionary congregation" needs before the church will become a new community of faith. If you are a pastor, the images Roxburgh gives us here are deeply thought-provoking and as such they are an extremely helpful motif.