Monday, May 31, 2004

Living in Mission 6

The Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Liminality by Alan J. Roxburgh on Amazon

Missionary Congregation Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Toward a Missionary Ecclesiology
missionary congregation cover

In this concluding chapter Pastor Roxburgh considers:

"...the leadership of the church in a time of liminality, which requires leaders whose identity is formed by the tradition rather than the culture. It also requires leaders who listen to the voices from the edge. This is where the apostle, the prophet, and the poet are found."

Pastor Roxburgh definitely is not talking about business models and parallels in this chapter!


I love this chapter, too! :) I'd like to mention a few of Pastor Roxburgh's ideas:

"...marginality is the church's reality." "...leaders whose identity is formed by the tradition rather than the culture." But he doesn't explain how the tradition has formed the identity of those leaders. "Poets are the articulators of experience and the rememberers of tradition." Imaging and symbolizing! I also need to quote, "...they are cries that long to be connected to a Word that calls them beyond themselves into a place of belonging that God gives within a people." "The alternative community...is formed as the prophetic word addresses the pained recognition of our liminality."

Regarding pastor as prophet, Pastor Alan says, "Without this other Word, the community turns its pain into the ghetto experience of marginalization rather than the recognition that it exists for the life of the world."

Regarding Bible study, he perceptively observes, "...we are a culture that believes that if something has been studied, then it has been done." Oh, how true! :(

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