No.11: Encounter and the Call of God
Editorial
Editorial: Learning to Listen
In this issue of the Journal we want to turn our attention to hearing God particularly through encounter and sharing stories, drawing on the resource of Journal stories and the practices of action and reflection. Sally Mann was a storyteller for the journal, and she describes...
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Think Tank 2018: Allowing Stories to lead us
I'm learning the power of stories. My involvement with the Journal of Missional Practice began with telling my story. In Spring 2016, Martin Robinson and Mary Publicover came to interview us. Our community church, Bonny Downs, was featured in Issue 7. I can’t tell you...
Think Tank 2018: Learning Together
My years in church leadership, teaching, and consulting, along with a degree in education, have always focused on how we learn. There have been times when I was inspired by a compelling theory or new data, and I have seen others who also showed interest and voiced intent around new possibilities, but two things stand out...
Conversations
‘Eat What is Set before You’: A Conversation with the Author Scott Hagley.
In this video Scott Hagley is in conversation with Alan Roxburgh and Martin Robinson to discuss his recent book ‘Eat What is Set Before You’. Throughout his experience as pastor and researcher Scott has asked the question ’what kind of relationships do churches need to connect with what God is up to in their neighborhoods?’ The book title ‘Eat What is Set Before You’ references Jesus’ instruction to the seventy...
Leading and Discerning in a Fragmented Context
In this video Alan Roxburgh and Mark Lau Branson introduce two pastors, both leading Nazarene churches and both deeply embedded in neighbourhoods in the Los Angeles area. Immigration is an issue for both churches. Marcos Canales and Josh Smith reflect on the challenge of building community in a context of fragmentation and distrust.
Kingdom Communities in Queensland
At the beginning of this story Queensland Church of Christ was barely viable. The book Kingdom Communities tells the story of its transformation. Authors Dean Phelan and Andrew Menzies discuss the turnaround in this video with Alan Roxburgh. The seventy or so churches, many small and many insular, had become disconnected from a large Church of Christ care sector. And around one hundred and twenty well developed institutions in various aspects of social care had lost any sense of theological purpose.
Leadership, Community and the Work of God.
Two wise and experienced ministers reflect with Alan Roxburgh on how they discern the call of God in this video conversation. Sally Mann and Tim Dickau have already shared their stories within this journal. Both are ministers of churches which have developed extensive social programmes in areas of deprivation, in East London and Vancouver.
Two Pastors Talking: ‘So How Do You Hear God?’
Although Joseph Omoragbon and Fred Liggin are church pastors, both see their primary role to be that of missionary to their community. In most other ways they are different. Fred is a white American working in Southern United States. Joseph is a Nigerian immigrant, a pastor and church planter with the Redeemed Christian Church of God, serving in North East England... This video conversation explores how they both hear the call of God.
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The Journey of Journey Communities
The story of Journey Communities and their café, is not one that says, 'here is a great new model of church', so much as, 'this is what mission tends to look like in a post Christendom, post secular and post so much else West'. Jeff and Christie Lothamer have come to the UK to serve as missionaries...
Articles
A Christian Counter-Movement to Neoliberalism?
Recently I was sitting with friends on the back-deck when the topic of neo-liberalism came up. The conversation caused me reflect again about the Christian response to this massive social and cultural unravelling too many of us are experiencing. Why isn’t there a Christian counter movement for the protection of society from neo-liberalism?
Extending the Conversation
A Christian Counter Movement to Neoliberalism: A Rapid Response by Sally Mann
Further Thoughts on Christian Resistance by Alan Roxburgh
Book Reviews
Review of two books with the same title and a marked difference: Twilight of the Elites
These two books were written almost a decade apart, one in the USA, the other in France. Each addresses the role of elites in the unfolding (now unraveling) of Western societies. By the term ‘elites’, each is describing what evolved in the early part of the twentieth century with the formation of a middle-class meritocracy...
Book Review: ‘Looking for Lydia’ by Sally Mann
This is an inspiring book about the journey Sally and Dave Mann have experienced in the East End of London. The subtitle of the book is ‘encounters that shape the church’ and they explore these by focusing on some of the key figures we read about in Acts and the epistles.
Book Review: ‘The Church and its Vocation: Lesslie Newbigin’s Missionary Ecclesiology’ by Michael Goheen
In truth, from the first page on I was gripped by the crispness of Goheen’s writing and the breadth of scholarship that he has brought to this important and excellent book. Newbigin was, and remains, one of the most important missiological minds of the late twentieth century who, for all of us, raised the critical questions of what it means for the people of God to address the still unaddressed challenge of the modern West.
Liberty, Equality, …Disintegration? A Conversation with the author of ‘Why Liberalism Failed’
What we call liberalism today is in fact a transformation from a classical and Christian definition and understanding of liberty to one where liberty is understood as capacity to live one’s life in the absence of external constraints, brackets the question of truth and goodness, and leaves it up to the individual to define the nature of one’s own good. This is profoundly different...
Book Review: Undomesticated Dissent by Curtis Freeman.
The theme of Freeman’s book is dissent and its critical place in both the formation and thriving of democracy. He focuses on three of the early pioneers of this dissent in 17th and 18th century British social life, that period of time when England was thrust into social upheaval...
‘Practices for the Refounding of God’s People.’ Part 1: Modernity’s Wager.
To engage the modern west with the gospel we need to understand that it has been shaped by ‘modernity’s wager’: the belief that life can be lived well without God. According to Alan Roxburgh and Martin Robinson in this conversation...
‘Practices for the Refounding of God’s People’: Part 2: Practices for Refounding.
The British and European church has benefitted from the arrival of Christian migrants from Africa and Asia, a ‘blessed reflex’ from the early days of mission. According to Alan Roxburgh the Canadian church has benefitted from the wisdom of First Nations indigenous peoples who have embodied an appreciation of the land...