Simon Carey Holt on video

Alan Roxburgh is a name that turns up on this blog fairly frequently, but it was only today that I discovered the videos on Roxburgh Missional Network site.

The focus of these is 'moving back into the neighbourhood' and the two dozen or more videos look at different aspects of this. The softly-spoken Australian (so soft I had to turn the computer's sound up), Simon Carey Holt features in five of them, and gives as good an idea of what the focus is as anyone. He tells a story in the first of his videos about being in a Los Angeles neighbourhood when three young boys were mistakenly shot (the local gang mistook them for members of an opposing gang). In spite of there being a church of 9,000 people nearby, with 100 pastors, Holt was surprised to find that not one of those people seemed to know anything about the shooting, nor did any (as far as he knew) turn up to the spontaneous memorial that took place in the alleyway beside the Holts' kitchen window.

The problem was most of that enormous congregation drove to their church, and drove home again to a different suburb.

Holt is the author of a book, The God Next Door, which also focuses on the themes discussed in the videos.

Perhaps your church isn't very neighbourhood-connected. However, you are, and there's nothing to stop you being involved with the people who live on either side of you, or behind you, or across the street. We tend to think of our neighbours as being there by chance; perhaps the reality is, God has put them there purposely.