These are radically different kinds of questions than the ones currently being asked by denominations and congregational leaders. In Missional: Joining God in the Neighbourhood I argue that we’re controlled and shaped by what I call church questions. No matter what the style or brand - be it traditional, contemporary, emergent, missional etc. - the basic underlying questions are focused on how to improve, change, reorder, redesign, remake the church in one form or another. Discussions are about what types and models of church are needed, they focus on how to, one more time, restructure what already exists, put a commission together to imagine new forms, or change existing books of order and discipline to make the church more open. All these activities, which have some value, are shaped by a single, common imagination. Church is the centre of the conversation, the subject, object and end of all these discussions. It’s this imagination that’s blinding and binding Christian imagination from the ways the Spirit is actually unravelling our existing church world and pushing us across boundaries into unknown spaces where we no longer have the maps or control.
Alan Roxburgh in his article: Rediscovering the Neighbourhood
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