transformed communities
A quote from Alan Roxburgh
“We need a movement of God’s people into neighborhoods, to live out and be the new future of Christ. It must be a movement that demonstrates how the people of God have a vision and the power to transform our world. This is not the same as current attempts to grow bigger and bigger churches that act like vacuum cleaners, sucking people out of their neighborhoods into a sort of Christian supermarket. Our culture does not need any more churches run like corporations; it needs local communities empowered by the gospel vision of a transforming Christ who addresses the needs of the context and changes the polis into a place of hope and wholeness. The corporation churches we are cloning across the land cannot birth this transformational vision, because they have no investment in context or place; they are centers of expressive individualism with a truncated gospel of personal salvation and little else.
Our penchant for bigness and numerical success as the sign of God’s blessing ony discourages and deflects attempts to root communities of God’s people deeply into neighborhoods. And until we build transformed communities there is no hope for a broken earth.”
Thanks to Jordon Cooper for the heads up
May 31st, 2004 at 5:06 pm
Dang…you beat me too it…I got it from Karen Neudorfs site and am going to post it later this week maybe…I love it…
May 31st, 2004 at 8:04 pm
Sorry Paul
June 1st, 2004 at 2:25 pm
A really thought-provoking quote. What’s needed are people who believe that God also moves in small churches and communities. In Sydney I’d argue we’ve been lulled into a belief that all the great things are happening in big churches.
June 2nd, 2004 at 10:29 am
Definately thought provoking. If numbers are the sure sign of God’s blessing, then he has blessed some movements that seem contrary to his vision over the course of history. Can a church that gorws rapidly to large numbers still have this vision and power that Alan talks about? I think it can.