News From The Assembly

Disciples Can Build True Community In Their Own Neighborhoods, Says Roxburgh 
July 24, 2007 - Disciples News Service - Fort Worth, Texas

Alan Roxburgh speaks during the Tuesday morning plenary session at the 2007 General Assembly.

Disciples can best serve their communities by building a social environment, said pastor, teacher and consultant Alan Roxburgh at a plenary session during the 2007 General Assembly.

Roxburgh, director of the Allelon Center for Missional Leadership, spoke eloquently about what it means to be community during a morning worship service on July 24 at the Assembly. He began by relaying a story about two men from his native northern England, one of whom was impoverished. The other man was from a wealthy neighborhood.

The two came together for a common purpose: ministry. They walked the streets of their neighborhood, engaged people in conversation and took the time to learn what their problems were. The wealthy man and poor man figured out how to look beyond their economic differences to serve their neighbors. But they had to find out who their neighbors were before they could interact with them. They got to know the people around them and then were able to address their needs. Roxburgh called this true community.

“True community is radically different from the kinds of things I used to hear about as a pastor,” said Roxburgh, who has led churches in a small town, suburban area and an urban setting.

Within three months, Roxburgh said, police looked up the two men and reported that crime had fallen in the area because of their work in establishing a “true community.” A year and a half later, the same men were summoned by the city council and encouraged to institute their successful formula citywide.

“You have changed the whole face of the community,” Roxburgh said the council told the men. The councilors were anxious to know how they had done it.

In order to have true community, we must establish the peace of God, who is our peace, and who “has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations,” he said, referring to Ephesians, 4:14-16.  “We are to be the demonstration of where God is taking all creation. This God in Jesus Christ comes to be with the stranger. Any other kind of community, including a family huddling together in the warmth, is really false community.”
 
Roxburgh is a core member of the Gospel and Our Culture Network and was a member of the writing group that authored, “Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Gospel to North America.”

“We cannot be God’s people if we simply focus on serving middle class Americans who drive 20 miles to church looking for an esoteric experience,” he said. “We are to be the demonstration of where God is taking all creation.”

By: James Patterson, writer