This accessible introduction explains what the missional church movement is all about and offers church leaders workable ways of implementing change.

Introducing the Missional Church: What It Is, Why It Matters, How to Become One (Allelon Missional Series)

Religion & Spirituality

Boren, M. Scott

Roxburgh, Alan J.

Christian Books & Bibles

Baker Books

Exhausted with trying to “fix” the church? It’s time to turn in a new direction: back to the Holy Spirit. In this insightful book, internationally renowned scholar and leader Alan Roxburgh urges Christians to follow the Spirit into our neighborhoods, re-engage with the mission of God, and re-imagine the whole enterprise of church. Joining God, Remaking Church, and Changing the World can guide any church ― large or small, suburban or urban, denomination-level or local parish ― to become a vital center for spirituality and mission. • Distills the best of mission wisdom for laity and clergy today • Roxburgh is a leading voice shaping church life ecumenically and globally Alan Roxburgh offers deep hope and concrete steps forward for churches struggling with life in a post-Christian culture. By entering more deeply into the stories of the Bible, our own stories, and the lives of our neighbors, we join God’s life in the world. This is one of the most helpful books I have read, full of clear analysis and practical wisdom. ― Dwight Zscheile, associate professor of congregational mission and leadership at Luther Seminary and author of People of the Way and The Agile Church Joining God invites you to embark on the journey you always wanted to take. In this book you will find: Courage: Alan Roxburgh is unafraid to admit the unraveling of what we’ve been and calls us to move into new places. Faith: The Spirit is going ahead of us into our neighborhoods. Ancient/future: The answer isn’t flashy promotions but deeper discipleship and community. Hope: When we dare to move outside our walls, we’ll find work to do and our calling renewed. ― Philip Clayton, scholar, activist and author of Transforming Christian Theology Drawing on his years of experience with missional church theology and practice, Roxburgh outlines our attempts to end church decline and opens up fresh vision: What if the unraveling of the church is God’s way of leading us out of bondage to American culture into God’s new Exodus? What if God is inviting us to shift our focus and to discern and join God’s presence and work in our neighborhoods? This book outlines practical steps congregations can embrace to experiment with this new/old way of living the Gospel locally. Engaging these practices will not be easy. And learning from God and neighbors how to participate in local missional experiments might actually transform both congregations and society. Don’t just read this book … gather a group to experiment with this “way” in practice! ― Gordon Scruton, Retired Bishop of the Diocese of Western Massachusetts Drawing on his work as a consultant, researcher, sociologist and teacher, Roxburgh invites congregations to build bridges between their churches and their neighborhoods. He outlines a way for congregations to reclaim their apostolic roots, a process that is rooted in scripture and grounded in prayer. His is a challenge to be faithful to the Gospel and to reap the benefits of commitment and creativity. ― Mark Beckwith, Bishop of the Diocese of Newark

Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our Time

Morehouse Publishing

Throughout its history, the church has faced crises of meaning and identity in all kinds of changing contexts. The crises facing the churches of the western hemisphere today are no different. At their best, churches have recognized that their challenge is not their own fixing or even ""reformation"" but a deep engagement with the ways the gospel transforms society. This book explores how this can happen again in a radically changing western world.

Practices for the Refounding of God's People: The Missional Challenge of the West

Robinson, Martin

Church Publishing

Our world has changed dramatically in the past quarter century. People are losing faith in technology. Our society has lost consensus and is dividing into competing tribes. There are "new realities" and new values. We are passing into an unprecedented situation with few familiar landmarks to guide us.

Reaching a New Generation: Strategies for Tomorrow's Church

Intervarsity Pr

The church is living in a time of massive, unprecedented change. Traditional institutions and structures are unraveling in response to rapid social, demographic and economic developments. The existing ways of being the church are no longer meaningful to many. How should the church respond? Many seek to address this situation by tweaking the established institutions, finding new structures, reorganizing congregations or renewing long-established practices. Some even argue that we need to abandon structures and institutions altogether. We regularly hear proposals for missional churches, organic churches, simple churches, fresh expressions churches and so on. Alan Roxburgh argues that we need to look deeper. Structures embody the core narratives that shape how people see the world. We cannot simply replace old institutions with new ones. We need to examine the underlying stories, metaphors and cultures that give organizations their meaningfulness. The crisis of the church today is a crisis not of institution but of imagination. In Structured for Mission, Roxburgh challenges the church to become a place where people are empowered to reimagine their religious life and experiment with new ways of being the church in a local context. We are living in a brave new world. Will the church be ready?

Structured for Mission: Renewing the Culture of the Church

In The Missional Leader, consultants Alan J. Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk address two questions: "How do we do missional?" and "What does missional leadership look like?" Drawing on their many years of experience, the authors show readers how to bring God's word into the community outside the church's walls. They focus on how to lead missionally on the ground, in the local setting, even amid leaders' experience of massive change within the church and in the wider world. The challenge for many church leaders is that they are not equipped to lead a church in shifting from a consumer model of church to one that is missional. They were trained in a Christendom mindset--to meet the needs of the church's members. This book assists leaders in shifting from dominant models of leadership rooted in strategic planning--with mission and vision statements, desired outcomes, measurements along the way, and determined goals. It provides a praxis for beginning where people are, rather than where the leader wants them to go. 
Roxburgh and Romanuk give frank recognition to the fact that the shift from a consumer model to a missional mindset will almost certainly be stormy, disruptive, and disorienting. This is not a book of quick fixes and slick slogans, but one that sets out a comprehensive and in-depth treatment for a different way of leading. The Missional Leader is a critical commentary that needs to be read in the light of today's realities.

The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World

Romanuk, Fred

Fortress Press

The urgent question for Christian mission in North America today has to do with churches and congregations and the crisis of their identity in the culture of modernity. Alan Roxburgh argues that the crisis is not merely one of internal identity or structures but involves the massive changes that have transformed modernity, including the shifting of the church from the center of culture to the margins.Chapter 1 reviews the marginalization of the churches and their self-under-standing of that context; chapter 2 examines Victor Turner’s work on liminality (a term describing the transition process that accompanies a change of state or social position), relating it to the church’s experience of marginalization; chapter 3 outlines leadership characteristics required in today’s missionary congregations.Alan J. Roxburgh is Senior Pastor of West Vancouver Baptist Church in British Columbia, an adjunct faculty member of Regent College in Vancouver, and author of the recently published Reaching a New Generation.

The Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Liminality (Christian Mission & Modern Culture)

Trinity Press International

Our world has changed dramatically in the past quarter century. People are losing faith in technology. Our society has lost consensus and is dividing into competing tribes. Rather than simply condemning these new values, Roxburgh calls the church to respond with Christian community, Christian ecology and Christian spirituality. This fresh and powerful book shows what our new world is like and how the gospel is yet again relevant and redemptive.

Regent College Publishing

Leadership, God's Agency, and Disruptions: Confronting Modernity's Wager

Leaders in congregations and Christian organizations wrestle with an unraveling of the world in which they have little experience and training. While they are offered unending resources by experts on leadership, some with claims to biblical blueprints, the challenges seem mismatched to those methods. Branson and Roxburgh frame the situation as one in which "modernity's wager"--the conviction that God is not necessary for life and wisdom and meaning--has defined the Western imagination. Because churches and leaders are colonized by this ethos, even when God is named and beliefs are claimed, approaches to leadership are blind to God's agency. Branson and Roxburgh approach this challenge as a work in practical theology, attending to our cultural context, narratives of God's disruptive initiatives in Scripture, and a reshaping of leadership theories with a priority on God's agency. With years of experience as teachers, consultants, and guides, they name practices which lead to more faithful participation. Leadership, God's Agency, and Disruption is wide-ranging in cultural and biblical scholarship, challenging in its engagement with numerous leadership studies, and practical with its focus toward the on-the-ground life of churches and organizations.

Leadership, God's Agency, and Disruptions

Branson, Mark Lau

Cascade Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Roxburgh, Alan J.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Roxburgh, Alan J.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Roxburgh, Alan J.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Introducing the Missional Church: What It Is, Why It Matters, How to Become One (Allelon Missional Series)

Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our Time

Practices for the Refounding of God's People: The Missional Challenge of the West

Reaching a New Generation: Strategies for Tomorrow's Church

Structured for Mission: Renewing the Culture of the Church

The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World

The Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Liminality (Christian Mission & Modern Culture)

Reaching a New Generation: Strategies for Tomorrow's Church

Leadership, God's Agency, and Disruptions

Leadership, God's Agency, and Disruptions: Confronting Modernity's Wager