Presbyterian Global Fellowship planned the event; San Diego Presbytery hosted it. Presenters included Alan Roxburgh, vice president of Allelon Canada, and Mark Lau Branson, Homer L. Goddard Associate Professor of the Ministry of the Laity at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif.
There is no “master plan” to deal with the new world we find ourselves in, according to Roxburgh. “It’s very Presbyterian to ask, ‘What’s the plan?’ but there isn’t a plan or a strategy for what God is up to in our neighborhoods,” he said. So the question becomes, “Now what?”
The more than 300 participants were challenged to spend time with people in the neighborhoods around their churches, listening, and seeing how God’s Spirit is moving within these contexts.
It is not a matter of giving up being Presbyterian, or throwing out existing structures and organization, according to Roxburgh. It does involve risk and flexibility — making an adaptive shift in order to listen for clues in the neighborhoods to see what God is doing and wants to do to transform the world.
Church leaders need to be open to changes, as well as the congregations, presenters said.
Roxburgh and Branson challenged ministers to get into the life outside the church buildings, listen to what people say and the needs they express, and follow as God leads in that circumstance.
“The questions you ask develop the reality you live in,” said Branson. “If the questions being asked a church or its ministry are always about what is not working, then ‘what is not working’ will be the focus of your energy, thinking, and time. If God’s grace is on the ground, initiating the Kingdom of God, and you are spending all of your time discussing problems, then what are you missing?” he asked.
