by Alan J. Roxburgh
Morehouse Publishing, New York. 128 pages
REVIEWED BY ALLEN D. TIMM
An amazing new partnership began in a Detroit neighborhood. It all started with a prayer walk, with church members stopping and asking neighbors how they could pray. One of the residents turned out to be the president of the neighborhood block club. Soon the president called to ask for help with a project: Could the church help neighbors board up a house and cut down bushes? She said the vacant home was dangerous because it sat right at a school bus stop. Together the church and neighbors collaborated. Now the block club meets at the church. Now, church members are talking about how they can join what God is doing in a nearby retirement community.
The commissioned ruling elder who led those efforts recently led a workshop on this book in which Alan J. Roxburgh bids us to follow God into our neighborhoods.
Roxburgh says so many churches are trying to start new programs to attract neighbors. Instead, he challenges the church to get out the door and into the neighborhood. As we join God in the community we find the church changes, and we are joining God in remaking the world. We partner with neighbors to live out the design of God as Micah prophesied: doing justice, showing mercy and walking humbly with God.
The charge for an outward direction comes from hearing what God is doing. Groups begin with Scripture and prayer. Roxburgh offers various Scriptures. Psalm 126 says that the nations notice what God is doing. Isaiah 52:10 promises, “all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.” Jesus sent his disciples out two-by-two (Luke 10) and charged them to stay with neighbors and to travel lightly. Roxburgh interprets this sending of Jesus as a call to engagement with our neighbor: “We are embarking on a shared journey to discern where the Spirit is at work in our neighborhoods and join God in these places. How do we discern together? How do we join with God? How will this joining require us to be changed as a gathered people?”
The reader can hear Roxburgh’s call to action in this video where he makes the case for why congregations need to engage their neighborhood. He says it is no longer “natural for people to come to church.” Churches need “to go where they are.”
Part two of the book outlines a process for following God in to the neighborhood. Roxburgh provides a workbook-type series of exercises for listening to neighbors. The outline includes mapping the neighborhood, walking it, listening to community leaders and designing an experiment. Roxburgh’s book can be used as an outline for discussions with a session or group in the church who is called to follow Jesus out into the neighborhood.
One of the key learnings for sessions that have studied this book is that the call of Christ is not to “do for” but rather “be with” our neighbors. After studying Scripture and praying, listening to neighbors and hearing a call in a time of discernment, experiments can be designed. Afterwards there is a time of evaluating where we followed God and how we joined God in changing the world.
What I hear in this book is God’s call to lead change in our communities so that the world will reflect the vision of God.
ALLEN D. TIMM is executive presbyter of the Presbytery of Detroit.
