Transforming the Suburbs

“As I listen to how suburban church leaders speak, I am more and more aware that in their programs for growth and multi-site digitally-fed main speakers they have little sense that geography matters.

The local, the neighborhood, is the place of God’s presence and where the Spirit is at work among people.

I am convinced that for Christians to understand how the Biblical narrative enters and participates in the transformation of culture they must grasp that geography is everything! Once we live into the Incarnation we are committed to place, to particularity; space and time are not containers but the reality within which God’s transformative grace is worked out.

We are seeking to reclaim the suburbs for the kingdom, not curse them as so many do.

Forget the stars and the gurus; stop hungering after the trendies of the moment; enter the local and the ordinary, listen to what is happening on the ground in your own place and context because this is where God’s future is bubbling up. Pay attention to those who actually work on the ground rather then the gurus who try to think great thoughts in heads that are so disconnected from the ordinary places and times where most of us live.”

-Alan Roxburgh, article

HT: Pastor Rod