In a change-up from previous episodes, Jenny Sinclair interviews her Leaving Egypt co-host Al Roxburgh. Al shares about his journey, first, as a Baptist minister who knew how to renew and grow churches and, later, as a consultant on making churches “missional”. He talks about the significance of Lesslie Newbigin in launching a change in his thinking thirty years ago, a prompt that set him on a journey of reframing his understanding of God’s agency in the context of modernity. Changes in Al’s thinking and practice have continued over the last ten years—with an emerging clarity that we are living through a change of era. Amid signs of unravelling across the West, he has been drawn to engage with conversation partners around the relationship between church and society. This led him to revisit Catholic thinkers who examine political economy through the lens of the gospel, especially as the impact of economic systems on human flourishing became increasingly serious. Al describes how the Spirit has pushed him outward—away from a church-centric posture and toward a deeper awareness of God at work in the world, particularly in the local. His advice now for church leaders is not to focus on what makes the church work, but on what is going on among people in the places where they live. Through practices of discerning, dwelling, and listening, he urges us all to ask: What does it mean to be God’s people here, in this neighbourhood?
For Alan J Roxburgh:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonsnetwork
Books
Forming Communities of Hope in the Great Unraveling: Leadership in a Changing World (with Roy Searle)
Practices for the Refounding of God’s People: The Missional Challenge of the West (with Martin Robinson)
Joining God in the Great Unraveling
Leadership, God’s Agency and Disruptions
Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our Time
Also mentioned in this episode:
Paul Weston Humble Confidence: Lesslie Newbigin and the Logic of Mission
Tim Rogan The Moral Economists: R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E. P. Thompson, and the Critique of Capitalism
Alan Seligman Modernity’s Wager: Authority, the Self, and Transcendence
Also referred to were these Catholic thinkers:
Augusto Del Noce The Crisis of Modernity
Luigino Bruni Civil Economy
William T Cavanaugh Field Hospital and The Uses of Idolatory
Rocco Buttiglioni Modernity’s Alternative
For Jenny Sinclair:
Website: https://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclair
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/T4CG
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TogetherForTheCommonGoodUK
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/t4cg_insta/
