Reaching a New Generation

by Alan J. Roxburgh

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0830813403
• ISBN13: 9780830813407
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: IVP Books
• Length: 140 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Engaging popular longing for community, environmental concern and empowerment

Alan Roxburgh, Reaching a New Generation: Strategies for Tomorrow's Church (Downers Grove: IVP, 1993) Reviewed by Darren Cronshaw This pastor turned teacher says he is struggling to articulate a theology for congregational mission in a changing situation. Above all, he contends that above all people today yearn for community, want to save the earth from ecological destruction, and thirst for an experience of spiritual reality. He tells of the popularity of the 'Big Carrot' food co-op that opened up near his previous church offering these values: community, environmental concern and empowerment. He suggests the church needs to respond with Christian community, Christian ecology, and Christian spirituality; thus showing the relevance of the gospel and a way forward for communicating it. Rather than selling out to individualism, the church needs to reclaim its birthright and express itself in terms that makes sense to people today: 'The old cant of guilt, death, self-centred spirituality and the dualisms of dematerialized souls waiting in the anteroom to heaven will not touch people's longings for a new kind of earthed community. The vision of a hope beyond has been displaced by the hope of a common, healed life here on earth.' (p.100) Since writing this book a decade ago Roxburgh has done some consulting and training for Australian church denominations, most notably the Churches of Christ in Victoria and Tasmania (see [...]). He continues to urge the development and application of the missional ecclesiology that is developing in his thinking in this book: 'We need to start switching the lights off, locking the doors and disbanding the programs. This is not where God's people are meant to be, and it is not the journey Jesus Christ has invited them to make.' (p.128) Originally appeared in Darren Cronshaw, `The Emerging Church: Introductory Reading Guide', Zadok Papers, S143 (Summer 2005).

best book Al Roxburgh has written

I first read this book in 1995. A decade later, I still return to it and consider it the best book Al Roxburgh has written. It is short. It emerges from practical experience. It does a wonderful job of reading the Biblical narrative in light of contemporary concerns.

Really good read if you want ANSWERS in ministry to GenX

Super book, first read it 5 years ago and now they're reprinting it. Roxburgh leads us down the path of resurrecting a dying inner-city church [read that: morgue with a steeple] through what postmoderns really want: Community [fellowship, care and concern], reality based ministry, relationships [with God, of course AND fellow pilgrims] and participatory worship. Roxburgh's analogy and observations of a local coffee shop/organic grocery always packed with postmoderns, hits the nail right on the head and then his applying the principles of those stores without compromising the ministry is great. Get it and read it...remember Roxburgh wrote this several years back [1992?] BUT he's better than most writers of the past 3 years. Buy it.