Fragility and Hope

January 11, 2023By Alan Roxburgh

Exhausted? Saturday mornings have, like Sundays, a ritual beginning for me. Around 6am I have a fresh coffee, my dogs beside me and the weekend newspaper (Saturday, the Globe & Mail; Sunday, the weekend New York Times). It’s the first Saturday of the new year, the coffee is good and the dogs are settled. I … Read More

No Straight Lines

December 6, 2022By Alan Roxburgh

I can’t separate my thoughts about a lot of things from Advent just now. What does Advent say to us in our time of disruptive uncertainty? How does Advent connect to the unfamiliar, hard places where so many of us find ourselves? The Context Over the last few months we sponsored a series of Leaders … Read More

Leading in the Tensions

November 30, 2022By Alan Roxburgh

I’m in regular conversation with church executives about the challenges of leadership in this disruptive time. Each person describes their experience in a somewhat different way but the underlying issue is the same in each case. These leaders are hard working, love their churches and have big hearts for kingdom ministry. Yet each has high … Read More

The question we must address

September 7, 2022By Alan Roxburgh

Over the last forty years I’ve written more than a few books about the Euro-tribal churches and the nature of leadership. I’ve wrestled with questions of what it means to be God’s people in an era of unraveling. I now believe that the most important question we must address is: In a world confronted with … Read More

Reflections on Leadership

May 31, 2022By Alan Roxburgh

Scriptures are replete with stories of promise that address this question of how we live in a time of unraveling. Above all else, the Easter narrative is the story at the centre of our lives. Right now, however, I see the Euro-tribal churches being more like those bewildered followers of Jesus lost in their lament … Read More

Community and Belonging

April 1, 2022By Alan Roxburgh

So many of us are asking so many questions right now about where we are. These questions are about our churches, but they’re also about our society as a whole. We have this growing sense that the ground has shifted beneath our feet. We don’t know where we are anymore. Ways of life and leading … Read More

The Soil of Community

October 13, 2021By Alan Roxburgh

Somehow, somewhere, we seem to have lost our sense of belonging and connectedness. But this overarching sense of loss of community isn’t the only story. The Spirit of Jesus is at work in our neighbourhoods fermenting a new kind of community in all kinds of unexpected places. Our experiences of isolation are, in part, shaped … Read More

The Gospel and Identity

September 16, 2021By Alan Roxburgh

A Christian framing of identity begins with the confession that our identity, as a group or community, is formed and rooted in Jesus Christ. Thus, the shaping of identity in congregations in the midst of this great unraveling begins with the regular confession of who we are in God through Christ. This is why a … Read More

Learning from the 72

September 2, 2021By Alan Roxburgh

There is no “code to 21st Century Ministry” but there are practices rooted in our great tradition. The leaders we need contribute to forming a people who embrace the story of God’s agency and the Spirit’s re-weaving in the places where they live amidst the great unraveling. This has been as true for the 5th … Read More

Christian Imagination

August 23, 2021By Alan Roxburgh

Roxburgh reflects on the moment we are in. In the midst of the exhaustion, heaviness and hopelessness (even in our churches), how can we see with the eyes of Christian imagination?