The Leadership Institute featured speaker Alan Roxburgh

While some pundits are touting an era of “post-denomination” or even “post-church,” author Alan J. Roxburgh says, “That’s utter nonsense!”

“God must have this amazing sense of humor because one of the most vibrant places of revival and renewal today is in the Anglican Church,” Roxburg told a crowd nearing 200 at the Wednesday afternoon auxillary Leadership Institute.

“’God’s new thing’ always breaks out in the people whom we have given up on,” he continued. “God’s imagination always breaks out in those whom we say, ‘they just don’t get it.’”

Roxburgh says the problem is too many people today go off looking for the next big guru. But when we do that, he says, we are saying that we don’t believe that God is up to something in the local church.

“We’ve been mobilized by all this ideology of post-church or post-denomination that it has made us immobilized. I think the call of God is to embrace our history and embrace who we are. When I read the scriptures, it’s not the spirit of God that rips up tradition, rather it’s that he re-enters it in deep and profound ways.”

Roxburgh says church leaders are oftentimes focused on the wrong questions, such as ‘How do we get more people to join our church?’ or “How do we help people?”

“The spirit of God doesn’t have the least kind of interest in applying marketing principles to solving problems in the church,” he said. “We have put ourselves where we don’t need to fundamentally change. I’m saying you’ve got to put yourself in a place where you are not in control of the agenda.”

And the answer for Christians isn’t in networks or unclassified groups.

Roxburgh said, “If I’m going to put my money on where God’s future is, it’s in local congregations.”