The Sky Is Falling!?! by Alan Roxburgh

Chapter 1

Roxburgh describes two different tribes of people in today's forward-thinking church leadership world: liminals and emergents. Liminals are people who don't want to jettison the traditional church modes. They recognize a change is taking place in society, but they feel ill equipped to handle it.
Emergents don't know anything but change. They are frustrated with the structures they know, and so they have done away with them, but this has left them without a framework for effecting change.

This book is about finding a way for the two groups to work together. They each have the same goals; they're just going about it in different ways, and they both have something to offer one another.

The emergents only know change, and so they lack the discernment to know which changes to heed and which ones to disregard. When change is constant, it is easiest to shrug everything off rather than be blown every which way.

The liminals lack the imagination to see ways to address the changes taking place. They've learned to trust their tools, and they're the only tools they know how to use.

We need common ground.

Chapter 2

Roxburgh contends that we are living in a period of discontinuous change. Discontinuous change is change without a discernible pattern. It comes from all directions at all times. For instance, we face the pressures of postmodernism, rapid technological development, globalization, pluralism, staggering need, the democratization of information, pluralism, and the end of Christendom. Discontinuous change leaves us feeling bewildered, and established patterns don't seem to work anymore.

Chapter 3

People react one of two ways to this sort of change - they try to regain the past or they jump to some unknown future. Instead, Roxburgh advises, we should learn to live together and help one another in the present situation we find ourselves in.

We have to realize that the outside pressures aren't our main concern. In times of transition, people feel the change within themselves, and this is more disconcerting than what is changing in the world. People feel unsettled about the change, and leaders need to be aware of this in those they lead and in themselves.

Chapter 4

There are 5 phases to change:

1) Stability and Equilibrium - We are not here anymore. In times of stability, leaders can maintain the status quo.

2) Discontinuity - This is the onset of change. Leaders tend to try to maintain the stability through these periods while they figure out what is changing in the world around them.

3) Disembedding - The former power structures no longer hold. Leaders need to be able to adapt and revise their institutional cultures. This is very difficult, because people still don't want the world to change.

4) Stability predictability, and control within the former world are gone. People don't know where to turn or what to do. They latch on the most popular current system, but systems keep letting them down further highlighting their lack of control of the world around them. In this situation (the one we are in now) leaders need to listen to God and let Him define what the new future will be.

5) Reformation - The people have negotiated the changes and are restructuring their lives accordingly. Leaders help people adapt their ancient stories to the new context. Roxburgh doesn't think we are anywhere this phase currently.

Chapter 5

Discontinuous change is common to the Biblical narrative. The israelites went through all the stages of change.

Chapter 6

We are living in a time of transition, and it is important for leaders to recognize and empathize with those they lead and to understand the stress discontinuous change is bring to their lives. We also need to have the patience and courage to live in transition and listen to God as to how to proceed instead of retreating into the past or jumping into the future.

Chapter 7

In this time of transition, it is important for people to support one another. Both liminals and emergents need one another. If we can't come together around anything else, then we must come together around our felt need for change. We need to learn from each other. Roxburgh calls this togetherness "communitas."

Chapter 8

Communitas to support one another in periods of transition is a pattern that runs through scripture. The Israelites in the wilderness, the period of the judges, the Babylonian exhile, and the first century Christians including Paul's ministry team are pictures of people supporting one another in periods of great transition.

Chapter 9

Transition isn't just happening in the church. It's happening in the wider culture as well. Core traits are changing, and we need to change too to interact with the changes. According to Roxburgh, we need to:

1) Create a common language
2) Redefine group boundaries and criteria for inclusion and exclusion
3) Learn to dialogue outside system of power and status
4) Get past ideologies

Chapter 10

The leader's main job is to create environments where "missional imagination" is possible amongst the people he or she leads. Missional imagination is simply the freedom to imagine and pursue the things God may be laying on people's hearts to do.

Chapter 11

We need a more communal form of leadership. We need a concert of leaders.

We need some people gifted at expressing the current emotional, mental, and sociological state of the people. (We need poets.)
We need people gifted at calling us into a new future. (We need prophets.)
We need people gifted with the ability to concretely work that future out on the ground now. (We need apostles.)
We need people gifted to care for people in the midst of transition. (We need pastors.)

Chapter 12

And we need people to bring all these divergent leadership styles together. We need what Roxburgh calls at abbot or abbess. This is a person who can organize the competing voices of leadership in times of transition. We need to be brought together to lead the church and each other during this time of transition in the world and in the church.