What does this look like at a neighbourhood level?

“We need a movement of Gods people into neighbourhoods, to live out and be the new future of Christ. It must be a movement that demonstrates how the people of God have a vision and the power to transform our world. This is not the same as current attempts to grow bigger and bigger churches that act like vacuum cleaners, sucking people out of their neighbourhoods into a sort of Christian supermarket.

Our culture does not need more churches run like corporations; it needs local communities empowered by the gospel vision of a transforming Christ who addresses the needs of the context and changes the polis into a place of hope and wholeness. The corporation churches we are cloning across the land cannot birth this transformational vision, because they have no investment in context or place; they are centers of expressive individualism with a truncated gospel of personal salvation and little else.

Our penchant for bigness and numerical success as the sign of God’s blessing only discourages and deflects attempts to root communities of God’s people deeply into neighbourhoods. And until we build transformed communities there is no hope for a broken earth.” Alan Roxburgh

It is possible to become a community within a neighbourhood of those called out of the dominant culture to be the people of Jesus.

Each community seeks to demonstrate to their neighbourhood what it looks like when a people live together under the reign of God.

These followers of Christ may be a part of a “church” and some may not. Attention is paid not to structure any of the communities’ gatherings or initiatives during Sunday mornings in order to avoid conflicts with worship services.

The first initiative that the community engages in is to love affectionately and tangibly the brothers and sisters in Christ who live in the neighbourhood. This means that they eat regularly together, listen to and pray for one another.

Next, they engage their neighbours, listening, caring and discerning what Jesus would have them do together with and for their neighbours. They seek to love their neighbours affectionately and practically often with a kind of hospitality which reaches first to the “people of peace” and then to those of the neighbourhood who are on the margins.

Within each neighbourhood servant-leaders emerge who in cooperation with others in the body of Christ encourage Christian practices among the community such as biblical reflection, fasting and prayer, generosity to the poor, welcoming the stranger and the proclamation of the good news that the “kingdom of God is near”.

"Rather, they (new communities of faith) are based on a missional understanding of church that emphasizes an incarnational, servant approach and sees church not as a once-a-week gathering but as a community to which one belongs that relates to the whole life. It is a community in which each person makes an active contribution, during gathered worship as well as dispersed service.

These churches emphasize hospitality and are therefore small. They are small not because of their limited appeal but because they are committed to maintaining their values of community, accountability, and service, and to being reproducible on an exponential scale. This is indeed an inspiring vision.” Eddie Gibbs