Driving through Ohio last week I was struck by all the signs on people’s lawns decrying “ObamaCare”. Many of these signs, like television scenes of public officials shouting at each other and putting one another in the worst light, seem to indicate we are living in a time of heightened conflict and polarizing rhetoric no matter which side one falls across on a series of issues. It was surprising and disconcerting to be in Germany among Christians of differing ages and from various churches and see the way in which the rancor around the words ‘missional’ and ‘emergent’ had travelled across the Atlantic to quickly poison dialogue in a very different context.

These are hard and confusing times for all of us - no matter our politics, racial/ethnic identities or religious views. We all find ourselves in this new space where the maps that once worked so well for us no longer describe the land in which we find ourselves. This will always bring out the extremes along with the need to set straw arguments in order to demonize the other. It’s hard to believe we are in Holy Week, walking with the One who chose not to fight in all the usual ways but to embrace and give his life for a radically different imagination. The anger and blame among Christians of differing views seems to make a lie of the Cross.

I am writing this edition en route to Toronto the second day after the closing of the Vancouver, 2010 Olympics. The plane is full. People from all over Europe along with a collection of media, TV and sports groups are heading home. Many still wear the uniforms of their countries; others have the big, brown Moose horns given out at the closing ceremonies firmly set on their heads. It’s as if no one wants the Games to be over.

Something happened in Vancouver over the past seventeen days that’s hard to describe. The city came alive in celebration. Huge crowds filled the downtown all through the day and long into the evening.

In the second part of Alan Roxburgh's interview with Simon Carey Holt, Simon shares with us how we might form a mission-shaped people in this new space we are living in without all the measurement and formula techniques.

Simon trained in spiritual direction which he has taught at Whitely College in Melbourne. In God Next Door he talks about the practices of entering, attending, dwelling and listening to what God is already up to in the neighborhood.

Watch Simon Carey Holt - God Next Door Part 1