In my opinion, one of the most insightful extra-biblical writers on the modern day word, missional, is Australian author Alan Hirsch. Many of you may have heard me reference a book called, The Shaping of Things To Come, another of Hirsch’s books.
In this short 10-minute video, Hirsch breaks down 6 major shifts that he believes are essential for a church to become missional… again. This is all taken from his book, The Forgotten Ways.
- The most essential place to start is that we must recover Jesus. The heart of the church must start and end with the heart of Jesus. The incarnation of Jesus must be brought to the fallen world.
- The art of Discipleship. If we fail here, we fail. A disciple is simply someone who is becoming more and more like Jesus – progression.
- Encountering the world in a missional and incarnational manner. We are a sent movement of people. In order to understand missional, we must understand our mission. To be amongst the people.
- Apostolic environment – missional and apostolic are the same word (latin/greek). Ephesians 4 outlines the 5 essential church leaders, which is almost always void in some capacity in modern-day Western churches. In the west, we focus primarily on Pastor/Teacher as the church leader(s). However, Ephesians 4:11-13 clearly identifies 1) apostles (modern day apostles are gifted in starting new endeavors and ways to progress the church into the fallen world), 2) prophets, 3) evangelists, and then finally 4) pastors and 5) teachers. I have actually spoken in depth about this at Cumberland, listen here.
- Organic Systems – how the church should organize itself. The church should have less top-down ministry approach; paid pastors coming up with all ministry outlets and directions. The whole body of believers have the power of the Holy Spirit to provide outlets for ministering to people, either collectively with others or independent. Organic ministry can simply mean ministering opportunities can come from any angle, the priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:4-5, 9).
- Communitas – the idea of the type of community we are forming. Does the community exist for us, or do we exist for the community? We move from merely being friends or a collective crowd who attend the same church to becoming comrades who lock arms and are sent out into ministry together, both in order to survive and thrive.
Anyway, here is the video. Alan is a bit difficult to understand at times, so I’ve tried to sum up his statements in short.
Click here for video.
people are my art 