by Lon on January 3, 2008
I’ve been chewing on Alan Hirsch’s latest book, The Forgotten Ways, over the past few months. It’s somewhat of a follow up to The Shaping of things to come by Hirsch and Michael Frost.
It’s a fairly dense read and Alan coins a number of new terms, which might be why it took me so long to dig through… but it was well worth it.
There are plenty of reviews around on the book, a few personal gems:
All great missionary movements begin at the fringes of the church, among the poor and the marginalized, and seldom, if ever, at the center.
An advertising executive recently confessed to me that they are now deliberately stepping into the void that was left by the removal of Christianity from Western culture… Much of that which goes by the name advertising is an explicit offer of a sense of identity, meaning, purpose, and community… If through advertising marketers can just link their products to this great unfilled void, they will sell.
If we don’t disciple people, the culture sure will
The fact that God was in the Nazarene neighborhood for thirty years and no one noticed should be profoundly disturbing to our normal ways of engaging mission.
Start with the church and the mission will probably get lost. Start with the mission and it is likely that the Church will be found.
Some other resources by Alan Hirsch and on The Forgotten Ways
- The official forgotten ways website
- Alan Hirsch’s Blog
- Interview of Alan Hirsch
- PDF of The Forgotten Way’s first chapter
- Rodney Olsen interviews Alan Hirsch on sonshine.fm here
- Jordon cooper does an excellent reflection on The Forgotten Ways
- Soularize podcast roundtable with Spencer Burker, Neil Cole, and Alan Hirsch
- Two audio sessions with Alan Hirsch and many others at Forge
- Audio downloads of Alan speaking at the Canadian Church Planting Congress
A visual of mdna (missional DNA)
by Lon on November 9, 2007
Here’s another idea.
What if we as church leaders weren’t so obsessed with building a quasi-kingdom of God through our local churches and instead did everything we could to connect our entire city to the Living God?
How many of us are actually a part of metropolitan churches where we drive past thirty other churches on a Sunday so that we might worship a God that ‘works’ for us?
What if we recovered a solid theology of place? What if we completely rethought where we live and the way we minister to people? What might the church in the city look like if we were willing to reconfigure our collective churches?
This particularly applies to suburban churches as we now realize how we’ve abdicated the city core and ponder how we’ll ever get back in.
Odds are, however, many of suburbanites still work in the urban core and many are moving back into gentrified neighborhoods. What if we were strategic about leveraging this?
What if a few churches went through our membership rolls and sent out those who were already involved in urban neighborhoods and formed new parish churches together?
Ridiculous? Shallow? Too challenging?
by Lon on November 5, 2007
I think I’ll start highlighting some slightly ‘out-there’ ideas I’ve been pondering over the next couple weeks. Here’s one.
I’ve spent the bulk of my church-life in ethnic churches. I’m a firm believer in the ethnic church and it’s role critical role in developing community, evangelism, identity, perspectives, etc. However, like many others in my generation, we struggle with also being a multi-ethnic church in a multi-ethnic culture.
While there is undoubtedly incredible diversity even within an ethnic community, there’s something indescribably beautiful about entering a community where the diversity is almost blatant.
Many of us have been there before, where we’ve invited, or wanted to invite a friend from a different, only to find that the whole ‘race-thing’ can become just one more barrier to Christ.
So the big question is how on earth do you transition a church that’s mono-ethnic into a multi-ethnic church?
Here’s one simple idea I’ve been bouncing around…
We declare a month where everyone commits to bringing someone who’s not like themselves.
This way no one feels awkward, no one knows it’s an ethnic church
In a month’s time you’re a completely different church!
What do you think? Too radical? Too naive? I know there are other factors and issues such as multiethnic staffing/leadership, integration, etc. I’d love to know what people think.
(I know multiculturalism is the even bigger issue, but one thing at a time folks…)
