Alan Hirsch at GRTS

This past Wednesday, Alan Hirsch, Director of Forge Mission Training Network, and author of The Shaping of Things to Come and The Forgotten Ways, spoke in chapel at my seminary, Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. I wasn’t able to make it, although I really wanted to be there. Thankfully there is a recording available on the GRTS website. You can access it in the player below or download it here.

Steve Argue, Director of the Contextual Learning Center and Adjunct Professor at GRTS was there, and gives these notes from Hirsch’s message.

Four Essentials for the Western Church in the 21st Century
1. The church must rediscover the absolute centrality of Jesus (Christology)

• We must (re)align ourselves with Jesus Christ
• We must go back to the roots of our faith
• The closer we get to Jesus… the more dangerous he is
• Has Jesus been subverted from the church?
• Jesus does not suit our middle class sensibilities

2. The church must rediscover the ethos of discipleship

• We need discipleship not entertainment
• Without discipleship you end up with a church that is less than Jesus intended
• The authority of the church to speak, comes out of our ability to embody the message

3. The church must rediscover a missional-incarnational impulse

• This exposes the very nature of God
• The church doesn’t have a mission… the mission has a church
• We must reframe around “sent-ness” not “come-ness
• Incarnation- into one’s world (Jesus- 30 years in the neighborhood and no one “noticed.” This is the opposite of colonizing people’s cultures or an “attractional” posture.

4. The church must rediscover the ethos of the structure of apostolic movements

• Consider church’s resources in the first 200 years contrary to the resources the church has today. Have our resources mixed our message?
• Movements are not elitist. Everyone is involved, everyone carries the potential for change (priesthood of all believers)
• “Movements” are reproducing and reproducible
• Movements avoid centralization of power
• We must broaden out our understanding of leadership as it is currently too narrow (Eph 4)

From AlreadyNotYet

Now I read Hirsch’s book, Shaping of Things to Come for my class on the missional church. I tended to like a lot of what Hirsch wrote. This is only confirmed by his time here in Grand Rapids.

Explore posts in the same categories: Missiology, Seminary