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Loading ...The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church
Alan Hirsch & Michael Frost
Practically the book that launched the contemporary ‘missional’ quest – read it to find out why.
For the first time we in the West are living in what has been called a “post-Christendom era.” Most people throughout the Western world have seen what the Church has to offer, and they have found it wanting. The current credibility gap has made it hard to communicate the gospel with clarity and authenticity. Paradoxically, this is the case even though it is currently a time of almost unprecedented openness to the issues of God, faith, and meaning. This is a time when the need for, and relevance of, the gospel has seldom been greater, but the relevance of the Church has seldom been less. If ever there was a time for innovative missionary effort in the West, it is now.
This raises enormous challenges for people in the West. This classic in missional literature explores why the Church needs to recalibrate itself, rebuilding itself from the roots up. The case is built around real-life stories gathered from innovative missional projects from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and England. These spirited experiments of Gospel community serve to point out just how varied a genuinely incarnational approach to mission can, and indeed needs to, become. They present vital nodes of missional learning for the established Church as it seeks to orient itself to the unique challenges of the twenty-first century.
knowtown
I am gearing up to read Michael Frost’s new book, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture (look for a future review on that title) but first I had some catching up to do. While I am familiar with Frost’s work with Alan Hirsch, I had not read any of their work completely. So Before tackling Frost’s first solo book, I thought I would jump into their earlier work, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21 Century Church.
This is a popular book that came out in 2003 and has been recommended to me many times by pastors, church-planters and fellow ecclesial dreamers ever since. The success of this earlier work is evidenced by the wide ranging use of the vocabulary that Frost and Hirsch use throughout the book (words like “missional” and “not-yet-Christians”) by those concerned with the future of the church.
Frost and Hirsch raise important questions and share well told stories to initiate a conversation about some important things that some in the church are trying to avoid. They quote from a wide variety of sometimes seemingly incompatible Christian thinkers and point to a lot of real world examples to illustrate their claims. They argue that if the church is going to have any relevance in the future it is going to have to reshape itself. They take the reader on a broad overview of history to show how the church has lost its way. But they are not prophets of “doom and gloom.” Frost and Hirsch believe that the church can change and once again be what it is called to be. Their generous and gracious tone soften much of their critique and it is not surprising that many are turning to this book to help them frame their thoughts of re-framing the mission of the church.
But as I read this book I could not escape a feeling of deep dissonance. Certainly, some of that dissonance is intended, as the authors are indeed trying to shake contemporary paradigms of how we embody church. But those things were not what troubled me. For me, it was more about the tension in many of the things that are left unsaid. There seems to be an underlying assumption throughout the book about what “the gospel” is. This concept of “gospel” is referred to again and again in their arguments (“the missional church proclaims the gospel.”) but it is never clearly spelled out what they mean by it. Likewise, they make mention several times to holding on to things that are “biblical” and letting go of things that are “unbiblical” as if these concepts are universally accepted by the church. These undefined things make their arguments seem shallow and inapplicable.
Early in the book they argue that our ecclesiology should emerge from our missiology, which in turn should emerge from our christology. But underneath this is an undefined soteriology that makes their christology and missiology unclear and their ecclesiology only a cosmetic addition. It seems the authors are clear in their minds on what distinguishes a Christian from a “not-yet-Christian” but because they assume this does not need any clarification the reader is left wondering just what the mission of the church should be. While they attempt to call into question the empirical nature of typical evangelism it is unclear how their own understanding of missional is any less empirical. And while they quote the outstanding missionary thinker, Vincent Donovan in support of their arguments it is difficult for me to see how Donovan supports their claims. While Donovan argues very powerfully that it is time for the Church to be evangelized by the world, and for a historically and theologically dynamic, cosmic christology, Frost and Hirsch clearly see “mission” and “evangelism” as a unidirectional endeavor to lead the lost to a historically static and theologically settled Christ.
Finally, it seems that their vision of the shape of things to come challenges their own assumption that the church is in trouble which begins the book. They argue that the church of the future will not look like the institutionalized, commercialized church of the present which is already in sharp decline. The future church will be hard to gather statistics on because it will be more incarnational than attractional. If the church fails to reinvent itself at this pivotal moment in history it will have no impact in the future. But in contrast to the declining statistics that mark what they see as the current paradigms, they argue that the future church will be more like a “web of relationships.” It will be difficult to gather statistics in the future church that show a reverse in the declining numbers because their will be no easy way to gather the data. Could it be that their vision of what is to come is already here (and has been for much longer than we care to admit)? If that is the case it seems that pointing to the statistical decline is no indication of how bad things are. It may in fact be a better indication that the Kingdom of Heaven is here and many of us are not living into it as we should because we don’t recognize it.
Anyone who knows me will guess correctly that I would disagree with the authors views of “leadership” so I will not beat that dead horse here. But there is plenty in this book that I find beneficial and I have a deep appreciation for Frost and Hirsch in offering these thoughts and presenting them as a hopeful way forward. Overall, I think this book will be helpful for pastors who are already invested in institutional church paradigms and questioning how to transition their ministries as they move ahead. But those asking deeper theological questions about soteriology, “Gospel,” and ecclesiology may find it disappointing.
Mar 23rd, 2009
Jeff
Review of “ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church.”
I was immediately interested in reading this book because I’d read Hirsch & Frost’s previous book, The Shaping of Things to Come, which has had a lasting impact on me. ReJesus was also an impacting book, but in a much different way. While the first book was filled with a lot of information and practical ideas about how the church should be shaped (and re-shaped) to engage our world, this book was more about where the church–and believers as part of the church–should be focused in their faith: upon Jesus as the center, rather than the institutions of church. Not the skewed pictures of Jesus, the many ways we re-make Him in our image, but the authentic Jesus that the Bible actually describes. To phrase it as Michael Frost would, Shaping was about ecclesiology (the structure/function of church), while ReJesus is about Christology. Here is another way of looking at it. In emergent/missional circles we often hear about the “ancient-future” approach. While Shaping was focused on the “future” part–ReJesus is more about the “ancient” part. But even beyond focusing on ancient traditions of the church, Hirsch and Frost go all the way back to the Founder of our faith as the necessary anchor, expressing our need as the church to sort of “reboot”, to return to Jesus as foundational to all “re-shaping” that must take place.
Because of this focus, while the first book really engaged my mind and confirmed a lot of what I was thinking and feeling about the church itself–reading this book was more of a spiritual experience for me personally. I could feel myself adjusting and shifting in the soul as I read–hungering to engage this real Jesus in a deeper way. In a way, it felt like each chapter was its own experience, and God encountered me in a different way within each one. I realize that’s subjective, and I’m not suggesting this will happen to you if you read the book; I’m just saying that’s how I responded as I read it.
If you approach this book with the expectation that Frost and Hirsch are going to simply debunk the inaccurate images of Jesus and replace them with the “real” historical one, you will probably be disappointed, because that really isn’t the point. Yes, the Biblical Jesus is described here at some level, but more importantly, the reader is invited to engage Jesus rather than just study about Him–to know Him not just by description, but by experience.
The only weakness I perceived in ReJesus is that Frost and Hirsch tend to make numerous references to their previous books to reinforce what they are saying in this one–to the point that on a couple of occasions, had I not already been familiar with those books, the point might have been lost on me. I realize this was probably to keep from repeating too much information, but in some cases it might have been better to be redundant for the benefit of people who were reading these authors for the first time–even if it made the book a bit longer.
I blog often about the need for the church to function like an organism rather than an institution, and how we need to adapt as an organism to our environment (not changing our principles, but our methods). Once a reader asked me what would happen to the church if, in our “adapting”, we adapted ourselves away from Jesus and the gospel. My answer was, “It would no longer be the church.” And the reality is, over centuries of institutionalizing the church, we have drifted from Jesus–not completely, but in framing Him according to the parts of Him that appeal to us, and in distorting the image of who He really was/is. There is a great need in all our expressions of church to recalibrate back to our founding principles, and to our Founder Himself–to recover our focus on Jesus and truly be His disciples again, as the starting point for all that we do. And this is why the discussion in ReJesus is so important.
BOTTOM LINE REVIEW: Highly recommended.
May 4th, 2009
david
A couple weeks ago I blazed through The Shaping of Things to Come by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost. Alan and Michael have written a really superb introduction and structure for what it is to intentionally shape ourselves into missional communities. The book breathed renewed energy into my own dreams for a community dedicated to the movements of God through this world.
One of the main things I appreciated about this book was how comprehensive it was in only about 200 pages. They moved through philosophy, theology, ecclesiology, story, and encouragement, tying all chords together under an overarching focus on the mission of God.
Christology informs Missiology informs Ecclesiology
Moving mission from being a program within church to being that which directs how we gather is the focus shift that most needs to be understood when interacting with all things Missional.
Where are the people in your neighbourhoods? What are their passions? What are the rhythms of their life? How have our traditional conceptions of what a church needs to look like interfered with our joining of those communal rhythms? How can we reorganize ourselves to shape our church life in a way that does not conflict with and even repulse the community we are living in?
Practical example time. My buddy Tim is a pastor at a small town church. The church has come to be involved with an annual charity run which is held on a Sunday morning. The Ecclesiology to Missiology form says that we go to church on Sunday mornings and miss the charity run (Pastors especially!) We show ourselves being uninterested in the causes that are important to our surrounding community. Yet Tim went to the run to hand out water. In fact, he was sent to do just that. It is a seemingly small step, but the Mission of God that always is directed outward dictated a different sort of shape for Sunday Gatherings. For Tim, the communion table became the water he served to these runners. Missional does indeed mean that people might not show up. But that’s because they are out doing their Father’s work.
This book has been out there for a few years now, and is still one of the most highly recommended texts on opening up to the beauty that is the Missional Church. I fully recommend you read it. If you are somewhere nearby I’ll lend you my copy. It’s underlined and scribbled in like crazy, but if you don’t mind a bit of mess I would love for you to take it.
May 7th, 2009
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