Put simply, the church finds itself in a post-Christendom era, and it had better do some serious reflection or face increasing decline and eventual irrelevance.
ALAN HIRSCHRenewal means more than reinventing ourselves; it means rediscovering the primal power of the Spirit and the gospel already present in the life of the church.
More Alan Hirsch Quotes
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Interestingly, it’s as though the gospel story of Jesus is the archetypal heroic journey.
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Think of mission like the paddles of a defibrillator applied to the chest of a dying church.
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Whether we like it or not, we are all on a journey, a Quest if you will, every day of our lives, and the path we must take is full of perils, and our destiny can never be predicted in advance.
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Our preferences for stability and security blind us to the opportunities for adventure when they present themselves.
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Reconnecting with this purpose and recovering the forgotten ways. This purpose and potential have always been there, but individuals and communities have largely lost touch with them.
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But herein lies the rub: Christianity has been on a long-term trend of decline in every Western cultural context that we can identify.
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A capacity for genuine ecclesial innovation, let along engender daring discipleship.
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Go among the people. Don’t assume you know what church looks like.
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It is vital to see ourselves as part of an ongoing journey started by our heroes in the Scriptures.
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The ultimate solution to the problem of spiritual complacency is to create a systematically embedded culture of holy urgency.
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A missional theology…appl ies to the whole of life of every believer.
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Building community for its own sake is like attending a cancer support group without having cancer.
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We must have a sophisticated process to form people into adventurer-disciples.
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Real leaders ask hard questions and knock people out of their comfort zones and then manage the resulting distress.
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Many church folk, in their self-conscious attempt to be overtly morally upright, emit all the wrong signals, thus messing with people’s perception of the gospel.
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Judgments about who belongs in the Hall of Fame are extremely subjective.
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Expressions of the Holy Spirit’s power, evangelism to seekers, or Bible teaching, these so-called new movements still operate out of the fallacious assumption that the church belongs firmly in the town square, that is, at the heart of Western culture.
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But the standard churchy spirituality doesn’t require any real action, courage, or sacrifice from its attendees.
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Those of us with too much invested in the way things are will never embrace the revolutionary cause required for wholesale change.
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Mission is the practical demonstration, whether by speech or by action, of the glorious lordship of Jesus.
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Built squarely on a fivefold ministry, organized around mission where everyone (not just professionals) is considered an empowered agent, and tends to be decentralized in organizational structure.
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It’s not so much that the church has a mission, it’s that the mission of God has a church.
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But because they also convey universal truths about personal self-discovery and self-transcendence, one’s role in society, and the relation between the two.
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The surface of our consciousness; film, television, literature, sports, and travel are in a sense vicarious adventures.
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And if they begin with this mistaken belief about their position in Western society, all their church planting.
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The appetite for adventure and risk is not exclusive to young Christians. In face.
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