My week with Alan Hirsch

One of the people I was most looking forward to meeting in Sopron was Alan Hirsch. (He’s part of the leadership team of Christian Associates International, which sponsored the conference I spoke at last week — see my previous post). Alan is the co-author of The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church and (more recently) the author of The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church, an insightful book that is getting a lot of press these days.

In his latter work Hirsch examines the explosive growth of the early church and the Chinese house church movement and asks the question: “What made these movements work?” His answer, in a nutshell, is that both movements embodied the five-fold ministry of Ephesians 4 (apostle, prophet, evangelist, teacher, pastor) and were guided by “apostolic genius.” Like all living organisms, the church that comprised these movements balanced order on the precipice of chaos and was able to adapt quickly to ever-changing circumstances. This is something that institutions simply cannot do.

I was excited to meet Alan, particularly because I’m the senior pastor of a large church that is, of necessity, an institution. It took about 3 seconds for Alan and I to realize we’re cut from the same cloth. Our histories and personalities are very similar, as are our passions and callings. We both hate religion and feel that the religion of Christendom in particular is the main obstacle to advancing the Kingdom in the West today. I love this dude!

Alan and I spent time discussing an assortment of theological topics along with how our pastoral team and I could more effectively transition the institution of WHC into a missional kingdom movement. We’ve always taught that the weekend event “is not church.” You don’t go to church, for the church is not a building. Rather, “church” (ekklesia) happens when Jesus followers gather in close-knit communities to fellowship, pray, worship and serve others. This is what we’ve always taught, but we’ve frankly never felt like we were very good at making this a reality. While we thank God for the many vibrant small group communities that are part of WHC and who “do church” together, the majority of people who attend the weekend services remain just that — attendees.

One of the things I like about Alan is that he doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. What he offers, rather, is a bunch of excellent, kingdom-centered questions. In particular, he helped me begin to honestly explore how the practices of WHC might be interfering with the teachings of WHC. How might we inadvertently be reinforcing the typical, western, paradigm of church as a weekend gathering of spectators even while we’re proclaiming that this weekend gathering is not church?

I obviously don’t have any clear answers just yet, but I want to thank Alan for helping me embrace a few more of the right questions.

And I encourage all of you to read his probing book, The Forgotten Ways.

Blessings,

Greg