Alan Hirsch in New Orleans

June 18, 2008 | Filed Under alan hirsch, church planting |

alan-hirsch.jpgThis past weekend two friends and I drove to New Orleans to attend a one day seminar with Alan Hirsch. In addition to the seminar Alan spent the majority of the previous day meeting with the staff of Journey Christian Church. Rick Grover the pastor of the church invited us to come down early and join in the discussion. It was a very profitable time and well worth the 15 + hour drive.

In addition to discussing key ideas from both “The Shaping of Things to Come” and “The Forgotten Ways”  we spent a significant amount of time talking about how to cultivate a missional mindset within existing communities that are heavily influenced by church growth principles and preoccupied with church activities.

This discussion dealt with the importance of the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer and how every follower of Christ must see themselves as missionaries sent into their local context. The dialogue was especially helpful for the work I am currently doing on a dmin project which focuses on assisting churches in the reallocation of resources in a missional direction.

Another very helpful discussion dealt with fostering new missional communities in a post-Christendom context. One example that Alan shared that I believe illustrates good missional practices for church planting uses the acronym INCH, which I believe Alan said was utilized by Christian Associates International. The basics of the acronym were explained like this:

Initiatives — This is the very lowest level of missional-incarnational practices. These are simple steps taken by individual people of God who carry the word, life and deed of Jesus into the lives of others.

Networks — These are formed when groups of 10-15 people get together to share what is taking place and to participate in missional-incarnational practices as a community.

Clusters — These are basically networks of networks. There is a bit more structure/organization at this level. There may be certain types of training/resources provided within clusters that might not be available in smaller groups.

Hubs — This represents some type of larger gathering for corporate worship, training and larger missionary engagement. Hirsch argues that hubs are probably necessary in certain American contexts.

What do you think about INCH? What applications do you see for it in your ministry? In church planting?

Lastly, a topic surrounding most of the conversation over the two days was recognizing that the lowest common denominator in all of the missional-incarnational practices is discipleship and the difficulty of discipling people in the midst of a consumerist culture. The story of the middle class in America is one of safety, security, comfort and convenience. In other words, American Christians have overwhelmingly chosen the story of the American way rather than the way of Jesus. Hirsch refers to this as living the story of the Kingdom as opposed to the story of the Empire.

How do you model and/or speak of living the principles of the Kingdom vs. Empire?

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8 comments so far
  1. Georges Boujakly June 18, 2008 8:23 pm

    Brad,

    I’ll let the practitioners answer your excellent questions.

    I found Alan refreshingly real, and penetratingly honest about the status quo of the church in America. Alan believes in the American spirit which is creative and innovative. Alas, the church is usually behind in innovation and creativity when it comes to pushing the envelope of progress in the work of the kingdom. At least, my tribe comes short on those two counts.

  2. Brad VW June 19, 2008 8:17 am

    I really appreciate what you cover in this post and this blog in general. I’m a new young pastor in an older established church that I would like to guide towards being more missional but of course it hasn’t been easy. I loved “The Forgotten Ways” and if I was planting a church I could instill those values from the beginning but coming in as the young outsider I’m struggling with how to lead the transformation from inward to outward, or attractional to missional. I’ve preached on it for about 18 months, but I’m not sure that has the biggest impact. Anyway I’m rambling, thanks for the post.

  3. Brad Brisco June 19, 2008 11:56 am

    Brad

    Thanks for the comment. I think you are starting in a great place, by simply speaking/teaching on the topic.

    I don’t know if you are familiar with Rick Meigs’ (www.blindbeggar.org) synchronized blog idea for Monday, but he has 50 different people that will be speaking/writing on the term “missional.” I suppose some will discuss the practical steps to cultivating a missional mindset.

    I plan to take the previous “Missional: More Than a Buzz Word” post and add to it the practical considerations. Check things out on Monday and see if that is helpful. If not I would love to dialogue further about how to practically moved a community in that direction. Blessings!

  4. living church of god June 20, 2008 5:29 pm

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  5. Michael McAleer June 27, 2008 7:41 am

    The INCH pattern is a natural pattern to follow. It really fits well with family:clan:tribe identities that I feel are natural human structures that form in every culture. It also allows you to build on real network forces acting all around us. On this note I recently re-read Acts and discovered again that Paul did not necessarily create networks, he went to where networks of people already existed. We hope to be starting an INCH type church plant very soon in the Central Texas area.

  6. jesse perry June 29, 2008 11:14 am

    The INCH model is helpful for me as I look at my plant. At this point we are at the “Networks” level and will probably stay at this point for a while. Is there more info out there that helps “flesh out” INCH a bit more? Possibly some communities that have found themselves going through these stages? Thanks.

  7. Michael McAleer June 30, 2008 2:29 pm

    Jesse
    Since you and I are maybe the only two people left looking at this, I personally don’t know of any books that flesh this out missiologically. I tried looking on the webpage of the group mentioned in the article, but I didn’t find anything. As I stated, I think they are common patterns found anywhere : family:clan:tribe. The network stage is analogous for me with family. It is where people feel most at home, are free to share and actually look for meeting basic needs. In what we are considering right now for a new start, I would say that networks have to get formed into clusters at some point. Clusters are really “house church” sized groups. My own opinion is when you have 3-4 networks (cells) you can make a cluster. That seems to be a natural break point (and stopping point around 30-50 people) in many church plants. I feel the only way to overcome the stopping point is to form “worship hubs” with 3-4 clusters. I think the key all along is to keep them involved in missional tasks and spirit. Also, I think that if you want hubs, you build the DNA for that into the networks. Right now we are thinking that our start will focus on developing clusters. If we end up with hubs, that would be ok too.

    Please email me if you would like to discuss this more mmcaleer@pathwaysmediation.net

  8. extract’d | relevintage August 5, 2008 5:00 am

    [...] Brisco from his “Alan Hirsch in New Orleans” entry from his blog, Missional Church [...]