Comments on: Alan Hirsch Interview

By: TILL HE COMES Blog » The Future of the Church (Part 1 of 3)

TILL HE COMES Blog » The Future of the Church (Part 1 of 3) — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:24:21 +0000

[...] love everything written by Alan Hirsch, and so when I saw a post containing a YouTube Video by Alan from the Exponential Conference, I had to watch it. I have embedded it below, but here is what Brad [...]

By: Jeremy Myers

Jeremy Myers — Thu, 08 May 2008 00:34:35 +0000

Great post. Thanks for the video. I think Hirsh is exactly right. It is so hard for us to put aside our attractional model and work from a true missional model.

By: Brad Brisco

Brad Brisco — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:39:23 +0000

Grace, yes I too would like to hear more on your point. For me his comment brought me back to the point made in “Shaping” when he and Frost spoke of the importance of having our Christology influence/determine our Missiology which in turns should influence/determine our Ecclesiology.

I believe when we are driven by or “bonded” to the church growth movement we simply go at this in a backward fashion. We look at church models (or ecclesiology) that are “working” and we put them into practice in our settings.

Instead of being driven by our “missionary desires” we are driven by our pragmatic concerns for “growth” and as a result we don’t really connect with our context. But this shouldn’t be of great surprise when we have pastors and church planters going to the latest conference that tells everyone just what another church did to experience “growth.” I really believe this is a crucial and central issue that needs serious consideration if we are going to be moved to new forms of church.

By: grace

grace — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:27:28 +0000

Brad,
I just watched this clip at another site. The comment about being monopolized by the church-growth mentality stuck out to me also. Another thing he said was that missionary desire will drive new forms of church. I’d love to hear more brainstorming along those lines.