In chapter two of “The Forgotten Ways” author Alan Hirsch proposes that the decline of the church in Western culture can be attributed to defaulting to a Christendom mode of thinking. Moreover, because of our Christendom default mode we don’t even know that there is a better alternative.

Quoting Bono from U2, “we are stuck in a moment and now we can’t get out of it.” Or from one with few more academic credentials; David Bosch in Transforming Mission states: “Strictly speaking one ought to say that the Church is always in a state of crisis and that its greatest shortcoming is that it is only occasionally aware of it.”

For Hirsch the root of the problem is Christendom and our inability to adequately deal with the very assumptions on which Christendom is built and maintains itself. Relying partially on Stuart Murray’s excellent Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World, Hirsch provides a convincing summary of the significance of Constantine’s decisions. Just a few of the Christendom shifts include:

1. The movement of the church from the margins of society to its center.

2. The assumption that all citizens were Christian by birth.

3. Sunday as an official day of rest and obligatory church attendance.

4. A generic distinction between clergy and laity, and the relegation of the laity to a largely passive role.

5. The defense of Christianity by legal sanctions to restrain heresy, immorality, and schism.

6. The division of the globe into “Christendom” or “heathendom” and the waging of war in the name of Christ and the church.

7. A hierarchical ecclesiastical system, based on a diocesan and parish arrangement, which was analogous to the state hierarchy and was buttressed by state support.

Hirsch states: “This shift to Christendom was thoroughly paradigmatic, and the implications were absolutely disastrous for the Jesus movement that was incrementally transforming the Roman world from the bottom up.”

He follows this up with a fantastic quote from church historian Rodney Stark: “Far too long, historians have accepted the claim that the conversion of the Emperor Constantine (ca. 285-337) caused the triumph of Christianity. To the contrary, he destroyed its most attractive and dynamic aspects, turning a high-intensity, grassroots movement into an arrogant institution controlled by an elite who often managed to be both brutal and lax.”

On page 64 Hirsch offers an excellent comparison table (which was previously published in “The Shaping of Things to Come” p. 9) between three “church modes.” He compares the “Aposotolic & Post-Apostolic Mode” (AD 32 to 313), the “Christendom Mode” (313 to present) and the “Emerging Missional Mode” (past 10 years) in six different categories.

The characteristics of the Christendom mode include:

1. Locus of gathering: Buildings become central to “church.”
2. Leadership: Institutionally ordained clergy/professional guild.
3. Organizational structure: Top-down.
4. Means of grace: Sacraments experienced only “in church.”
5. Position in society: Church is perceived to be central to society.
6. Missional mode:  Attractional and extractional.

The characteristics of the Emerging Missional mode (and in most cases parallels the Apostolic mode):

1. Locus of gathering: Rejects need for “church” buildings.
2. Leadership: Pioneering-innovative, 5-fold ministry.
3. Organizational structure: Grassroots, decentralized movement.
4. Means of grace: Redeems/ritualizes new symbols, including Lord’s Supper.
5. Position in society: Church is once again on the fringes.
6. Missional mode: Incarnational-sending and missional.