Missional Church Network

In chapter 6 of “The Forgotten Ways” Alan Hirsch focuses on the issue of leadership in the missional church. He begins by reflecting back on the introduction of the book where he discussed the phenomenal Jesus movements of history, namely the early church up until 300 AD and the Chinese church during the reign of Mao Tse-tung. The question that begs to be answered with each of these movements is “How did they do it?” Or more specifically for the focus of chapter 6, “What kind of leadership?”

When discussing how to best speak of the type of catalytic leadership that is present in these Jesus movements Hirsch writes:

“There is no substantial word for this catalytic social power other than, to reinvoke biblical language, apostle. . . . The apostolic person’s calling is essentially the extension of Christianity. As such, he or she calls the church to its essential calling and helps guide it into its destiny as a missionary people with a transformative message for the world. All other functions of the church must be qualified by its mission to extend the redemptive mission of God through its life and witness.

It is the thought reflected in the last portion of this quote that speaks to me most clearly (and which Hirsch develops later in the chapter). Namely that all other functions of the church are “qualified by” or rest upon the apostolic calling. Recognizing the importance of the apostolic environment is so contrary to the norm of the Western Church that I believe it is nearly impossible for many to embrace. Moreover, not only is it difficult for some to recognize but there is also the realization that the way we currently view church leadership is a hindrance to being missional. Footnoting Alan Roxburgh’s “The Missionary Congregation, Leadership & Liminality” on page 152:

Roxburgh goes further in saying that in actual practice, a predominantly pastoral conception of the church and ministry now actually constitutes a major hindrance to the church reconceiving itself as a missionary agency. He also says, in relation to the institutionalization and dominace of the pastoral function embodied in ordination, that “the guild of the ordained will have to be removed; this is one social function that will not move us through liminality.”

But what does apostolic leadership look like? Or better yet, what are the primary functions of apostolic ministry? Hirsch identifies three primary functions:

1. To embed mDNA through pioneering new ground for the gospel and church.

2. To guard mDNA through the application and integration of apostolic theology.

3. To create the environment in which the other ministries emerge.

The importance for the apostolic ministry to be at the foundation of everything else that takes place in the church is again emphasized in the description of function. Apostolic leadership literally creates the opportunity for other ministries to emerge. Not to minimize the importance of the other ministries, but I agree with Hirsch that we need to recognize the need for a missional leadership system. On page 169 Hirsch provides an excellent summation of the major issue at hand:

Missional church requires a missional ministry and leadership system. For the most part, the Christendom church obscured the need for a full-fledged missional leadership system, because the self-understanding of the church became fundamentally nonmissional. Because all citizens were deemed to be Christians, all that was really needed were the pastoral and teaching ministries to care for and teach the congregation. These were eventually instituted as offices in the church and became the principle metaphors for church leadership. The net effect is that the whole system weighted itselfin favor of maintenance and pastoral care and that these became hegemonic in practice, and therefore both fragmented and distorted the total mission and ministry of the church in favor of only part of its calling.