Alan Hirsch Recap May 12 – Edmonton
This is a summary of a recent Alan Hirsch conference held in Edmonton for the C&MA. The two day affair certainly left its mark on those who engaged the topic (and less so for the select gray haired folks sleeping or reading emails).
After one of the days I asked Alan a question, "how do you take a missional message to the most right-wing conservative attractional churches in the entire country, isn't it frustrating?"
He humbly replied part of it had to do with calling, I for one would get frustrated. Nonetheless, Hirsch provided a challenging summary to a group of evangelicals, some searching for answers, others still skeptical about this whole 'missional movement'.
For us there was little new, but for the rest, as Hirsch put it, "we already know the answers."
Given Hirsch's presence at this particular event, hosted by the Christian & Missionary Alliance, was to catalyze a renewal, this question was certainly warranted: why don't we do something about it?
I have some suspicions as to why evangelicals aren't more eager to 'do something' (my thoughts not Hirsch).
Why don't we do something?
1. Too much risk.
• Both too much risk in the model, and too much capital risk. We measure missional models of new church with attractional models. We also want to mesh building attractional models with missional ones, i.e. mortgages are a burden, but that only comes as a result of a notion that a building is the first thing then they'll come.
2. The Unknown
• The way missional church works is too foreign both in style and in model. The model is no model, as in one size does not fit all, however, in attractional everyone looks like everyone else except for your wicked preacher and banging band. Conversely, when new ideas come along we tend t o try to fit it into existing paradigms, creating new models within existing models. We do what we do better but we don't actually change.
3. Wrong systems
• In order to become missional is to destructure the entirety of the system. Or, it's a new 'test plant' that is not connected. Attractional is fundamentally postured against missional. I.e. trichotomy of clergy-laity-missionary which of course does not lend to the idea of a starfish.
This does not suggest that models are wrong, that's how we learn, however, my sense is that missional church, interpreting post-modern culture in a language they can understand and pointing them towards God's reign on earth, is malleable enough to be interpreted in a multitude of systems.
Your thoughts?
[tags]alan hirsch, missional, forgotten ways, C&MA[/tags]
