The
A ‘review’ of The
Shaping of Things to Come by
Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch,
Hendriksen Publishers. September 2003
We all know that if we
have a child with ADHD we have a problem on our hands.
I am not an expert on
the subject, but there appears to be a chemical imbalance, which renders the
child unable to function in what we would consider a normal manner. There are various theories as to its
prevalence and its causes but everyone agrees on one thing, its no fun living
with it long term.
Michael Frost and Alan
Hirsch from
‘The Shaping of Things
to Come’ points out that we are now living in the ‘Post Modern’, ‘Post
Christendom’ world but that we are still doing church according to the
modernity Western model. People are
exploring spirituality. We see the
upsurge of New Age movements, alternative religions, belief in the occult,
search for extraterrestrial life movies with overtly spiritual themes. People want a spiritual reality that allows
them to believe in something bigger than themselves. They want a creed to live by. Unfortunately, the last place they are
looking for this reality is in the institutional churches.
The institutional
western church is losing ground—fast!
Sure there are high spots, but there are high spots on a sinking ship as
well. It may keep you out of the water
slightly longer, but if the mast is attached to the ship it will soon follow
the rest of the ship into oblivion.
How do we stop from
sinking? Do we build a faster, bigger,
slicker, more professional ship? Do we
work harder, smarter, build teams, cells, use seeker services, embrace the
latest gimmicks in order to plug the holes?
Or should we be
looking for another ship?
Hirsch and Frost
suggest that it is time we looked at another ship, another model. Their analysis of the current church model
goes something like this;
The Church is
Attractional
Dualistic
Hierarchical
Hirsch and Frost
suggest that these three characteristics are flaws in the DNA of the modern,
institutional church.
By Attractional the
authors mean that we work hard to attract people into our services or
programmes as though we are marketing a product. If only we can get the packaging right,
people will buy. The problem with this
way of doing things is that we are assuming that the people we are trying to
reach already have a Christian worldview.
We think that our entertainment value can compete with what is on offer
at the movie theatres and rock concerts.
Can your church compete with Lord of the Rings or Robbie Williams? Should we?
Ultimately,
‘Attractional’ becomes ‘Extractional’.
We extract people from their own culture and force them to adopt the
‘proper’ Christian culture.
The Dualistic remark
identifies the fact that for five hundred years the western world has tried to
separate the sacred from the secular.
There was a good reason for this.
No one wanted this to
happen again. Now, most if not all,
Western nations claim there is a separation between church and State. Christian leaders don’t get to impose their
morals on the people and politicians don’t get to decide who goes to heaven.
As far as the church
is concerned, ‘real’ ministry happens within the church, by the clergy.
The by-product of all
this is that now we have trouble relating our Christian life with our ‘other’
life. Because we have been extracted
from our culture in order to remain pure, we no longer know how to relate to
the people we have left behind. We
somehow feel dirty or sinful if we have a beer with someone, or sit with them
during a crisis without contriving to share the Four Spiritual Laws with them. The Muslims do this much right; they have
almost total integration of life and faith.
This particularly
strikes a chord with me. I was basically
born into the Christian faith. From the
time I was a week old I was in church every Sunday. Don’t try and quote scripture at me, I know
it all. I know how to act to be accepted
and look spiritual within the Christian world.
I cannot point to a time in my life when I could say I wasn’t a
Christian. But I am not at all sure I
know how to relate to the 90% of the New Zealand population that will only ever
be seen dead inside the Church, and maybe not even then.
In order to correct
this oversight, I have bought myself a yacht, which I would be happy to tell
you about, at length, any time you have a few hours to spare. If you own a yacht, every yachtie within
500metres of the launch ramp thinks he has a right to discuss with you the
details of yachting and life in general. Wonderful.
The question put in
the book is, ‘how do we abandon Western Christianity’s dualistic world view in
favour of a whole-of-life spirituality?’
The third claim that
the authors make is that the Church is Hierarchical.
Let me quote:
‘…. the traditional Church is hierarchical, deeply indebted to what we see as an overly religious, bureaucratic, top down model of leadership, as opposed to one that is more structured around grass roots agendas.’
They go on to say that
although some Churches would claim this is not true, that regardless of these
Churches doctrinal stance this is in fact how the Church is organized in practice.
So, having diagnosed
the malady, Hirsch and Frost then devote the rest of the book to proposing a
remedy, or at least a way forward.
They begin by quoting Bishop John Gladwin’s conclusion;
‘…the emerging Church will have these four features in common:
1.
focus
on the journey of faith and the experience of God
2.
desire
for less structure and more direct involvement by participants
3.
sense
of flexibility in order and a distinctly nonhierarchical culture
4.
recognition
that the experience of church is the sustaining of discipleship.’[1]
The way forward
revolves around having a paradigm shift that actually takes us back to seeing
that to reach the world around us we must learn to think missionally once
again.
Think missions. Think
how in the perfect mission world, the missionary will do all in her power to
present the gospel to the target group by using images and stories and customs
they know and understand. He will become
a part of the culture and reject his own cultural baggage in favour of allowing
a culturally appropriate church to form.
The onus is on us to
find ways to reach across the culture gap and engage with the Post Modern, Post
Christendom world around. We must meet
them on their turf. Enter their spaces. Incarnate ourselves to them just as Jesus
incarnated himself to the world.
A number of working
examples are explored, including a shoe shop in San Francisco, the Hope
Community in England which is run by three Catholic Sisters and the authors own
missional community in the south of Melbourne.
All of these models
are exploring ways to engage with their particular community. They are not trying to get them into the
Church and make them like us. They are
walking with the people and discovering how God will work out his purposes for
them in their culture. A group or micro
church or even a full blown congregation may develop out of these groups but
that development is driven by the group for the group.
There are many other
great thoughts to be considered throughout the book. One that particularly attracted me was the
discussion around closed sets and open sets.
The traditional church has been a closed set. You are either in or you are out. The criteria for inclusion has been
acceptance of a set of doctrinal beliefs or even saying ‘THE PRAYER’ before you
can be guaranteed entry into heaven. The Church becomes that gatekeeper to the
The emerging missional Church sees more of an open set. Christ is the centre toward which we are all bound. No one can really say who is in or out or at what point a person may cross the line. We are all on a journey towards the centre. This makes it a bit messy. We are not quite so sure who is ‘in’. It is hard to quantify. It is difficult to report our attendance figures.
How many respectable paid up members of our churches are actually moving away from the centre in one way or another, while ‘sinners’ on the fringes are moving towards Him? Who is ‘in?’
There is a lot of
thought provoking material in this book.
There is a lot of talk of missional communities, Christian spirituality
in the Post Modern world. There is even a section on the Hebrew concept of
community and spirituality, which the authors suggest is far more relevant to
us than the current Greek worldview that we have inherited.
This is an important
book. It addresses some fundamental issues around our expression and
understanding of our faith and practice.
It is worth reading and talking about and mulling over.
I promised you an ADHD
church, so we need another ‘D’ I
started thinking I would make the observation that the Church is ‘Dated’ which
it is and so is often no longer relevant to our world Then I thought I would use the negative
word, ‘Doomed’ because if we don’t change somehow that could be our fate.
Then I decided that I
would, however, end on a positive note and use the word DYNAMIC because the
Church has always survived and it always will. At critical moments in its
history it has had the remarkable ability to morph and rise up once again and
change its world. It is irrepressible,
hard to control or even understand, just like that ADHD child.
I want to be involved
in the journey. We cannot preempt where
God is taking us but lets go along for the ride.