the “sent” church: a missional people 6

June 5, 2008

Series recap: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

When there are “megashifts” in a culture, there tends to be a reconceptualization of the church. The more intense the cultural swing, the more comprehensive is the alteration in the church’s perception of itself. What is emerging from the disarray of the present social-historical shift to the postmodern is likely to be a second reformation as the church rediscovers itself as a missional movement.

In recognizing the impetus of the missional wave and the predicaments caused by modernity, what would a missional church look like in the 21st century? What are the characteristics of a missional church that will help it resist modernity’s malady?

Over the next few posts, we will look at the emerging ’shape’ of the missional church, particularly in the West. Today we look at prominent missional leaders/thinkers Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost’s thoughts on the subject.

In their influential book, The Shaping of Things to Come, Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost rightly react against the values of an exclusively attractional and hierarchal church by describing what a church missional mode looks like. According to Hirsch and Frost, rather than being attractional, the missional church leaves its own religious sectors and lives at ease with non-church goers, trickling into the host mores like salt and light. [1]

Frost and Hirsch state:

If the attractional mode sees the world as divided into two zones, the ‘in’ and the ‘out,’ the incarnational model sees it more as a web, a series of intersecting lines symbolizing the networks of relationships…of which church members are a part. [2]

In this new age, the missional church places a lofty worth on communal life, embraces open leadership structures, and welcomes the involvement of all the people of God. Further, a church on mission gathers for sensual-experiential-participatory worship and is intensely concerned for matters of” justice-seeking and mercy-bringing.” [3]

Tomorrow we look at the missional framework of Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. Stay tuned…
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1) Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 30.

2) Ibid, 44.

3) Ibid. 22.

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