Alan Hirsch (born 24 October 1959) is an Australian author and thought leader in the missional church movement.
It is vital to see ourselves as part of an ongoing journey started by our heroes in the Scriptures.
I found out the hard way that if we don't disciple people, the culture sure will.
Think of mission like the paddles of a defibrillator applied to the chest of a dying church.
Most churches don't have the resources for these tricks and inducements but are still bound to the imagination that church happens on a Sunday in a building.
The church of Jesus needs to wake up from the exile of passivity and embrace liminality and adventure or continue to remain a religious ghetto for culturally co-opted, fearful, middle-class folk.
The quest for heroic adventure then is a quest for the gospel, although it might not be seen that way by everyone.
Mission is the practical demonstration, whether by speech or by action, of the glorious lordship of Jesus.
Being the church that Jesus intended means that we must participate in God’s eternal purposes for his world. Renewal means more than reinventing ourselves; it means rediscovering the primal power of the Spirit and the gospel already present in the life of the church—reconnecting with this purpose and recovering the forgotten ways. This purpose and potential have always been there, but individuals and communities have largely lost touch with them.
In order to develop a pioneering missional spirit, a capacity for genuine ecclesial innovation, let along engender daring discipleship, we are going to need the capacity to take a courageous stand when and where necessary.
There's no such thing as an unsent Christian. You have already been SENT.
You cannot sell a Christendom approach to a post-Christian world. They are anti-Christian.
Heroes are important not only because they symbolize what we believe to be important, but because they also convey universal truths about personal self-discovery and self-transcendence, one's role in society, and the relation between the two.
The missional church is not a new trend or the latest new technique for reaching postmodern people.
Unless the church is equipping believers to embrace the values and vision of the kingdom of God and turn away from the materialism, consumerism, greed, and power of the present age, it not only abandons its biblical mandate, it is rendered missionally ineffective.
At some point preoccupation with safety can get in the way of living full lives.
Go among the people. Don't assume you know what church looks like.
A missional church is a church that must live the dialectic. It must stay in the journey.
Worship that is in some way divorced from mission is counterfeit worship
Many church folk, in their self-conscious attempt to be overtly morally upright, emit all the wrong signals, thus messing with people's perception of the gospel.
Real leaders ask hard questions and knock people out of their comfort zones and then manage the resulting distress.