Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost, Faith of Leap: Embracing a Theology of Risk, Adventure, and Courage. Baker Books, 2011.
Referenced in: Missional Lifestyle, Discipleship, Spirituality – Shapevine Series
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
Faith of Leap is one of several volumes in the Shapevine Missional Series on missional spirituality and discipleship. Each conveys similar themes as their titles on Missional Communities and Missional Strategies.
Given the fact that so much of the missional perspective calls for redefining the way faith is expressed in the postmodern environment, engaging the missional quest requires a willingness to take risks, a kind of spiritual entrepreneurship and catalyzing. For many established churches, and even for missionally minded people who are part of them, the lure of falling into old patterns, even terribly ineffective ones, is so strong. Many of the institutions, the traditions, the resources, and the associations seem to reside in environments that are characterized by and reward in others a kind of acquiescent cooperation with what is. The sense of missional risk, adventure, and courage is gone. This book addressed the need to regain that faith of leap.
Written as part of the Shapevine missional series, this is what some believe to be Hirsch and Frost’s best book yet. They launch from the story of Abraham:
All the elements explored in this book – risk, adventure, courage, and the implications for church, discipleship, mission, and the self – are in some seminal way contained, as well as demonstrated, in Abraham’s courageous response to God. …Abraham’s somewhat “unbalanced” action put him (as well as his rather large household) at serious risk. At the very least, it dislocated him from this land, severed him from the familiar comfort of kith and kin, and resulted in a dangerous, lifelong journey that involve what can only be called open-ended adventure and discovery. It was a truly existential act. It was a leap of faith to be sure, but it also led to a life of faithfulness that has set the parameters of how we as God’s people ought to understand what it is to live a life pleasing to God. The result is that we all now take our cue from Abraham. (16)
From there, the authors discuss what it means to live with a sense of holy urgency in today’s challenging missional environment. They discuss the liminal lifestyle, a Jesus-inspired missional community and spirituality, the wild hope that allows us to adopt a vision that is bigger than our fears, embarking on the hero’s journey to become what God made us to be in partnership with Him, getting over risk-aversion in a way that does not devolve into individualism, rethinking the church and her mission, and then taking the first steps into missional territory.
From the Publisher
As Helen Keller observed, “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
To Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, so much of how we have learned to experience and understand the faith has been divorced from the overarching adventure inherent in our God and in our calling. This book is a corrective to the dull, adventureless, risk-free phenomenon that describes so much of contemporary Christianity. It explores the nature of adventure, risk, and courage and the implications for church, discipleship, spirituality, and leadership.
About the Authors
Michael Frost is vice principal of Morling College; founding director of the Tinsley Insitute at Morling college in Sydney, Australia; and a Baptist minister. He is the author of Jesus the Fool, Seeing God in the Ordinary, and Exiles, and the coauthor of The Shaping of Things to Come. He lives in Australia.
Alan Hirsch is founding director of Forge Mission Training Network and cofounder of Shapevine.com, an international forum for engaging with world-transforming ideas. Currently he leads an innovative learning program called Future Travelers which helps megachurches become missional movements. He is the author of numerous books, including The Forgotten Ways, and coauthor of Untamed and Right Here, Right Now. Hirsch lives in the Los Angeles area.
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