Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church. Brazos Press, 2009.
Companion volume: Hirsch and Altclass, The Forgotten Ways Handbook
Referenced in:
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
Hirsch is the coauthor with Mike Frost, of The Shaping of Things to Come. This volume is a follow-up, addressing the need for the church to redefine and reengage the postmodern environment from a missional/Missio Dei perspective. Also, while perhaps not intentional, the book also bears strong resemblance to the “organic” models set forth by Frank Viola and Neil Cole.
The popularity of this book stems from its very direct, prescriptive style. While academics are not likely to frown on it by any means, the most appreciative audience will be missionary-practitioners in the trenches, and this is by design. This is not to say that readers will be able to immediately identify with all of its contents, thus the glossary and addendum (“A Crash Course in Chaos) to help one navigate the concepts. Nonetheless, he says:
This book would appeal most to those who are leading existing churches, to those who are initiating new forms of sustainable Christian community for the twenty-first century (what I will call the emerging missional church), and to those who are involved on the strategic level of ministry, namely that of leading movements, parachurches, and denominations. (26)
In the introduction, Hirsch discusses three underlying features to his approach:
It adopts the missions-to-the-first-world approach, which translates the best practices of mission used in the last century in the two-thirds world into reaching the first world. Hirsch uses the early church and the twentieth-century Chinese churches as test cases.
It reflects Hirsch’s fascination with helping Christianity recover its ethos as a movement (which grew from 25,000 in a.d. 100 to 20,000,000 in a.d. 310 before Constantine) vs. an institution (what it became after Constantine). Hirsch asks how these early Christians did it against these odds:
- They were an illegal religion throughout this period: At best, they were tolerated; at the very worst they were very severely persecuted.
- They didn’t have any church buildings as we know them: While archaeologists have discovered chapels dating from this period, they were definite exceptions to the rule and they tended to be very small converted houses.
- They didn’t even have the Scriptures as we know them: They were putting the canon together during this period.
- They didn’t have an institutional leadership: At times of relative calm prototypal elements of institution did appear, but from what we consider institutional these were at best pre-institutional by comparison.
- They didn’t have seeker sensitive services, youth groups, worship bands, seminaries, or commentaries, etc.
- They actually made it hard to join the church. By the late second century aspiring converts had to undergo a significant initiation period to prove they were worthy.
It consistently criticizes religious institutionalism, not because institutions and organizational structure are bad (indeed they are often necessary) but because historically God’s people have been most potent when their zeal expressed itself in less institutional forms.
Hirsch divides the book into two sections:
Section 1 presents his personal narrative relating the experiences that guided his thinking and imagination toward a more missional understanding. Chapter 1 carries this theme on the micro level through the story of a local practitioner trying to guide a complex, inner-city church planting movement in the current environment. Chapter 2 looks at the macro perspective of missional concerns on a strategic and translocal level.
Section 2 is the meat of the book which describes “Apostolic Genius” and the components of “mDNA” (missional DNA). Here Hirsch presents the six quintessential elements that combine to create Apostolic Genius and mDNA:
- Jesus Is Lord: At the center and circumference of every significant Jesus movement there exists a very simple confession. Simple, but one that fully vibrates with the primal energies of the scriptural faith, namely, that of the claim of the One God over every aspect of every life, and the response of his people to that claim (Deut. 6:4–6ff.). The way that this was expressed in the New Testament and later movements was simply “Jesus Is Lord!” With this simple confession they changed the world.
- Disciple Making: Essentially, this involves the irreplaceable and life-long task of becoming like Jesus by embodying his message. This is perhaps where many of our efforts fail. Disciple making is an irreplaceable core task of the church and needs to be structured into every church’s basic formula (chapter 4).
- Missional-Incarnational Impulse: Chapter 5 explores the twin impulses of remarkable missional movements, namely, the dynamic outward thrust and the related deepening impulse, which together seed and embed the gospel into different cultures and people groups.
- Apostolic Environment: Chapter 6 looks at another element of authentic mDNA—apostolic influence and the fertile environment that this creates in initiating and maintaining the phenomenal movements of God. This will relate to the type of leadership and ministry required to sustain metabolic growth and impact. This is where Hirsch develops the popular APEPT/APEST model of leadership (see his expansion of the apostolic dimension of this model in The Permanent Revolution).
- Organic Systems: Chapter 7 explores the next element in mDNA, the idea of appropriate structures for metabolic growth. Phenomenal Jesus movements grow precisely because they do not have centralized institutions to block growth through control. Here we will find that remarkable Jesus movements have the feel of a movement, have structure as a network, and spread like viruses.
- Communitas, Not Community: The most vigorous forms of community are those that come together in the context of a shared ordeal or those that define themselves as a group with a mission that lies beyond themselves—thus initiating a risky journey. Too much concern with safety and security, combined with comfort and convenience, has lulled us out of our true calling and purpose. We all love an adventure. Or do we? This chapter aims at putting the adventure back into the venture. (24-25)
From the Publisher
Alan Hirsch is convinced that the inherited formulas for growing the Body of Christ do not work anymore. And rather than relying on slightly revised solutions from the past, he sees a vision of the future growth of the church coming about by harnessing the power of the early church, which grew from as few as 25,000 adherents in AD 100 to up to 20 million in AD 310. Such incredible growth is also being experienced today in the church in China and other parts of the world. How do they do it?
The Forgotten Ways explores the concept of Apostolic Genius as a way to understand what caused the church to expand at various times in history, interpreting it for use in our own time and place. From the theological underpinnings to the practical application, Hirsch takes the reader through this dynamic mixture of passion, prayer, and incarnational practice to rediscover the dormant potential of the modern church in the West.
About the Author
Alan Hirsch is the founding director of Forge Mission Training Network. His experience includes mission and church planting to the marginalized as well as leading at the denominational level. He is coauthor of The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church.
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- Missional Church Resources, Introduction and Index
- Church Leadership and Renewal, Index to Resources
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