THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME: INNOVATION AND MISSION FOR THE 21ST CENTURY CHURCH

Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch

Hendrickson & Strand, 2003

Reviewed by Darren Cronshaw

Towards the end of World War I, a grudging British general commented, ‘If the world fell apart tomorrow, an Australian would put it back together . with three bits of string and a length of fencing wire.’ The General had witnessed Australian practicality and creativity in the face of sometimes hopeless odds and learned to rely on it.

With challenges facing the church today, there is a desperate need for good old Aussie innovation in the way we live out our faith and do church. Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, an innovative evangelistic-prophetic pair of missionaries, challenge the Church to infiltrate our communities in radically new ways. They make a solid Australian contribution to the literature of emerging missional churches.

Much of what they say makes me uncomfortable and not a little inadequate. I serve in a conventional suburban church concerned (among other things) with building redevelopment and employing a full-time pastor to preach sermons and care for the congregation. When I teach evangelism, I do so mainly in a classroom. As much as Frost and Hirsch excite my imagination, my living and full-time occupation is centered round more traditional models of church and theological education.

What makes me hopeful, however, is other friends at church who express discontentment with the status quo and just turning up on Sunday. The cutting edge of my teaching is when students take seriously their fieldwork assignments and bring their experience back into the classroom or into supervision to reflect on. An invitation of The Shape of Things to Come is to redeem the everyday rhythms of life (including pleasure, friendships and community). This may well threaten an employee of current institutions like me, but may well set free many of the people in my church and classroom. The authors’ sense of vision and hope is not in revitalizing established churches (though they acknowledge a place for that), but in planting new culturally diverse missional communities. Moreover, when I pause to reflect, they are telling me I don’t have to be the super-charismatic pastor on steroids that makes things happen with the latest tools. There are other more organic ways of engaging in mission. The alternate mode they espouse is missional, incarnational, messianic and apostolic, around which they structure the book’s four sections.

They begin the book with ‘The Shape We’re In’ and describe the need for revolutionary new missional structures outside Christendom’s attractional, dualistic and hierarchical model. ‘It’s time to step out of the box of Christendom in order to take on the problems raised by Christendom.’ (p.7)

‘Incarnational Ecclesiology’ leaves religious zones and goes out to people to infiltrate community networks and present the gospel relevantly like the cross-cultural missionaries we are. ‘The missional-incarnational church will make Christian teaching attractive by living it under the very noses of those who have not yet embraced it.’ (p.54)

‘Messianic Spirituality’ engages culture and the world, being inspired by Jesus and his spirituality of engagement. Such an authentic spirituality is not just about retreat and reflection but engagement with everyday matters and active service. ‘One worships more fully, prays more deeply, and studies more diligently when all is done in the context of a life of action and spiritual momentum.’ (p.143)

‘Apostolic Leadership’ is the fourth and final guidepost for emerging missional churches. Pastors and teachers have had their share of leadership responsibility. The church also needs people apostolically pioneering new mission, prophetically questioning the status quo, and evangelistically taking the message beyond the walls. ‘If we fail to make significant place for APE-type leadership in our time, it is unlikely that the emerging missional church will get footholds into the various Western contexts in which we are called to be faithful.’ (p.180-81)

This is not a ‘how to’ but a ‘why to’ book. It argues and develops a framework for why we need to experiment like mad, be free to fail, take risks, cultivate climates of radical change, and develop church on the margins. Einstein said “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Frost and Hirsch include stories from around the world of imaginative new ways of doing church. It will be great to see what ‘string and fencing wire’ comes together in Australia in response to the challenge they identify.

Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch and their FORGE missional leaders training network live what they write with their passionate action-based spirituality, cross-cultural methodology and grass roots movement ethos. Their book has been nominated as the Christianity Today book of the year for mission. Thanks Alan and Michael for a great Australian contribution to emerging missional churches.

Darren Cronshaw is pastor at Aberfeldie Baptist Church, a member of The Community of Hope, and teaches evangelism at Bible College of Victoria and Whitley College.