Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century. Peabody, Mass. Hendrickson Publishers, 2003.
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LifeandLeadership.com Summary
There are several excellent authors on the missional church, but Frost and Hirsch are perhaps the most recognized spokesmen. Their models for ministry, such as A.P.E.S.T. for church leaders, have become missional benchmarks.
Frost and Hirsch excel in helping readers understand how/why the missional perspective arose in reaction to the failures of the church in the post-Christendom era. They begin with a clear contrast between the church to the Apostolic/Post-Apostolic Mode (a.d. 32-313), the Advance and Triumph of the Christendom Mode (313 to current), and the Emerging/Missional Mode (past 10 years). From there, they discuss three salient features of the missional church around which the book is organized:
1. Incarnational Ecclesiology – The missional church is incarnational, not attractional, in its ecclesiology. By incarnational we mean it does not create sanctified spaces into which unbelievers must come to encounter the gospel. Rather, the missional church disassembles itself and seeps into the cracks and crevices of a society in order to be Christ to those who don’t yet know him.
2. Messianic Spirituality – The missional church is messianic, not dualistic, in its spirituality. That is, it adopts the worldview of Jesus the Messiah, rather than that of the Greco-Roman empire. Instead of seeing the world as divided between the sacred (religious) and profane (nonreligious), like Christ it sees the world and God’s place in it as more holistic and integrated.
3. Apostolic Leadership – The missional church adopts an apostolic, rather than a hierarchical, mode of leadership. By apostolic we mean a mode of leadership that recognizes the fivefold model detailed by Paul in Ephesians 4 (apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers). It abandons the triangular hierarchies of the traditional church and embraces a biblical, flat-leadership community that unleashes the gifts of evangelism, apostleship, and prophecy, as well as the currently popular pastoral and teaching gifts.
The missional “genius” of a church can only be unleashed when there are foundational changes made to the church’s very DNA, and that means addressing fundamental issues like ecclesiology, spirituality, and leadership. It means there must be a complete shift away from a Christendom way of thinking, which, as mentioned above, has been attractional, dualistic, and hierarchical. (12)
They provide a very well-researched and experienced-based way of conceiving, organizing, implementing and evaluating a contextualized missional ministry. This book is one of the most thorough and densely packed guide to the missional approach.
Frost and Hirsch are attributed with some of the most frequently used concepts in the missional movement. Although in many cases they did not coin these terms, their usage and exposition have become the missional standard. The appendix also includes a very helpful glossary to help with definitions:
- Bounded-Set vs. Centered-Set Approach – This is an understanding of evangelism. Bounded set is the church defined by a boundary separating those in the set from those outside the set, reflecting the church’s propensity to develop laws or prescriptions for determining who is in the church and who is out. Centered set is the church defined not by some artificial (and often socially prescribed) set of criteria, but by proximity to Jesus. Although the authors attribute this to Chris Harding from Youth for Christ in Australia, Frost and Hirsch expressed it comprehensively. (50)
- HUP, Homogenous Unit Principle – This idea posits that people are best reached with the gospel in people groups of the same language, customs, culture, and belief. This was developed in the 1970s by Fuller Seminary School of World Mission, and has been severely criticized as a road to churches that are unable to appreciate diversity. Frost and Hirsch acknowledge its pitfalls, but also believe that “the only way forward is to embrace HUP as a mission strategy, while working toward heterogeneity with mature Christians in community.” (52)
- Communion, Community, Commission – The three-dimensional picture of the contextualized church: Communion (in relationship with Christ), Community (in relationship with one another), and Commission (in relationship with the world). (78-79)
- Critical Contextualization – An adaptation of Paul Hiebert’s model of contextualization that attempts to build safeguards that minimize the risk and limit the possibility of syncretism or a betrayal of the gospel. (89)
- Whispering to the Soul – An approach which “whispers into the deepest longings of not-yet Christians today” by exciting curiosity through storytelling, provokes a sense of wonder and awe, shows extraordinary love, explores how God has touched our lives, and focuses on Jesus. (97-107)
- Messianic Spirituality – This addresses the need for a spiritual framework and resources that sustain those reached into the life of Christ. They propose a spirituality of incarnational engagement with the world, as modeled for us in Christ, over against the mysticism of the ancient monastic and contemporary pastoral models that seeks God through an otherworldly dualism that negates/separates from the world instead of engaging it. Messianic spirituality seeks the redemptive significance of everyday experiences, seeing the daily connections between heaven and earth. Much of these section reflects a lesser known text by Michael Frost, Seeing God in the Ordinary: A Theology of the Everyday. (111-133)
- A.P.E.S.T. – Following the biblical model of leadership from Ephesians 4 – Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Shepherds, Teachers. In the original treatment, they used A.P.E.P.T., but in subsequent versions replaced the second P. for “pastor” with S. for “shepherd.” The model is introduced in The Shaping of Things to Come and is developed further in Hirsch’s volume, The Forgotten Ways.
Frost and Hirsch are at times quite controversial. It is not the first place for those who come out of a traditional church model (these should start with Stetzer’s Breaking the Missional Code). But for those who want a refreshing and challenging missional model, The Shaping of Things to Come is an excellent volume. Their philosophy is more fully developed in these companion volumes:
- Michael Frost, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture (2006)
- Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church (2008)
- Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church (2009). Also, The Forgotten Ways Handbook: A Practical Guide for Developing Missional Churches (2009)
- Alan Hirsch and Debra Hirsch, Untamed: Reactivating a Missional Form of Discipleship (2010)
- Michael Frost, Jesus the Fool: The Mission of the Unconventional Christ (2010)
- Alan Hirsch and Lance Ford, Right Here, Right Now: Everyday Mission for Everyday People (2011)
About the Authors
Michael Frost is an Australian teacher, writer and church leader. He is also one of Australia’s leading communicators and evangelists.
Alan Hirsch oversees missional leadership development for his denomination in Australia, and he is also a key mission strategist for churches in the UK and New Zealand. He is a mission strategist, teacher, and church leader, and is known for his radical approach to mission-in-the-West. His local church, South Melbourne Restoration Community, is a model of incarnational mission and ministry in postmodern settings.
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