Alan Hirsch and Dave Ferguson, On the Verge: A Journey Into the Apostolic Future of the Church. Zondervan, 2011.
Referenced in:
- Missional Communities – Convergent with Attractional
- Theology of Mission, Proposals and Formulations – Missional/Convergent with Attractional
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
This book is part of the Exponential Series by Zondervan. It describes the Future Travelers effort by twelve large American churches that are trying to realign themselves with the apostolic movement found in the New Testament to make an “exponential” impact in catalyzing missional movements worldwide. These twelve are:
- The Austin Stone Church – Austin, Texas
- Community Christian Church – Chicago, Illinois
- Granger Community Church – Granger, Indiana
- The Journey – St Louis, Missouri
- Kensington Community Church – Detroit, Michigan
- Mosaic Church – Little Rock, Arkansas
- Mountain Lake – Cumming, Georgia
- RiverTree Christian Church – Massillon, Ohio
- Rock Harbor Church – Costa Mesa, California
- Seacoast Church – Charleston, South Carolina
- Soma Communities – Seattle-Tacoma, Washington
- West Ridge Church – Dallas, Georgia
This book is designed to be somewhat of a manifesto for one of the most significant church-planting movements today. The concepts, language, and structure of the book formed the organizational framework for Exponential Church Planting Network, which is purported to being “The Largest Gathering of Church Leaders on the Planet.”
Hirsch and Ferguson have teamed together to bring their respective strengths. Hirsch comes as a theologian and strategist into “a serious attempt to process and apply the Apostolic Genius paradigm, developed in The Forgotten Ways, to existing (largely evangelical and evangelistic) churches, as well as to other existing church systems.” (19) Because much of the literature of the missional movement addresses new and alternative type communities, the authors try here to lay out a “radical reframing” of the missional ideas in a way the informs and engages a healthy megachurch movement. As such, it addresses issues such as change management and systems processing. This also captures the sense of “Verge,” or a kind of convergence of and serious interaction between what were once regarded as conflicting approaches of missional and attractional. It is a discarding of either/or and embracing of both/and thinking (cf. Jim Collins, Built to Last, Myth #11), but instead is a convergence of three distinct ways of thinking about the church:
- Church-growth theory – which extends and maximizes traditional ecclesiology and organizes the church around the evangelistic function.
- Exponential thinking – as an application of the emerging science of idea-viruses and tipping points (see Gladwell, The Tipping Point) to ecclesiology. It has also stimulated church-planting efforts over the last decade or two.
- Incarnational missiology – which requires reorienting the entire church around the primary outward-oriented function of mission and recontextualizing the church into different subculturies. (42-43)
Hirsch provides excellent tables, diagrams, and models to describe this theologically and philosophically. These sections are rich, and comprise very hopeful perspectives for the missional revival of established churches.
Dave Ferguson brings his gifts of passion and motivation to another of the book’s concerns, to equip reproducing churches, a focus of the Exponential Conferences. Together they tackle a third concern, and that is to “mobilize every person for mission in their context.” (20)
The result is an excellent description of the missional philosophy in theory and practice. The authors refer to it as the Apostolic Genius that is born out of a missional DNA (mDNA) that consists of six elements:
- Jesus is Lord
- Disciple-making
- Apostolic environment
- Missional-incarnational impulse
- Organic systems
- Communitas
Bringing these realities more to the forefront of the church requires four movements that make up the main sections of the book:
- Part 1: Imagine – Emphasizing the importance of the missional imagination in helping us to rethink what we mean by ecclesia, and move on to imagining new possibilities. Imagination helps us to see the mission as Jesus sees it. The goal of this step is for each individual and the community to “See it.”
- Part 2: Shift – This is the paradigm-shifting heart of the book, describing how churches can activate apostolic movement vision and philosophy at the heart of the church. We must reframe our basic concepts of church to understand the mission and Jesus understands it. The goal in this step is for each individual and the community to “Get it.”
- Part 3: Innovate – This looks at the dynamics of genuine innovation (as opposed to simple creativity), without which we are doomed to simply repeat what we already know. The church ought to do mission as Jesus does it. The goal in this step is for each individual to “Do it.”
- Part 4: Move – This explores what it takes to practically generate and maintain actual movement, or this movementum, throughout the church and become a Verge church. Movementum can be defined as the process of gaining missional momentum until we birth an apostolic movement, and movementum occurs when we are continually taking our church through the preceding three stages: imagine, shift, and innovate. (46-47)
From the Publisher
The church is on the verge of massive, category shifting, change. Contemporary church growth, despite its many blessings, has failed to stem the decline of Christianity in the West. We are now facing the fact that more of the same will not produce different results. Our times require a different kind of church—-an apostolic, reproducing, movement where every person is living a mission-sent life. Many of the best and brightest leaders in the contemporary church are now making the shift in the way they think, lead, and organize.
Motivated partly by a vision of the church as ancient as it is new, and with a driving desire to see Biblical Christianity establish itself in Western cultural contexts, we are indeed seeing a new form of the church emerge in our day. Hirsch and Ferguson call this ‘apostolic movement’ because it is more resonant with the form of church that we witness in the pages of the New Testament and in the great missional movements of history.
In this book, Hirsch and Ferguson share a rich array of theology, theory, and best practices, along with inspiring stories about leaders who have rightly diagnosed their churches’ failure to embrace a biblical model of mission and have moved toward a fuller expression of the gospel. On the Verge will help church leaders discover how these forerunners and their insights are launching a new apostolic movement—-and how any church can get involved.
About the Authors
Alan Hirsch is an award-winning author on various aspects of missional Christianity and co-founder of Future Travelers, an intentional learning journey for contemporary churches seeking to transition to becoming authentic movements.
Dave Ferguson is a spiritual entrepreneur and the lead pastor of Community Christian Church, an innovative multi-site missional church with eleven locations in Chicago. Dave is the movement leader for NewThing, an international network of reproducing churches. He is also the coauthor of The Big Idea. Check out the latest from Dave on his blog (www.daveferguson.org) or follow his everyday adventures on twitter @daveferguson.
***For additional information on this resource, including reviews, click the bookstore links. Check the reference at page top or the links below for resource guides on related topics.***
See Resource Guides on Related Areas:
- Missional Perspectives, Introduction
- Missional Church Resources, Introduction and Index
- Church Leadership and Renewal, Index to Resources
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