Alan Hirsch is the founder of 100Movements, Forge Mission Training Network, and Future Travelers. Known for his innovative approach to mission, Alan is widely considered to be a thought-leader and key mission strategist for churches across the western world. Alan has written and co-authored several books, including The Forgotten Ways, The Shaping of Things to Come, ReJesus and The Faith of Leap.
Key Questions:
What does it look like to lead a missional church vs. a church with a more traditional background?
What things do we often take as missional that are actually not?
What makes the missional church different from the traditional church?
Key Quotes:
“God’s mission is prior to the church.”
“We normally say ‘the church has a mission.’ Missional thinking says, rather, that ‘the mission has a church.’ And mission produces the church…And we participate in it—we don’t invent it.”
“Most of the ways we think about church are non-missional, and very deliberately so. I mean scripted right out of the equation.”
“The problem in most of our thinking, most of our paradigm was set in that Christendom period. So most of our theology, most of our traditional thinking—the rationality, if you will—developed in a time of profoundly non-missional [thinking].”
“The Gospel itself is still as valid as it ever has been, but the church as the delivery system for the Gospel—as the kind of primary agency of the Kingdom—that’s what people have a problem with.”
“You don’t plant a church, you plant the good news of Jesus and Jesus’ story. And the church begins to form itself around Jesus.”
“We’ve got to learn how to plant the Gospel again.”
“Leaders are the guardians of the keys of the paradigm of the organization or the church.”
“The way we do evangelism is damaging our capacity to make disciples.”
“When you disciple, it’s not just passing information on, you’re actually forming people. And it’s a way—it’s an ethos.”
