In this episode, Greg Nettle talks with Alan Hirsch, author and thought leader in the missional church movement, about church multiplication. They cover topics from “The Forgotten Ways,” discuss the new edition of his book “ReJesus,” and how our job is to become more and more like Christ.
Insight from Our Guest, Alan Hirsch
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1. We need to become aware of the flaws in our view of the church
- Traditionally, church leaders have been focused on planting or pulpit
- A paradigm shift is necessary to focus on discipleship as a core value and the church as a tool on the journey
- We need to learn how to play with all our other pieces before we put the queen back in the game
- “I think we’re beginning to see that actually you need to change the paradigm in order to really change our practices.”
2. Liminality breeds community
- True community requires conditions of risk and willingness to learn
- Challenge helps church planters find inner resources that will help their churches flourish
- “We are so risk averse and we also rely on overly developed models that are really somewhat defunct or obsolete, and I think we’re gonna have to learn new things.”
3. The broken paradigm of Christendom
- Constantine embracing Christianity as a state religion meant that churches were no longer seen as missionary agencies, but as support agencies
- The American Church still operates under this paradigm – “you can come to us on our terms”
- Persecuted churches thrive because they have a missionary mentality and see every believer as a church planter and a movement starter
- “You can see this even more recently in many of the ideological debates, the assumption that the church is the moral defender of society and all it’s nonsense… I think it’s a false understanding. It comes from a Christendom controlling paradigm, but we’re no longer there. We’re missionaries now. And we always have been actually.”
4. Plant the gospel, not a church
- Jesus will build the church
- Our mission must precede our ecclesiology (our view of church)
- Our mission and ecclesiology must have scalability (movement making) built in
5. Constantly go back to Jesus
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- “The thing about an ideology is that it grabs a certain idea, calls for your passionate involvement. So it calls for your life. It calls for your conversion to give yourself over to something. The problem is, we’re not called to be those people {aligned with political ideology}. What I think we are fundamentally called to be is the people that resemble, or look and sound and think, like Jesus. We’re called to be a people that corresponds to our Founder. We are meant to be the body of Christ, and Christ looks like this.”
- “Christlikeness is our calling. It’s part of discipleship. We must become more and more like him, but he’s the archetype of human beings. He stands for something for humanity. In other words, it’s God’s plan for the world is to make us Christlike – the whole world. We’re hidden in that humanity that looks like Jesus. God will have us Christ, like all, or he will not have us at all…When we see something that violates that passion, that pattern of Jesus, you know… I think our commitment is to walk away, not to give our hearts to false gods and idols who promise everything but deliver violence. But we have got to repent of this and to recalibrate around Jesus again at this time – this is maybe the most important thing.”
*Transcripts are created through automated processes and may contain errors
Show Links
Connect with Alan Hirsch
Author & Activist | alanhirsch.org
Founder & Designer | movementleaderscollective.com
Founder & Coach. | 5QCentral.com
Founder & Advisor | Forge International
Movement Mentor | NewThing
Resident Consultant | Redeemer City To City
Leadership Developer | NOVO
Connect with Greg Nettle and Stadia Church Planting
- https://www.thechurchplantingpodcast.com
- https://www.gregnettle.com/thechurchp…
- https://www.stadiachurchplanting.org
- Facebook and Instagram: stadiachurchplanting
- Greg’s Facebook page: gnettle
- The Church Planting Podcast on Facebook and Instagram: plantingpodcast
More About: Alan
Alan Hirsch is widely considered to be a global thought-leader on missional movements and leadership. He has worked with churches and organizations across the world, but mainly in North America, Europe, and Australia. Alan is the founder of the Movement Leaders Collective, Forge Mission Training Network, and the 5Q Collective. All three organizations focus on pioneering leadership development and training and consulting in on the church as missional movement.
Hirsch is the author of numerous award winning books including The Forgotten Ways, The Shaping of Things to Come, 5Q, ReJesus and The Faith of
Leap, Untamed, Right Here, Right Now, On the Verge, and The Permanent Revolution.
His experience includes leading a local church movement among the marginalized, developing training systems for innovative missional leadership, and heading up the mission and revitalization work of his denomination. He is movement mentor for NewThing International, and is the embedded consultant for Redeemer City To City in New York.