If we can embrace the adventure and risk and equip our churches to lay down their lives and abandon their inherent loss-aversion, who knows what innovation, what freshness, what new insights from the Spirit will emerge. Alan Hirsch More Quotes by Alan Hirsch More Quotes From Alan Hirsch The church of Jesus needs to wake up from the exile of passivity and embrace liminality and adventure or continue to remain a religious ghetto for culturally co-opted, fearful, middle-class folk. Alan Hirsch religious adventure jesus A missional theology...appl ies to the whole of life of every believer. Every disciple is to be an agent of the kingdom of God, and every disciple is to carry the mission of God into every sphere of life. We are all missionaries sent into a non-Christian culture. Alan Hirsch christian god life You can do more with 12 disciples than with 1,200 religious consumers. Alan Hirsch disciple consumers religious The safety-obsessed church lacks the inner dynamic to foster profound missional impact in our time. Alan Hirsch impact safety profound Unless the church is equipping believers to embrace the values and vision of the kingdom of God and turn away from the materialism, consumerism, greed, and power of the present age, it not only abandons its biblical mandate, it is rendered missionally ineffective. Alan Hirsch biblical greed vision It's not so much that the church has a mission, it's that the mission of God has a church. Alan Hirsch missions church You cannot sell a Christendom approach to a post-Christian world. They are anti-Christian. Alan Hirsch leadership christian world You plant the gospel. You don't plant churches. Alan Hirsch church leadership christian Every Christian is a sent one. There is no such thing as an unsent Christian. Alan Hirsch christian A retreatist spirituality is not a spirituality that can, or will, transform the world in Jesus's name. Alan Hirsch names world jesus In missional churches, the baby birds have been pushed out of the nest and are learning to fly for themselves. Alan Hirsch church bird baby When the church is in mission, it is the true church. The church itself is not only a product of that mission but is obligated and destined to extend it by whatever means possible. The mission of God flows directly through every believer and every community of faith that adheres to Jesus. To obstruct this is to block God's purposes in and through his people. Alan Hirsch block mean jesus But the standard churchy spirituality doesn't require any real action, courage, or sacrifice from its attendees. Alan Hirsch sacrifice real action Real leaders ask hard questions and knock people out of their comfort zones and then manage the resulting distress. Alan Hirsch leader real people In short, apostolic movement involves a radical community of disciples, centered on the lordship of Jesus, empowered by the Spirit, built squarely on a fivefold ministry, organized around mission where everyone (not just professionals) is considered an empowered agent, and tends to be decentralized in organizational structure. Alan Hirsch movement community jesus We will have to take risks, to chance failure, to be willing to walk away from the familiar paths that have brought us to this point. Alan Hirsch risk chance path Whether [new Protestant church movements] place their emphasis on new worship styles, expressions of the Holy Spirit’s power, evangelism to seekers, or Bible teaching, these so-called new movements still operate out of the fallacious assumption that the church belongs firmly in the town square, that is, at the heart of Western culture. And if they begin with this mistaken belief about their position in Western society, all their church planting, all their reproduction will simply mirror this misapprehension. Alan Hirsch teaching expression heart Being the church that Jesus intended means that we must participate in God’s eternal purposes for his world. Renewal means more than reinventing ourselves; it means rediscovering the primal power of the Spirit and the gospel already present in the life of the church—reconnecting with this purpose and recovering the forgotten ways. This purpose and potential have always been there, but individuals and communities have largely lost touch with them. Alan Hirsch community mean jesus Worship that is in some way divorced from mission is counterfeit worship Alan Hirsch missions worship way Many church folk, in their self-conscious attempt to be overtly morally upright, emit all the wrong signals, thus messing with people's perception of the gospel. Alan Hirsch perception self people
