Re: Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways, and the future of the churc

Alan, thanks for posting this.

I fully agree with your analysis (and Barth’s analysis) of the situation of the church in the West - that the Constantinian era is passing, that we face an adaptive challenge, that this could be described in terms of ‘liminality’, that ‘more of the same will not lead to significantly different results’, and indeed that the ‘current forms of the church lack the integrity and necessary theological funding to (re)generate movements in the West’. I think I can probably agree that for the church to traverse this liminal space effectively apostolic forms of leadership are needed, and that this may well generate the sort of missional movement that you describe. Finally, I didn’t mean to imply that the AG argument is just another hopeful missiological technique: I can see the clear emphasis on the lordship of Jesus, on discipleship, and on missional self-understanding… which for me is where the problem lies.

I am not persuaded that the ‘high points in biblical revelation’ are periods of liminality, that the liminal, radical Jesus movement model is normative for the church, that Apostolic Genius ‘represents the most primal expression of the ecclesia in any era’, or that it is to this paradigm that we should principally turn as we find ourselves shoved out unceremoniously into a post-Christendom wilderness.

As I see it, scripture does not give priority to the liminal mode of existence over the settled mode of existence. There is at least an oscillation between the two: Israel moves from Egypt to Canaan to Babylon top Judea, for example. But if anything, judging from the prominence of kingdom ideals and the shape of exilic hopes, the settled mode has some sort of ideal priority. Abraham was called to be the father not of a nomadic tribe but of a settled nation in a land of prosperity so that the fulness of God’s new creation might be embodied in that people and the blessing transmitted to the nations around. The creational microcosm breaks down, the blessing is lost, and the people enter crisis mode as a result; but that state of liminality is conceived fundamentally as a condition of judgment because of sin from which God must rescue his people. It’s as though Turner’s adolescents were exiled from the village for bad behaviour.

I think that this is no less true for the New Testament story: because of sin Israel faces terminal judgment and must be rescued from that situation by God if the promise to Abraham is to be secured, if the people are to continue to function as, represent in the world, and anticipate eschatologically God’s new creation. The letter to the Hebrews regards the church as a vagrant people, but notice how closely this is linked with the call to suffer rejection and potentially death as Christ did:

Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. (Hebrews 13:13-14)

I know this raises eschatological issues over which we differ, but even setting that aside, is this really an appropriate paradigm for the post-Christendom church in Europe? It still seems to me that the overarching task is creatively and adventurously to re-imagine what it means to be God’s new creation in the world, what it means to recover the creational blessing of Gen. 1:28 and transmit it to others; and I don’t think we can do that within the framework of the Gospels alone. I would suggest that it makes more sense to see ourselves in a position analogous to the church as it emerged from centuries of persecution and began to invent itself (crudely and sinfully, no doubt) as a new humanity - in Augustine’s terms, a city of God as a counterpart to the city of Rome.

Now we have a chance to re-invent ourselves - not as an imperial city this time, but perhaps as an organic, incarnational, postmodern movement, in which diverse communities discover the full potential of the creative Spirit within them as they live out and tell the biblical story as a witness to the reality of the one true God.

So I want to say very clearly: I do not have ‘serious doubts about the applicability of a movemental approach in Europe’. The issue is: How do we frame the story within which that movement takes place?

I know you like diagrams. I have tried to represent this diagrammatically here.