The Forgotten Ways Pt. 1

I've recently started reading "The Forgotten Ways" by Alan Hirsch. He asks some very timely, probing questions. "The church is on massive, long-trended decline in the West. In this situation, we have to ask ourselves probing questions: "Will more of the same do the trick? Can we simply rework the tried and true Christendom understanding of the church that we so love and understand, and finally, in an ultimate tweak of the system, come up with the winning formula?"

He responds: "However, most of the new thinking as it relates to the future of Christianity in the West only highlights our dilemma and generally proposes solutions that are little more than revisions of past approaches and techniques. Even much of the thinking about the so-called emerging church leaves the prevailing assumptions of church and mission intact and simply focuses on the issue of theology and spirituality in a postmodern setting."

Hirsch has some fascinating insights drawn from times of extreme growth such as the growth from 25,000 disciples in 100 AD to 20,000,000 in 310 AD and seeks to draw answers from these types of movements to discover how to "reactivate the church."

The most critical insight so far has been that the church continues to try the "church growth model" (putting on a quality performance with great facilities, good parking, bagels, etc.) even though only 12% of the world has any interest in this consumeristic way of "doing church", which leads to people just church shopping around for whatever the flavor of the month is (to which Hirsch says:
"Statistics right across the Western world where this model holds sway indicate that the vast majority of the church's growth come from "switchers"-people who move from one church to another based on the perception and experience of the programming")

So the dilemma is this: you have 95% of the world's churches competing for 12% of the population and 88% of the population being absolutely untouched because we don't know how to do anything else!

"What is becoming increasingly clear is that if we are going to meaningfully reach this majority of people, we are not going to be able to do it by simply doing more of the same. And yet it seems that when faced with our problems of decline, we automatically reach for the latest church growth package to solve the problem-we seem to have nowhere else to go. But simply pumping up the programs, improving the music and audiovisual effects, or jiggering the ministry mix won't solve our missional crisis. Something far more fundamental is needed."

I highly recommend this book!