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But herein lies the rub: Christianity has been on a long-term trend of decline in every Western cultural context that we can identify.

Alan Hirsch

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Alan Hirsch
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: October 24
Author
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Johannesburg
Gauteng
South Africa
Christianity
Herein
Lies
Trend
Term
Identify
Lying
Trends
Every
Context
Long
Decline
Cultural
Western

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In order to develop a pioneering missional spirit, a capacity for genuine ecclesial innovation, let along engender daring discipleship, we are going to need the capacity to take a courageous stand when and where necessary.
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You cannot sell a Christendom approach to a post-Christian world. They are anti-Christian.
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Interestingly, it's as though the gospel story of Jesus is the archetypal heroic journey, the embodiment of the very adventure that all people in every epoch have desired.
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The missional church is not a new trend or the latest new technique for reaching postmodern people.
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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.
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It is vital to see ourselves as part of an ongoing journey started by our heroes in the Scriptures.
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In a world that demands service we position ourselves as servants.
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You plant the gospel. You don't plant churches.
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Christianity is an adventure of the spirit or it is not Christianity.
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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.
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But the standard churchy spirituality doesn't require any real action, courage, or sacrifice from its attendees.
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If we are going to make the change from community to communitas, and not just end up with an unsustainable adrenaline-junkie culture, we must have a sophisticated process to form people into adventurer-disciples.
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Building community for its own sake is like attending a cancer support group without having cancer.
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It's not so much that the church has a mission, it's that the mission of God has a church.
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The quest for heroic adventure then is a quest for the gospel, although it might not be seen that way by everyone.
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Go among the people. Don't assume you know what church looks like.
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A retreatist spirituality is not a spirituality that can, or will, transform the world in Jesus's name.
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Nowadays we raise our children in a cocoon of domesticated security, far from any sense of risk or adventure.
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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.
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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.
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