Alan Hirsch on Missional Holiness
Alan Hirsch’s most recent book The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church is must reading for missional leaders. It is well written, provocative, and articulates a clear biblical vision for 21st century mission in pre/post-Christendom lands. Its core contribution is Hirsch’s description of mDNA (missional DNA). MDNA is always present but is too often latent in Christ following movements for a variety of reasons that Hirsch explores. The mDNA functions most powerfully when the Christ following movement is more organic than structured hierarchically. mDNA is centered around the affirmation/full person commitment to the full implications of the statements “Jesus is Lord.” Out of this center emerges five core elements: Missional Incarnational impulse, Apostolic Environment, Organic Systems, Disciple Making, and Communitas (Not Community).
Here is a sample paragraph from the chapter “Disciple Making” (p 113) in which Hirsch describes a missional holiness (my term not his). He is writing to answer the questions: What did Jesus have in mind when he tasked his followers with the Great Commission (Matt 28:18-20)?
He writes:
This question must take us back to the real significance and meaning of discipleship. If the heart of discipleship is to become like Jesus, then it seems to me that a missional reading of this text requires that we see that Jesus’ strategy is to get a whole lot of little versions of him infiltrating every nook and cranny of society by reproducing himself in and through his people in every place throughout the world. But this issue goes much deeper than sociological models relating to the transmission of ideas into movements; it goes to one of the central purposes of Christ’s mission among us. Jesus not only embodies God in our realm, but also provides the image of the perfect human being. We are told by Paul that it is our eternal destiny to be conformed to this image of Christ (Rom 8:29; 2 Cor 3:18). But the relationship between Jesus and his people goes deeper still. Our mystical union with Christ and his indwelling with us lies at the very center of the Christian experience of God–this is seen in all of Paul’s teaching about being “in Christ” and he in us, as well as John’s theology of “abiding in Christ.” All the spiritual disciplines therefore aim us toward one thing–Christlikeness. We heed the words ascribed to Mother Teresa: “We must become holy not because we want to feel holy but because Christ must be able to live his life fully in us.”
Wow. Good stuff.
What do you think?