The church needs to recover her most ancient, potent and beautiful form, that of the apostolic movement, according to Alan Hirsch and Dave Ferguson in their book On the Verge: a Journey into the Apostolic Future of the Church. The book represents an attempt by the authors to articulate a dynamic learning journey called Future Travelers which is being undertaken by a group of large US churches that are reframing themselves as high-impact exponentially reproducing missional movements.
Readers who are not familiar with Alan’s previous books will quickly discover that there is a whole new vocabulary to learn. The new paradigm of apostolic movements arises from the convergence of church growth theory, exponential thinking, and incarnational missiology. The new paradigm, which is referred to as “Apostolic Genius”, encompasses mDNA which has six elements:
- Jesus is Lord
- Disciple-making
- Apostolic environment
- Missional-incarnational impulse
- Organic systems
- Communitas
Alan’s perspective as a missional strategist and apostolic theologian is communicated in chapters 2 to 6, with Dave providing a short response to each chapter, and then Dave’s perspective as an apostolic practitioner is communicated in chapters 7 to 10, with Alan providing a short response to each chapter. The two authors have distinctly different writing styles, but it is helpful to get the interposed theoretical and practical perspectives.
Most readers will find this a challenging book to read, partly because of the new vocabulary and partly because many of the ideas raised are likely to be unfamiliar to the typical church leader. However, in my view the book is well worth the struggle because of the importance of considering and thinking through the issues raised. Apostolic movements are a work in progress , so it is OK to disagree with the authors’ ideas.
I personally struggled with the idea that “all of God’s people already have everything in them to be able to get the job done”. My understanding is that God gives different people different spiritual gifts so that we need to work together with others who have complementary spiritual gifts to get the job done, and this is why a church can accomplish mission far more effectively than lone-ranger Christians, and small groups which do not have an adequate balance of spiritual gifts tend to be ineffective.
I highly recommend the book to church leaders, not because of its literary style or even the answers it gives but because of the critical importance to the church in Western countries of addressing the questions the book raises.