Paul Walker replies on "The Forgotten Ways"

A Yearning for the Ocean

The first chapter of 'The Forgotten Ways' starts with a great quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupery

If you want to build a ship, don't summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs, and organise the work, rather teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean

That's a profound statement - and a warning not to get so hooked up on 'methods' and 'programs' that we neglect to discover core values and set them in place as the foundation of all that we do. Alan Hirsch uses this first chapter as something of a personal testimony, the story of his ministry and how that ministry came to shape his own approach to mission. We learn about his move to South Melbourne Restoration Church (now simply called Red) as new minister charged with turning around a church that was rapidly declining (as an aside - why do the least experienced ministers seem to be given these almost impossible jobs?) He recounts that there were three distinct phases in which this failing inherited church was transitioned into a missional community :

From Death to Chaos This was the 'reseeding' of the old church with the new missional type of church. Recognising the unhelpful nature of seminary education, Hirsch fell back on the one thing that he did know about, which was the experience of God's grace. So they set out to simply 'do' community - offering love, acceptance and forgiveness to any who would come looking. It wasn't always easy - there was plenty of chaos, and not everyone in the older church community welcomed the chaos - but, bit by bit, the newer form of church become the prominent one.

Becoming a Church Planting Church A sense of 'calling' - more or less from the start - to birth new churches into the unreached people groups of their home city. The first was a 'street church', planted with the poor and marginalised, the second was planted in the large Jewish community, and so on. There is a very interesting case study in this section which I'm going to look at in the next blog post

From a church to an organic movement This came from the realisation that the church had somehow lost its missional edge and that had unwittingly adopted consumerist models and bowed to the 'cult of the cool'. The Church was massively popular amongst GenX-ers but hadn't seen a conversation to Christ in over two years! The diagnosis was that there was a lack of emphasis on discipleship, which was - in turn - leading to lack of fruitfulness. The analysis of this is very penetrating, so much so that, again, it deserves a blog post of its own to really develop.

It's worth that the Hirsch's were at SMRC for some 15 years - this process didn't happen quickly, and it didn't happen without personal cost, a few failures and plenty of disappointments along the way. Yet, within that process, a sense of 'missional DNA' was slowly emerging (it will be that missional DNA which will form the rest of this book!)

The Planter -just a few thoughts from Paul walker to help suck you into the discussion Alan Hirsch is raising as a Missionary to the U.S.