The Shaping Of Things To Come

I once had the privelge of listening to Michael Frost speak at a PD session from a previous employer. He spoke as a man with much insight and understandings of the culture that we live in. He encouraged us to relevantly engage people in the community and share life as a journey with them - not to try to make them become like us, nor to try to point out personal wrong-doings, but rather to build relationships, walk together and encourage each other-hopefully in a manner that leads to greater Christlikeness.

At that stage I was very happy to agree with this, but also happy not to consider it a challenge to my life. As I have recently finished reading ‘The Shaping of Things to Come – Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church’, co-written with Alan Hirsh I have once again been challenged on my ‘missional’ / ‘church’ stance – challenged in a manner I now want to act upon in my life.

This book considers the place of the ‘church’ in today’s post-Christendom ear. It argues that to not only survive, but also to be faithful to the calling – the church must recalibrate itself. This is not to say it suggests throwing everything away and starting from scratch, but rather to consider contextualizing the Church while still remaining uncomprimising in the gospel message and Christian truths.

They suggest balancing equal commitments to fostering their relationship with God, one and other and to the world. That the essence of Church is relationships, and we must show our love for God in these relationships. Their desire is to see Churches adopt a missional, incarnational approach, to demonstrate messianic spirituality and be lead in an APEPT leadership model. (1) They are both practitioners of the model they suggest, working with others to create FORGE Mission Training Agency. – (Website worth a good look)

I have found sections of this book to be most helpful, it has served to strengthen my thoughts concerning church and ministry, but also offered me some new concepts to wrestle with. – I suggest wrestle as I’m not 100% convinced of everything written, but do see a huge value in the book as a whole. It is obvious from reading and hearing the authors that they do share a true yearning that the Gospel be shared, heard and responded to faithfully.

(1) APEPT leadership –commonly known as the fivefold ministry pattern. It stands for Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor and Teacher – taken from Ephesians 4:1-16 as Paul discusses church growth and leadership with the believers in Ephesus.