Alan Hirsch
South African-born missiologist and a leading voice in the missional movement of the Christian West.
Indeed, we believe that twenty-first century Christians are yearning to see the adventure put back into Christianity, into the relationship with the living God — where it rightly belongs.
Our preferences for stability and security blind us to the opportunities for adventure when they present themselves.
Many church folk, in their self-conscious attempt to be overtly morally upright, emit all the wrong signals, thus messing with people’s perception of the gospel.
Heroes are important not only because they symbolize what we believe to be important, but because they also convey universal truths about personal self-discovery and self-transcendence, one’s role in society, and the relation between the two.
The appetite for adventure and risk is not exclusive to young Christians. In face, it seems to be a fundamental yearning, knitted into the fabric of the human soul.
Because of this global uncertainty, the visionary and the adventurous amongst us will get to shape the future of the twenty-first century—the church included.
Real leaders ask hard questions and knock people out of their comfort zones and then manage the resulting distress.
Mission is the practical demonstration, whether by speech or by action, of the glorious lordship of Jesus.
More important, Christian community is not something about which we can arbitrarily make decisions — it is not an optional extra.
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.
When there is no possibility of retreat, we will find the innovation that only the liminal situation can bring. In short, we find the faith of leap.
Put simply, the church finds itself in a post-Christendom era, and it had better do some serious reflection or face increasing decline and eventual irrelevance.
Most churches don’t have the resources for these tricks and inducements but are still bound to the imagination that church happens on a Sunday in a building.
This is why we are on record claiming that the missional conversation — refactoring mission back into the equation of church — contains the seeds of authenticity and renewal for Christianity in our time and place.
Think of mission like the paddles of a defibrillator applied to the chest of a dying church.
Because we believe that somewhere in the nest of paradigms contained in the phrase “missional church” lies nothing less that the future viability of Western Christianity.
We are the people of the ultimate Quest — we are on a wild, and sometimes dangerous, adventure to save the world.
Let’s stop kidding ourselves — there are too many instances of Christians worshiping sublimely every Sunday, but never making an impact beyond the congregation, never experiencing the powerful beauty of communitas, and never going deeper in discipleship.
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.
Our point isn’t to make an examination of popular film but to illustrate that the yearning for a heroic adventure lies just beneath the surface of our consciousness; film, television, literature, sports, and travel are in a sense vicarious adventures.