Reflections on an Evening with Alan Hirsch

Last week I had the privilege of hearing twice from Alan Hirsch. Hirsch leads a church planting network called Forge, and over the years has become one of the leading voices on church planting. I've read some of his stuff, have heard him speak now a few times, and am deeply challenged by his thoughts.

At the first event I attended Hirsch gave a presentation titled, "The Faith of Leap," which is the title of a forthcoming book of his. The talk centered around the idea of "communitas." This is a concept that he introduces in his book The Forgotten Ways. Communitas essentially is the community that forms in the midst of an ordeal, challenge, or task. An example he gave is of manhood rites of passage in other cultures where boys are left in the bush by the village elders to find their way to the tree where the elders will meet them and teach them about being a man. It is in this quest, this adventure marked by risk and danger where community among the young men is formed.

Hirsch suggests that by and large risk and adventure are missing in most of our churches claiming, "Our longing for adventure has been taken out of the venture." As we look through the stories of the Scriptures and the early church, we find experiences chalked full of risk, chaos, and adventure and somewhere throughout the course of church history, church became safe.

I'm challenged by this and I tend to agree with Hirsch's assessment. Where is the risk in most of our churches? Where is the danger? Where is the uncertainty? Perhaps the reason that churches are full of passive, bored, and non-committal people is that we have failed to give them the adventure their souls long for, that we have failed to hand them the sword of cause.

A few weeks ago I shared a vision of planting 5 churches in 5 communities in 5 years with our church. The following week a guy who is new to our church told me that he finds most churches seem to be about "self-preservation," but that it seems as if we truly have a desire to be outward-focused. He then shared that a vision of planting churches is exciting. I don't know if we'll accomplish this or not, but it certainly is a risky, dangerous, and uncertain pursuit. At the same time it could be an adventure that people long for and my hope is that we'll take hills together and along the way form communitas...whatever that is.

What is the adventure you are on? What is the risk that you or your church is taking? How can we recapture the dangerous wonder of what it means to be a follower of Jesus?