I’ve recently finished reading The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21 Century Church by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch. I read lots of positive reviews about it on people’s blogs, and I guess I should always temper my expectations when I read lots of positive review. I was expecting a great book. I have to say I was a little disappointed, especially at first. It was a good book, but not a great book. It took me a while to adjust to the very churchy, theologically loaded, language. Once I was able to make that adjustment I was able to appreciate the book more. I could tell that I was not their target audience for this book. It seems to have been written towards pastors and mission directors in traditional church institutions. The book was divided into four parts, and I’ll deal with each of them seperately and briefly.
Part One – The Shape We’re In
I thought they did a pretty good job discussing the current state of things. Their analysis of the Pre-Christendom, Christendom and Emerging Missional was worthwhile. I thought their dealing with the Missional Church in chapter 2 was a little weak, but I also had already read Missional Church Their use of the terms Attractional, Dualistic and Hierarchical for describing the Christendom church was useful. Their use of the terms Incarnational, Messianic and Apostolic for describing the emerging missional church I thought was a little lacking, mostly because at least 2 of them(Messianic and Apostolic) are theologically loaded. I prefer Holistic and Missional to describe what they are talking about.
Part Two – Incarnational Ecclesiology
Bounded set vs centered set, fences vs wells, extractional vs incarnational. Lot’s of stuff that has been explained elsewhere. Chapter 5 on contextualizaion I’m sure was helpful for some people, but seemed very much overkill to me. In my opinion this was the weakest part of the book.
Part Three – Messianic Spirituality
They focused a lot of post-Jesus Jewish thought, which was useful to show a Jewish/Hebraic worldview. It probably was the most accessable way to do it, and it is a worthwhile cause. Some of it seemed out of place in this book though. It was an interesting read.
Part Four – Apostolic Leadership
Once I got far enough into this part to get over the terms in APEPT(Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor and Teacher) it was worthwhile. The focus on empowering the pioneering leaders was good. A few other things were worthwhile, nothing revolutionary.
Conclusion
I got the feel that because the authors focused so much on the practical aspects of the missional church, and given the way they referred to the Kingdom of God, that they didn’t really agree with the major theological aspects of the Gospel and Our Culture Network’s Missional Church and StormFront works. The focus on the reign of God and how we interact with it was a major part of those works. I think that had that theology pervaded this book, and the language been less churchy, then this would have been a book that I recommended to everyone. But given those things, I think there are probably better things for my readership to spend their time and money on.
