"The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the
21st Century Church"

written by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch

Reviewed by Murray Brown

With much coming out of the United States on the whole “emerging church” movement, it is refreshing to read a book birthed closer to home. Both Frost and Hirsch bring to their writing a mix of theological and practitioner views, developed out of an Australian culture, yet versed in what is happening on a wider scale in parts of the western world. Michael Frost is the founding director of the Centre for Evangelism and Global Mission at Morling College in Sydney while Alan Hirsch is the National Director of Forge Mission Training Network that seeks to train missional church leaders.

Through this book what they seek to do is build a theological argument for a more missional approach to church and ministry, sprinkling their thoughts with observations from Australia, New Zealand, the UK and North America.

They start with a familiar thesis: that we are observing a significant shift in worldview in society toward what has been labelled postmodernism – a mode of thinking in which truth takes on a more subjective, relativistic nature. A second familiar thesis they offer is that we are in a post Christian era in which the church must learn to adopt missional strategies to reach the lost. In order to do this they say three things are needed.

Firstly they present a case for “incarnational ecclesiology” – a theology of church that sees it immersed in the culture, not trying to attract people to “come” but “going” where people are and establishing church on their turf. They point out that God is already at work in the life of the unbeliever and calls us to share in this work, contextualising the gospel to the culture we work in.

Their second core requirement is for “Messianic spirituality”. Here they delineate between a Hebraic (Jewish) approach to spirituality and an Hellenistic (Greek) approach. They point out that we in the west have been overly influenced by the Hellenistic approach and need to recapture a more Hebraic flavour in order. In practice this means a less theoretical/speculative/abstract approach to theology and a more practical/concrete approach. It means seeing all of life as spiritual an the pleasures of the world as things to enjoy in a manner in which God intended, as opposed to an approach that tries to compartmentalise the spiritual and the secular, and views with some disdain the love of enjoyment and pleasure, viewing them as somehow “unspiritual”.

Thirdly Frost and Hirsch call for “apostolic leadership”, challenging both our church structures and the role of a leader. They issue a call to a balanced team approach based on the five-fold giftings of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher. Because of our over emphasis on the pastor/teacher role in church life, they argue that our churches are imbalanced in approach and therefore ineffective in missional work. They urge leaders to be risk takers, full of imagination and daring, not afraid to try things and if need be fail.

While not technically a youth ministry book, “The Shaping of Things to Come”, nevertheless has much to challenge the thinking of today’s youth leaders who want to grapple with deeper issues of theology and culture. It forces us to reflect on a “come to us” mentality in our programming and presents theological arguments, and practical examples of how to re-orient our priorities in being more focussed on entering into the world of the teenager, instead of expecting them to enter our world.

The chapters on the spiritual pursuit of pleasure and enjoyment provide much food for thought on how we present ourselves to young people. Too often we are seen as negative and dull whereas the call is to embrace and enjoy life to the full while being careful not to sin. Finally the insights related to the fivefold ministry gifts are a challenge to how we build leadership in youth ministry, which, like the wider church, tends to focus on the gifts of pastoring and teaching, and is perhaps all the weaker for neglecting the role of the evangelist, prophet and apostle.

- Murray Brown is the Director of YouthTRAIN