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Discipleship Blog Series

Redeemer Post-Baptism Neophytes and Newly Confirmed 2019

Communitas: Forging Real Fellowship

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This week we return to Hirsch’s final characteristic of mDNA/apostolic genius: Communitas. Hirsch contrasts communitas with community. Community is understanding the church in light of a consumerist culture and attractional forms of church. Community in that perspective is preoccupied with middle-class values: safety, security, comfort, and convenience. When those are the values sought within community then it is challenging for the church to conceive of itself as being in mission. Mission often demands entering into situations of danger and affliction. As Hirsch notes, the community is not ultimately intended to serve my needs. Or paraphrasing President Kennedy, “Ask not what you church can do for you, but what you can do for your church.”

Employing the concept of liminality from anthropologist Victor Turner, Hirsch describes the nature of true communitas. Liminality is to be in an in-between space, unsettled, disorienting, marginal. But it is in that space that communitas forms according to Turner. Hirsch writes, “Communitas in his view happens in situations where individuals are driven to find each other through a common experience of ordeal, humbling, transition, and marginalization” (Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways, 221). Experiences of liminality are the formative crucibles for the church to become a communitas. As Hirsch contends,

So the related ideas of liminality and communitas describe the dynamics of the Christian community inspired to overcome their instincts to “huddle and cuddle” and to instead form themselves around a common mission that calls them onto a dangerous journey to unknown places—a mission that calls the church to shake off its collective securities and to plunge into the world of action, where its members will experience disorientation and marginalization but also where they encounter God and one another in a new way. Communitas is therefore always linked with the experience of liminality (Hirsch, 221).

For the church honestly to live in mission, liminal experiences always will be forming it to live in communitas.

The catechumenate forges these very experiences of liminality for the catechumens and the congregation. All of the transitions out of and into the various stages of the catechumenate are liminal moments. Rites, such as the handing over of the creed, the exorcisms, and the footwashing rite on Maundy Thursday function as liminal moments. Through all of these moments the candidates, and the assembly, become aware that they are transitioning into something that they were not before. Their identity is changing, sometimes in subtle and sometimes in overt ways. At minimum they are becoming aware that they participate in God’s mission to the world, or as one of the catechumens in our study said, “I came to realize that I am a Christian all the time.”

In the midst of the catechumenate experience real fellowship among the catechumens and the assembly is formed. Hirsch describes this fellowship through the Fellowship of the Ring of J.R.R. Tolkien. As Hirsch observes, in the quest

They discover each other in a way they would not, or could not, in any other circumstance. Here is the mythic representation of mission (nothing less than the destruction of evil in the world), discipleship (constantly choosing goodness in the face of overwhelming opposition), and communitas (becoming a great community together in pursuit of a mission)….They are bound to each other, and they truly find each other, in the context of an arduous but common mission (Hirsch, 228-9).

While perhaps not as overwhelming as Tolkien’s quest, nonetheless the journey through the catechumenate forges real fellowship: a sense of purpose, of mission, of identity, of comradery, of love. That’s the communitas of the catechumenate!

Lent 1- Rite of Election (112)

Catechumenate Disciple Making: On the Way in the Mission

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The 1st characteristic of mDNA that Alan Hirsch discusses (but the 4th in our series of blog posts) is disciple making or discipleship. This is what the catechumenate aims at: to form disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ and of his Father. So how does Hirsch define discipleship? “Following Jesus and becoming increasingly like him (Christlikeness)” (The Forgotten Ways, 41). Obviously, we cannot be exactly like Jesus since he was the Logos, of one substance with the Father, sent by him to take on the flesh of God’s creatures. For Hirsch, in his humanity Jesus provides the image of the true human. In Jesus, we discover what true and faithful “creatureliness” looks like. So to be a disciple, to model Jesus, means through and in him truly to become the creatures God intended us to be.

Since this is God’s mission in his Son—to make us into the true, faithful humans God intended—as Hirsch says, “We never move from being a disciple on the way” (103). The Word is always forming us into sons and daughters of the living God through the one true Son, Christ Jesus. This kind of discipleship—formation into being sons and daughters—runs counter to the ways in which we usually today incorporate people into the church’s life. We often do not expect much transformation from them or any substantial change in their behavior, or even in their beliefs. In current patterns, incorporating them into the church involves primarily the intellectual assimilation of ideas. Discipleship is much too easy. This kind of approach simply acquiesces to the religion of consumerism and moves the church into an attractional mode of mission. Make the church attractive (and God too) so that people will want to invest in the church, even if they are not really expected to change.

Hirsch’s vision of discipleship within the church’s mission entails “An actively Christlike (redemptive) presence in every neighborhood and every sphere of life” (114). This demands that in the world disciples “live our truths” and “express the message authentically through the media of … [our] … personal and common lives together” (114). Living our truth—the life and mission of the Triune God—demands change, because our old lives don’t reveal that truth. Such transformation into living reflections of the true humanity of the Lord Jesus is the foundation of the believability of God’s mission. It provides the compelling witness that is the vehicle for the church’s transfer of the gifts of God in Christ to others.

The catechumenate aims to form this kind of discipleship in the lives of the catechumens. The intentional, lengthy, ritually focused, and community embedded formation of the catechumenate embodies the gospel and gospel-centered life in the catechumens. It is a lived integrity. The catechumenate operates on the principle that disciples are acting their “way into new ways of thinking,” living, and belonging (122). This is why mentorship is so important to disciple making. The church has to model this way of acting. Central to the catechumenate is such modeling in the form of sponsorship.

Because of such embodied and enacted disciple formation in the catechumenate, there is a visible and palpable consistency between the message and the messenger, the gospel and the disciple. It produces disciples who understand that for the rest of their lives they are on the way toward God’s kingdom. From that moment forward, they are participants in inviting others to join them on that way to discipleship. As Hirsch says, they are “Active participants in the mission Dei” from the moment they join the catechumenate (119). From the outset, these catechumens becoming disciples are “hitting the road with Jesus” (120).

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A Living, Organic Network: A Catechumenate Heart

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Alan Hirsch’s 4th characteristic of missional DNA (mDNA) or Apostolic Genius is what he calls Organic Systems. This entails perceiving and structuring the church’s life in mission on organic, living models rather than institutional and bureaucratic models. As Hirsch says, “A living systems approach seeks to structure the common life of an organization around the rhythms and structures that mirror life itself” (The Forgotten Ways, 182). Hirsch argues that the organic model is “theologically richer…because it is funded by a sense of God’s intimate relation and investment in his creation” (181).

Organic systems function primarily in networked ways. Think of the various systems of the body such as the neurological system. It operates in a collaborative way, all the parts of the neurological system contributing to its guidance and operation. With regard to vital organic networks Hirsch says, “The effective performance of a network over time and distance will depend to a large degree on the cultivation of shared beliefs, interests, principles, and goals—perhaps articulated in an overarching ideology” (202). Those beliefs, interests, etc…, shape that ideology. That ideology or shared social imaginary, to borrow a phrase from Charles Taylor, is the living pulse that keeps the network interconnected and thriving.

Missional leadership within an organic network will foster the permeation of that social imaginary throughout the network. Hirsch delineates 4 things that missional leadership can do for the living network to thrive in the world:

  • Unleash the mDNA that is dormant in the system.
  • Bring the various elements in the system into meaningful relationship.
  • Move the system…to become highly responsive to its environment.
  • In a mass of disordered information … select the flow of information and focus the community around it (183-4).

Through such leadership in the body of Christ—the living network of God—the relationships of the believers to one another and to those outside the body become the very center of the church’s life. In other words, mission resides at the center of the church’s life.

Central to the organic network of the body of Christ are hubs. For Hirsch, “Hubs are places where the lines of communication connect” (204). Hubs are central nodes in the neurological system of the body. In the congregations whose catechumenates we studied, the catechumenate functioned as just such a hub, and often as the central hub. The catechumenate was a central connection point for sharing and communicating the social imaginary of a congregation in mission. Other elements of congregational life emanated from the catechumenate such as Bible studies, community service, youth group, youth catechumenate, liturgical service, men’s and women’s groups, hospitality ministries, even congregational committee meetings. The catechumenate became one of the places that embedded in the congregation the way in which the congregation understood its life together and shared that social imaginary. It is the living heartbeat of the organic network of the congregation—the body of Christ in that place.

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Jesus is Lord: The Central Strand of mDNA

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We took a one week hiatus a week ago from the blog but continue this week after Thanksgiving with our series on Alan Hirsch’s five characteristics of genuinely missional churches, the mDNA that constitute Apostolic Genius. This week, however, isn’t so much one of the characteristics, but the central definitive feature that permeates all of the mDNA: the living encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. Hirsch refers to this as the epicenter of the missional movement and identifies it as the “biblical consciousness of God” (Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways, 84). A central biblical passage is Romans 11:36: “for from him and through him and to him are all things.” It is the awareness and recognition that in the encounter with Jesus through the proclaimed Word God’s creatures encounter the one, true, and living God the Creator who reigns over all his creation. And he does so through the death and resurrection of His living Word, His Son.

               Hirsch contends that in the New Testament and in all vital missional movements the encounter with Jesus as the Lord (Christocentric Monotheism) propels the mission and the message. As Hirsch says, “The desperate, prayer-soaked human clinging to Jesus, the reliance on his Spirit, and the distillation of the gospel message into the simple, uncluttered message of Jesus as Lord and Savior is what catalyzed the missional potencies inherent in the people of God” (86). It is literally a Jesus as God movement. “At its very heart, Christianity is therefore a messianic movement, one that seeks to consistently embody the life, spirituality, and mission of its Founder” (94). A properly-oriented catechumenate will position the encounter with Jesus at the center of its formation.

               How does the catechumenate reflect this epicenter? One of the ways that Hirsch advocates for determining whether the encounter with Jesus as Lord is central to the community’s life is to ask, “Is the real Jesus really Lord in my community?” (99). Is the risen Lord really the congregation’s touchstone and defining center? If this consciousness is central to the congregation’s adult faith formation, then hopefully it will be reflected in the totality of the community’s life. A properly-oriented catechumenate will manifest this. As Hirsch says, we need “to recalibrate ourselves and our organizations around the person and work of Jesus the Lord. It will mean taking the Gospels seriously as the primary texts that define us. It will mean acting like Jesus in relation to people outside of the faith” (94). Since the Gospels are central to the formation of the catechumenate and it seeks to give God’s gifts in Jesus and elicit the response that our way of living is a confession of his lordship, the catechumenate is  a way of sitting at the feet of the Lord! He guides and governs all creation toward his fulfillment and is the heart of the church’s mission and life as the Lord.

               The other five mDNA reflect this epicenter. We make disciples because his lordship calls us to do so. We see ourselves as driven by a missional impulse because God’s mission has come in the flesh into the world God created in Jesus. We form a living community because Jesus is living among us. The catechumenate embodies these five characteristics because the catechumenate itself flows from the confession that Jesus is Lord. The catechumenate is itself a form of lived confession that Jesus as Lord is at the heart of it all: of the catechumenate, of congregational life, of the church’s mission.

Palm Sunday 2019 (311)

Apostolic Environment: Missional Leadership through the Catechumenate

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The third characteristic of genuinely missional churches, the mDNA that constitute Apostolic Genius according to Alan Hirsch, is Apostolic Environment. In the New Testament age, Hirsch perceives that the leadership of the Apostles constitutes the apostolic environment. This leadership “embodies, symbolizes, and re-presents the apostolic mission to the missional community…a missional church needs missional leadership” (Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways, 152).  

Based on his consideration of the New Testament and missional movements throughout church history, how does Hirsch conceive of missional leadership? He says that the calling of leaders in an apostolic environment is “the extension of Christianity” calling “the church to its essential calling” and guiding “it into its destiny as a missionary people with a transformative message for the world” (152). An apostolic environment is one where leaders lead from the vision and comprehensive scope of the gospel as the mission of the church. For Hirsch, apostolic leadership integrates the outward mission of the church to the world with apostolic doctrine and teaching. They go hand in hand. He says,

At core, the apostolic task is about the expansion of Christianity both physically in the form of pioneering missionary effort and church planting, as well as theologically through integration of apostolic doctrine into the life of the individual Christians and the communities they are a part of. But more than that, as custodian of Apostolic Genius, he or she is the person who provides the personal reference point as well as the spiritual context for the other ministries of God’s people (154).

The leaders in an apostolic environment envision the external mission of the church as the mission of God the Father through His crucified and resurrected Son by the power of the Spirit toward the renewal and restoration of all humanity and the entire cosmos.

From this Hirsch establishes three primary functions of leaders in an apostolic environment:

  1. Embedding mDNA through pioneering new ground for the gospel and the church
  2. Guarding mDNA through the application and integration of apostolic theology
  3. Creating the environment from which other ministries of the church emerge (155-7).

In a local congregation, an apostolic environment of leadership aims to create an atmosphere of expectation and movement (163).

               The catechumenate has the effect of embedding an apostolic environment in a congregation. Since the catechumenate is oriented toward the birthing of new Christians—especially adults but youth and children as well—it embeds the vision that the congregation is constantly in mission to the world. In the congregations we studied, the pastoral and lay leaders of the congregation lead out of the crucible of the catechumenate. Through the catechumenate they embody, symbolize, and re-present the apostolic mission to the missional community (152). By its structure, the catechumenate intertwines apostolic teaching and doctrine and the external mission of the church. For example, Redeemer Lutheran Church in the Bronx constructed its youth confirmation on the model of its adult catechumenate. They have regular catechumenal gatherings on a weeknight for two hours with a meal (often pizza). The youth are encouraged to invite their friends. And they do! Their friends come and fellowship with the youth at Redeemer while hearing and learning the apostolic witness of the gospel. The entire congregation, youth included, live in an apostolic environment. As Hirsch concludes, “Apostolic influence awakens the church to its true calling and identity” (177).

Palm Sunday 2019 (219)

Moving into the Neighborhood: The Missional-Incarnational Impulse

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As I indicated last week, Alan Hirsch identifies five characteristics of genuinely missional churches, the mDNA that constitute Apostolic Genius:

  • Disciple-making
  • Missional-incarnational impulse
  • Apostolic environment
  • Organic systems
  • Communitas, not community

My (Kent) intention it to take up each of these in the following weeks and show how the catechumenate embodies these characteristics.  I am going to begin with the Missional-incarnational impulse (simply because we haven’t given attention to it elsewhere). It is important to frame this characteristic as Hirsch does. He contrasts this with the primary impulse toward mission that holds in most first world settings: the evangelistic-attractional impulse. This impulse is missionally-oriented toward attracting people to become part of a church/community/institution in order to grow the church (increase its numbers) and strengthen the life of the institution. Its fundamental impulse is attraction, not sending, as is the case in the missional-incarnational impulse.

So what does it mean to be missional-incarnational as opposed to evangelistic-attractional? As Hirsch says, it is “the practical outworking of the mission of God (the Missio Dei) and of the Incarnation. It is thus rooted in the very way that God has redeemed the world, and in how God revealed himself to us” (128). Being missional, which is a mark of the church, means being incarnational. In other words, God instantiates his mission to renew his creation when his Son becomes incarnate, takes on human flesh, and moves into our human neighborhood (John 1:14; Hirsch, 132). As Hirsch points out, through the incarnation God in his Son identifies with all that it means to be his human creatures and reveals the true human image of God, what it means to be a human creature of God.

This means that the church in its mission must live incarnationally. As Hirsch observes,

“The Incarnation not only qualifies God’s acts in the world, but must also qualify ours. If God’s central way of reaching his world was to incarnate himself in Jesus, then our way of reaching the world should likewise be incarnational. To act incarnationally therefore will mean in part that in our mission to those outside of the faith we will need to exercise a genuine identification and affinity with those we are attempting to reach. At the very least, it will probably mean moving into common geography/space and so set up a real and abiding presence among the group. But the basic motive of incarnational ministry is also revelatory—that they may come to know God through Jesus” (133).

This missional-incarnational impulse was instantiated in the congregations we studied. They were deeply embedded in their contexts and understood their life as a witness to those around them. As Hirsch indicates, the missional-incarnational impulse is a sending impulse (as opposed to attractional). The church as the people of God are sent into the world as seeds of God’s renewing work in Jesus. The catechumenate shaped that self-understanding of being sent in the congregations. The picture at the head of today’s blog makes that apparent. It is Redeemer Lutheran Church in the Bronx processing through their community waving palm branches on Palm Sunday. This ritual act embedded bodily in them this self-understanding of being a people sent into the world immediately around them. They understand themselves as sent as God’s missionaries into the places they live, where they work, where they play, and where they serve. As Hirsch says, “By living incarnationally we not only model the pattern of humanity set up in the Incarnation but also create space for mission to take place in organic ways. In this way mission becomes something that ‘fits’ seamlessly into the ordinary rhythms of life, friendships, and community and is thus thoroughly contextualized” (135). God has moved into the neighborhood to love among his people. The catechumenate creates the opportunity for the church to see itself as a sent people.

Redeemer Alleluia Dance

Apostolic Genius for Making Disciples

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This week we begin an ongoing series focused on disciple making. I don’t think there is any question that the primary goal of the catechumenate is making and forming lifelong disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. Disciples are those who believe in the God and Father of Christ Jesus, who trust that he has come to bring God’s rule and reign and renew the whole creation, and whose lives reflect Jesus’ reign through his death and resurrection. The catechumenate aims to shape discipleship under those fundamental parameters.

               Throughout the coming weeks, we’ll explore that aim and the intersection between the catechumenate and discipleship. One of the ways we have found helpful for assessing that intersection is through Alan Hirsch’s now classic missional book, The Forgotten Ways. Hirsch, the founder of 100Movements and an experienced mission leader, educator and church planter, wrote The Forgotten Ways (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2006) as a descriptive analysis of the missional impulse in the early church, throughout church history, and in vibrant missional and church planting churches, organizations, and groups in the modern era. Hirsch also aims to be prescriptive, to advance those missional characteristics that he finds in missional-activated churches into churches that have lost their way. As the introduction to the book states, “I am committed to the idea of translating best practices in mission developed over the last century in the two-thirds world into that of the first world. This has aptly been called the missions-to-the-first-world approach” (22). While one might contest the prescriptive force of Hirsch’s aim—without denying that there is much to be learned here—we have found that his description of the characteristics of churches who possess a vibrant missional impulse is decidedly true of the congregations we researched that have vibrant catechumenates. We don’t think the link is accidental.

               What I will attempt to do this week is describe what is at the heart of missional movements from Hirsch’s assessments of those movements. The living missional impulse he calls Apostolic Genius. He defines it as: “the primal missional potencies of the gospel and of God’s people” that “lies dormant in you, me, and every local church that seeks to follow Jesus faithfully in any time” (22). Elsewhere he says, “Apostolic Genius” is “the built-in life force and guiding mechanism of God’s people and the living components or elements that make it up. These components I have tagged missional DNA, or mDNA, for short” (18). The elements of mDNA that he identifies are: disciple-making; missional-incarnational impulse; apostolic environment; organic systems; Communitas, not community.  We’ll examine these in subsequent posts. The key here is that Apostolic Genius (characterized by mDNA) is embedded in the church’s life. As Hirsch says, it “is coded into each and every community through latent mDNA; only for most of us it lies buried and forgotten” (78). In the congregations whose catechumenates we researched, Apostolic Genius has been re-awakened or sustained by their catechumenates. Their catechumenates have renewed them to be “a community of God’s people that defines itself, and organizes its life around, its real purpose of being an agent of God’s mission to the world…the mission of God flows directly through every believer and every community of faith that adheres to Jesus” (82). Apostolic Genius is the church living out its identity as God’s mission to the world. And an active, purposeful catechumenate forms that Apostolic Genius in the people of God.