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Alan Hirsch

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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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).