The Shaping of Things to Come

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View books by Michael Frost, Alan Hirsch.

The book we have been waiting for on mission in a contmporary context - Rated
Utterly excellent - at last a book which has the honesty to say of our modern context 'we're not at all sure how to do mission' but then takes some important principles and expands them to help us dream about what mission may look like. Rather than imposing a blueprint, rather than saying 'this is what the world is like and this is how you have to be missionary' - it said to me 'take time to discover your world and then listen to what God may be saying into your context'

Stepping out of a world which we Christians effectivly described into one in which all our 'language of description' often seems to be Martian is most disorientating. This book says 'yes it is isn't it - here are a few tentative suggested first steps'.

Attractional vs Incarnational - Rated
Finally, a book which offers a real alternative to the contemporary church leadership mindset. Frost and Hirsch's most important point in this book which contains so much good stuff, is that Christ's desire for his people, the church, is to be a transforming presence in the world - an Incarnation. They illustrate, in slightly tongue in cheek fashion, the way that the church has signed up pretty much wholesale to an Attractional model of church - essentially tipping the great commission on its head, turning Christ's 'Go' into 'Come'.
I really hope loads of church leaders read this book and begin to realise that attracting people to their building is totally NOT what their job is about, Jesus came to destroy the temple and rebuild it out of living stones.