One more post before we turn to tomorrow's research.
Last week in class at Indiana Wesleyan University, Rick Champ, one of my students, presented a good summary of The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church by Alan Hirsch. You can find the PowerPoint here.
I believe Alan is a good thinker and has been challenging us all about the purpose and structure of the church, God's mission, and the gospel. We've developed a friendship-- and have even argued about a few things. But, we share similar passions-- and I know few Christian leaders as gracious and thoughtful as Alan.
I think his analysis of cultural distance and the western church is very helpful:
Alan's official site is http://www.theforgottenways.org.
I use Alan's book whenever I teach on missional church issues. However, I was surprised to receive an email this week from my friend Jimmy Draper indicating that he was reading the book and saw my endorsement inside. Jimmy is going to share his thoughts here at the blog in the coming days.
I love the fact that Dr. Draper is continuing to engage in such conversations. For those of you who are not SBC, Jimmy is one of the great leaders of my denomination and was saluted recently here. He is often called Mr. Southern Baptist.
Finally, Brother Maynard has some thoughts on the word "missional" as used by Gordon MacDonald in the recent Leadership Journal. Maynard, who does have a real name that he does not use, is the one who got me started writing about how people use the word missional in different ways.
Regarding the same issue, Earl Creps has some observations on the word "missional" as well.
For next week's "Monday is for Missiology," and after our discussion of the church dropout research, I will begin my series on how people use the word "missional" and why it matters.
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