Alan Hirsch (1)

Parts of this book are really good. I think this book is weakest on cultural analysis (where they pretty much assume that the culture is middle class). The emphasis on the the Shema-shaped spirituality and the Triune God are good and helpful.

This isn't really a book about missional discipleship even though it says that. This is a book that is advocating for missional discipleship. I suppose 'a book' on missional discipleship would be a suspect endeavor because the type of lifestyle that the Hirsches are advocating for is a risky trust in the trinity and seeking to allow that to touch all of life.… (mais)

I loved this book. It paints a very clear picture of the fate of the Church if we carry on doing what we've always done, and shows how Christendom-era thinking has become irrelevant and unhelpful. It goes on to illustrate how the Church needs to become mission-oreinted again, and that that mission orientation needs to be thoroughly incarnational and culturally contextualised in nature. Their analysis of the type of leadership needed in the future is, to my mind, spot-on. While the book is unsettling to any of us involved in church leadership, I believe it does point the way to an approach to missional thinking and action that we ignore at our peril. While a number of reviewers seem to regard it as for the "emerging church" I believe it applieas across the evangelical spectrum.… (mais)

There is a battle for the minds and hearts of people today that is more intense, more climactic and more universal than at any previous time in history. The development of Satan's world plan involves careful, drip-fed, layer-upon-layer preparation. The principal outcome of the Fall was not only the withdrawal of God's presence from the human heart and the resultant enslavement to sin; it also involved the opening up of the human race to a massive influence of mind-control by the powers of darkness. Traumatized people are much easier to control and exploit… (mais)