A timely and contemporary look at the many forms of the burgeoning "emerging church" movement. Contemporary music, a shirt-sleeved pastor, and Starbucks coffee. Not a typical church service for most people, but it is becoming more popular. Traditionally, churches have set church services, music, and speakers to fit the expectations of the congregation. Changing the service to appeal to a "contemporary crowd" is a recent phenomenon. Many people have grown disillusioned with the church and want a church on their terms, not their parents'. Enter the emerging church movement. Its goal: to help churches to reach their full potential and to reach a wider audience without compromising their core beliefs. Deals with a worldwide movement.

In his bestselling missional book The Forgotten Ways, internationally known missional church expert Alan Hirsch offered a vision for the future growth of the church coming about by harnessing the power of the early church. Now The Forgotten Ways Handbook moves beyond theory to practice, offering ways for any missionally minded person to apply the ideas contained in The Forgotten Ways to their life and ministry.

This intensely practical handbook includes many helpful tools: summary sections encapsulating the ideas contained in each chapter in a popular way; suggested practices to help readers embed missional paradigms concretely; and adult learning-based techniques and examples from other churches and organizations that enable readers to process and assimilate the ideas in a group context.

EXCERPT
Make no mistake about it; the scope of the change that is required to shift to the kind of movement described in The Forgotten Ways is nothing less than paradigmatic. Every element of mDNA poses a direct challenge to the prevailing ways of doing church and mission. When taken together, all six elements of Apostolic Genius make the task seem enormous. But we don't think it is actually as difficult as it seems. And it is certainly not impossible. The Chinese church proves that a highly institutionalized form of Christianity can become a remarkable movement given the right circumstances. And we don't believe that we have to have persecution to activate Apostolic Genius. Less intense forms of adaptive challenges can, and do, force the church to respond. What we are witnessing in our own day indicates that. Because the church carries the gospel as well as the full coding of Apostolic Genius in her, the potential for world transformation is always present in us. We can always draw upon latent resources and instincts. God is able and very willing to stir his church up. In fact we see this as one of the very special works of the Holy Spirit--to awaken God's people to their calling and destiny as a movement that can and will change the world.

Description: Metrospiritual: The Geography of Church Planting is about church planting in the city. There is an outpouring of new expressions of church being started throughout metro areas across North America. Where are these new churches being started? Maybe a more subterranean question is, ""Why""? Why are churches being started where they are and why is there is a bias towards one part of the city and an overall neglect of other parts? Metrospiritual explores these questions and more as it builds off of recent research and surveys of hundreds of church planters in seven large cities in the United States and Canada. There is a deeper look at pivotal issues such as gentrification, the Creative Class, community transformation, urban renewal, and the role new churches play in all of these. Endorsements: ""It is important for church planters who hope to affect their cities to put on new glasses. Sean Benesh has successfully provided such a tool. By looking at not only the raw data of a city but its life--its laments as well as what brings joy--along with a deep theological impetus, we are brought into the grand and possible challenge of planting in an urban context. Both needed and timely!"" --Rob Fairbanks President Christian Associates International ""I really enjoyed Sean Benesh's Metrospirtual: The Georgraphy of Church Planting. I found it fresh, challenging, and comprehensive of things that are critical in selecting and identifying the community in which to work and the issues at play in the community. I highly recommend every church planter to devour it slowly."" --Bob Roberts Jr. Senior Pastor NorthWood Church ""In recent decades there have been a number of helpful books on church planting. They generally fall into two categories: a successful church planter who presents a formula or a technical approach that is highly theoretical. Sean Benesh avoids both extremes. His approach is both accessible and based on good research. Throughout the book there are many personal anecdotes drawn from his own church-planting experiences in a number of cities. His concern is for the urban context. He knows how to exegete the city. And he identifies the Creative class as a primary group to engaged because they shape the culture and set a course for the future of the location. It is rare to find an author who is both a skilled practitioner and an academically trained theoretician."" --Eddie Gibbs Senior Professor of Church Growth Fuller Theological Seminary About the Contributor(s): Sean Benesh is planting the Ion Community, a church in metro Vancouver, BC, Canada. He teaches as an adjunct professor in the areas of a theology of the city, community transformation, and other urban issues. Sean has been involved in church planting both as a planter and a strategist, in addition to being a hiking and mountain biking guide.

The church is on the verge of massive, category shifting, change. Contemporary church growth, despite its many blessings, has failed to stem the decline of Christianity in the West. We are now facing the fact that more of the same will not produce different results. Our times require a different kind of church--an apostolic, reproducing, movement where every person is living a mission-sent life.Many of the best and brightest leaders in the contemporary church are now making the shift in the way they think, lead, and organize. Motivated partly by a vision of the church as ancient as it is new, and with a driving desire to see Biblical Christianity establish itself in Western cultural contexts, we are indeed seeing a new form of the church emerge in our day. Hirsch and Ferguson call this "apostolic movement" because it is more resonant with the form of church that we witness in the pages of the New Testament and in the great missional movements of history. In this book, Hirsch and Ferguson share a rich array of theology, theory, and best practices, along with inspiring stories about leaders who have rightly diagnosed their churches' failure to embrace a biblical model of mission and have moved toward a fuller expression of the gospel. On the Verge will help church leaders discover how these forerunners and their insights are launching a new apostolic movement--and how any church can get involved.