On Saturday morning of the CMA Conference the first general session speaker was Alan Hirsch. You may remember Alan as the co-author (along with Michael Frost) of "The Shaping of Things To Come". I really didn’t know what (or who) to expect, and I was pleasantly surprised. What I discovered was someone whom I can only describe as one of the most fertile "out-of-the-box" minds in Christianity today, wrapped in a package that reminded me of someone fresh out of the Jesus Movement of the early 1970s (which is when I came to Christ). For the next hour I felt like I was trying to sip water out of a fire hose . . . and it was all good! What follows here is a combination of my notes and those of my wife, and between the two of us I KNOW we didn’t capture it all. I’m hoping to convince Neal Cole and the CMA team to allow me to edit Alan’s talk and make it available as a Podcast for download, because this is a talk that 1) deserves widespread circulation and 2) needs to be listened to several times in order to "get it all". What I am going to give you now is a combination of bullet points and narrative in the hope of communicating as much of Alan’s material as possible.

Alan began with a challenge, namely, our need to "return to ‘radicalism’". The Latin root of "radical" is "radix" - meaning "root". The church needs to return to its roots. We need to go back to where it all started - with Jesus. The good news is that Jesus is "God-like"; but the better news is that God is Christ-like. We can know God because we can know Christ. Alan then posed a basic question which he would return to throughout his next two workshops (sorry, you’ll need to tune in next week for those): "How did the early church grow from 25,000 in AD100 to between 20 & 25 MILLION in just 200 years (by the time of its legalizing under Constantine)?" How did they do it? What makes it all come together in a movement that can only be described as KABOOM!? Especially considering:

• They were illegal and underground (persecution)
• Owned no building
• Possessed only fragments of Scripture
• Had no seeker friendly services

(Here Alan referred to a book, Spontaneous Expansion of the Church, by Roland Allen, available on Amazon used).

Alan then compared the situation of the early Church with that of the Church in China in the 20^th Century under Chairman Mao’s persecution. The gift of persecution forces the church to distill its message down and to strip everything out that is not essential: "Jesus is my Lord, and I cling to Him." In China the church wasn’t simply driven underground, it was forced to discover the epicenter of their faith.

• Their confession - "Jesus is Lord" - is political to the core! If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar (or Mao) isn’t!
• Such a message is "Simplex": simple to the point of being "sneezable", but complex because it takes you the rest of your life to live it out fully.
• Because it is "sneezable" it can be spread like a virus. All ideas spread like viruses (sneezing). The more complicated the message the longer it takes to spread.
• God Himself is complex, but the doorway is simple, so that anyone can grasp it and enter in.
• Simplicity of the message is the gift that persecution brings.

Next, Alan turned his attention from the simplicity of the message to the issue of Christology. Christology, he said, is at the heart of the renewal of the Church. The great declaration of the Old Testament was, "The Lord our God is One" (Deut.1). This doesn’t change in the N.T. But Jesus redefines it in terms of himself. The Founder of Christianity is Jesus, therefore we must go back to Him. In order to find ourselves, our identity, we must go back to the Founder.

Alan told a story of traveling with Michael Frost & their wives to Rome and visiting St. Peter’s Basilica. He was overwhelmed and impressed with the building & architecture, but felt like something missing. He and Michael Frost had the same thought: "Where is Jesus in all of this? Where’s the Nazarene?"

• French Calvinist theologian Jacques Ellul wrote about "the subversion of Christianity," namely, the removal of Christ from the very religion that bears his name.
• Question: How is it that we cannot find Jesus among all the religions which bear His Name?
• Jesus is not easy to deal with. Christianity minus Christ equals religion.
• Your life must change when you are with Jesus. Show me your Jesus and I’ll tell you who you are.
• Christology determines our mission, which determines our ecclesiology. The person of Jesus determines our function which determines the shape and form of our churches.
• When it loses its way, the church always "recalibrates" or "reboots" to Jesus.

Alan observed that Winston Churchill once said, "We shape our buildings and then our buildings shape us." Jesus gets trapped and then He becomes domesticated. We need to get back to the controversial Jesus. Alan noted that in Revelation 3:20 Jesus is described as standing on the outside of the Church, knocking to get inside the church. The question is, "What’s He doing outside the church? How did He wind up out there?"! In the "church" Jesus is made unreachable - as seen in the pictures which depict Him. Alan went on to describe some of the ways Jesus is represented today:

• "Spooky Jesus" - pictures of Jesus with the shiny halo or the pulsing red heart outside his chest, etc. It makes Jesus seem like an alien! THIS IS A HERESY!
• "Buddy Jesus" - this alternative view of Jesus, from the movie "Dogma" makes Jesus totally human. There is no respect for His deity. This is the Jesus of the prosperity doctrine; no reverence, no awe, no Lordship. This view of Jesus is very pervasive in America. (Maurice’s Note: My daughter the Youth Director informs me that you can now purchase "Buddy Christ" action figures. Well, they don’t do anything, but they make great shelf ornaments!).
• "Nice Guy Jesus" - this is the Sunday School Jesus. He’s Jesus, but He’s not very smart financially. He’s a nice guy and He’s good with kids, but don’t take His advice on any of the practical aspects of life. This is usually accepted by the well adjusted, middle class. If they are ever truly exposed to the Jesus of the Gospels they will lead lives that will be offensive.
• "Boyfriend Jesus" - this view gives romantic thoughts about Jesus, "Jesus is my boyfriend" This view makes Jesus mild mannered, not wild and dangerous. Modern songs tend to give this portrayal of Jesus.
• "Schmaltzy Jesus" - in this view Jesus is a wimpy teacher of moralistic platitudes about life.

We need to reconnect with the real Jesus as the Founder! We need to get there and stay there! Jesus is wild and dangerous! In "The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe" Lucy asks the Beavers about Aslan, the great Lion, "Is He safe?" Lucy asks.  "Safe, deary? Of course He’s not safe," the Beaver responds.  "But He is good." Jesus isn’t "safe". But do we understand that He is "good"?

Next, Alan asked all of us to consider the characteristics of the Pharisees of Jesus' day, thinking of them as passionate and devoted people.

• They were Great Tithers,
• They were very Evangelistic and Missional,
• They ran very good and well organized Board meetings,
• They were very Pious and very devoted to prayer,
• They were "people of the Bible" and defended the whole Scripture; they were "Torah people",
• They were morally very decent people,
• They were committed to making disciples,
• They were Zealous in their work, seriously passionate,
• They Believed in and defended the resurrection (as opposed to the Sadduccees)

Alan’s two observations were: 1) these are the people who put Jesus on the cross. Jesus said that they were theologically correct, but . . . 2) The group today whose characteristics most closely resemble the characteristics of the Pharisees is . . . the Evangelicals (OUCH! That's going to leave a mark!). So, what would happen to Jesus if He went to "church" today? He would probably be killed.

Alan’s conclusion: We’ve got to get back to the Gospels - to the revolutionary Jesus! We have to watch out. We must be careful to not get caught up and stay in a place of comfort and convenience!

O.K., this is just Maurice’s perspective, but the difference between Hirsch and Brafman was that, well, Hirsch was challenging while Brafman was . . . fascinating(?). My wife and I both have extensive notes from Hirsch’s talk (and we still couldn’t write fast enough to get in all down), But our notes for Brafman were fewer. Ori is the author, along with Rod Beckstrom, of "The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations". It is a brilliant piece of work, based upon a simple principle. If you cut off the head or leg of a spider it will inevitably die. But cut off the leg of a starfish and it will not only grow a new leg, but the severed leg will grow into a new starfish (a fact that fishermen in New England learned the hard way, by chopping up starfish in the hopes of killing them!). If you grasp that principle then you’ve grasped the heart of the message. To skip straight to the application and "punch line" (for me, at least), are you creating a house church network that is a spider (take out a leader, cut off a leg or head, and you kill the whole thing) or are you creating a starfish. I’ll get back to Ori in a moment, but I can’t resist the opportunity to make an observation (bad dog, bad dog, stop that!). The Church in the affluent west is, for the most part a "Network of Arachnids" - a network of spiders. What would happen to their organizations if the Rick Warrens, Bill Hybels, John MacArthurs, Joel Osteens, etc. of the church (along with their top lieutenants) were suddenly "taken out". On the other hand, persecution eventually turns a network of spiders into a ocean of starfish, as in China. Under Mao in the late 1950s there was a systematic effort to "decapitate" the leadership of the Chinese church. To the great surprise of everyone, the result (after much pain, suffering and adjustment) was an explosion of "starfish" leaders along with an explosive and exponential expansion of the Church from roughly 2 million when Mao’s persecution began to somewhere around 100 million today. Now you know why I personally "cringe" when I hear about western church leaders going to China to "help" the Chinese Church. Really? Help them do what? Emulate our methods so they can stop growing like we have? If the Chinese ever emulate us they will eventually morph from being starfish to being spiders, and that will be a disaster for them . . . and for us. O.K., the challenge for me, now that I’ve given away both the plot and the punchline, is to keep your interest for a few more moments. What I really should do is encourage you to get Ori’s book which you can find on Amazon for around $13.

According to Brafman, there are three basic ways to combat a "starfish" organization:

• Force them to change their ideology
• Find a way to centralize them - like the Apaches, give them authority, power & money thereby giving the leaders things to fight over among themselves.
• Decentralize yourself - go from being a "spider" organization to being a "starfish"

According to Brafman there are three components to the "glue" that holds a "starfish" structure together:

• Shared values - For example, "Jesus Is Lord"
• Circles - This means that no one person is in charge. This is the core organizing unit - "We’re all here for the same reason, Jesus".
• Catalyst - Consider two dysfunctional families of movie lore: The Banks family in Mary Poppins versus the Von Trapp family in The Sound of Music. They are both dysfunctional families, but there’s a difference. Mary Poppins doesn’t marry Mr. Banks! She is simply a catalyst for change, then she leaves. In a "starfish" organization the leaders tend to stay in background and then they leave. This is the power of being able to let go and receding into the background.

In his talk (which again mirrored his book, so buy the book!) Brafman referred to what he called "The Secret Sauce". This is the combination of a "Pre-existing network" and what he described as "The Champion (who is relentless) versus The Catalyst (who falls into the background). To illustrate this he offered two "real life" examples:

The slavery issue in England in 1700's - Here Brafman used the story of Granville Sharp & Jonathan Strong. A little history, Maestro, if you please. In 1765, Granville Sharp and his brother William, a surgeon, befriended an injured slave named Jonathan Strong, whom they met on a London street. Strong's master, David Lisle of Barbados, had beaten him and thrown him out onto the streets. The Sharp brothers nursed him backed to health and helped him find a job with a London apothecary. By chance Lisle saw Strong and, without capturing him, sold him for £30 to a Jamaican planter. Two slave hunters operating in London kidnapped Strong and held him captive while waiting for a ship to take him to the Caribbean. Granville Sharp, a Civil Administrator, used his knowledge of the law to win Strong’s release. In Brafman’s version of the story, which somewhat truncates the history, including Sharp’s working relationships with John Wesley and William Wilberforce, Sharp links up with the Quakers and eventually brings an end to slavery in England.

The 19^th Century Struggle for Women’s Suffrage - The second story Brafman used to illustrate a working relationship between a catalyst and a champion involves Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Maestro, if you please: Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an active abolitionist prior to the Civil War. She was outraged when, in 1840, the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London, denied official standing to women delegates, including herself and Lucretia Mott. In 1848, she and Mott called for a women's rights convention to be held in Seneca Falls, New York, which is credited with initiating the long struggle towards women's rights and woman suffrage. After 1851, Stanton worked in close partnership with Susan B. Anthony. Stanton often served as the writer and Anthony as the strategist in this effective working relationship. After the Civil War, Stanton and Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association and Stanton served as president. Elizabeth Cady Stanton died in New York on October 26, 1902. According to Brafman, when Elizabeth Stanton hooked up with Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth served as the catalyst, staying in the background while Susan was the Champion.

• Centralize knowledge at the edge - the more distributed the system, the more knowledge is found at the edge.

• The Power of Circles - it’s easy to have divisions, you must be more real
• It’s all about trust - do you trust those you work with
• Starfish are well hidden - yet they have incredible power.
• Dis-economies of Scale - it is the small circles that make the difference (like Starfish)