Alan Hirsch

Hirsch was born into a Jewish family in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1959.[1] He moved to Cape Town, in 1963 where he spent most of his childhood and adolescence. Then, he went to university in Cape Town where he studied business and marketing and moved to Australia in 1983 with his family. Although his family was not particularly religious, he was very much influenced by his Jewish heritage. He emphasizes Jesus as the Jewish Messiah and makes distinctions between Hebraic and Hellenistic thought. He served a two-year compulsory call-up in the South African military.[2] After having moved to Australia, he had a life-changing experience with the Holy Spirit that deeply affected him.[3] Soon after moving, he married Debra. They have been married and in Christian ministry together for over twenty years.[4]

During his first year of seminary at the Bible College of Victoria he led a small group of newly converted Christians from various sub-cultures in inner city Melbourne"[5] He maintained involvement with this group throughout his Seminary education.

After graduating, he and his wife were called to go to South Melbourne Church of Christ in 1989. This church was later renamed "South Melbourne Restoration Community".[6] Hirsch spent the next fifteen years leading this community (with wife Debra).[7] Five years after having begun ministry at SMRC, he became the director of the Department of Mission, Education and Development for the Churches of Christ Victoria and Tasmania Conference.[8] During these years, he and his wife planted two churches on the edges of society for the marginalized and urban poor in Melbourne, Australia. Neither church is in existence today. During this time Hirsch pioneered the missional training system called Forge Mission Training Network. Forge became a strong voice and agency for training younger people in missional thinking in Australia, although is now closed. Hirsch has now moved to North America (where there are active networks in Canada and the United States).[9]

Alan and Debra maintain that the church in North America will be a major determinant for the continued sustenance and future vitality of the church in the West.

Probably Hirsch’s most distinctive contribution was to articulate what can be called a phenomenology of apostolic movements. By probing the question of what comes together to create exponential, high impact and multiplication movements, he came up with the concept he calls "Apostolic Genius", which is defined as "a unique energy and force saturating phenomenal Jesus movements." Hirsch defines it elsewhere as "the built-in life force and guiding mechanism of God’s people."[10] As to its phenomenology, it is made up of the symphonious interplay among six core elements, or "mDNA". These six are explained as follows:[11]

1. Jesus is Lord—a confession made by Christians that Jesus is the ruler over every aspect of life (pp. 83–100). This is the most central element, around which the other five orbit . By locating this at the center, Hirsch asserts that Christology (the whole phenomenon of Jesus’s incarnation, life, teachings, role model, saving and redeeming work in cross and resurrection and return) must be the central defining theology of all Christian movements.
2. Disciple making—a practice of becoming like Jesus and leading others to do the same (pp. 101–126). This follows directly from the statement that Jesus is Lord and in essence is the calling of disciples to live in Christ and allowing him to live through them.
3. Missional-incarnational impulse—the dual-element of mission and incarnation by which a disciple goes into the surrounding world missionally and embodies the actions of Jesus incarnationally (pp. 127–148). This forms the basis of how a Jesus movement extends itself into the world.
4. Apostolic environment—which highlights the catalytic role that the apostolic person plays in both generating and sustaining movemental ecclesiology (pp. 149–178). Hirsch then highlights the role of Ephesians 4 in movements. He maintains that missional church requires a missional ministry to generate and sustain it. The prevailing Pastor-Teacher combination is not generative enough for movemental forms of Christianity, he asserts.
5. Organic systems—in contrast with a centralized institution, missional movements are structured more like an interconnected organism than through hierarchical organization. Organic systems manifest (i) an ethos of a movement (as opposed to institution), (ii) the structure of a network, (iii) spread like viruses and (iv) are reproducing and reproducible.
6. Communitas, not community—in contrast with an inward-focused group, communitas is an outward-focused group, who by engaging in various forms of risk and liminality, begin to relate to each other on a significantly deeper level (pp. 217–242).

Hirsch maintains that all six elements are needed to create highly transformative, exponentially growing, missional movements. In his book, he displays that it is critical to think in a systemic way about Apostolic Genius and not see each mDNA as a silver bullet. Rather it takes the whole (Apostolic Genius) to create the kind of movement he is describing.

"mDNA" stands for "missional DNA". This is the name he gives to the six components of Apostolic Genius as mentioned above.

APEPT or APEST is an acronym for the five ministry vocations described in Ephesians 4:11: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors/shepherds and teachers.[12] Hirsch has initiated and developed a profiling instrument to help people find their gifting using these five terms.[13] Following his teaching that Jesus has designed the church in such a way that every church (indeed every believer) has everything necessary to get the job done, he maintains that every Christian has all the five ministries latent in them although they will generally only operate from the primary and secondary ones. Hirsch believes that each believer is made up of a complex of APEPT/APEST callings or ministry, and therefore a profile is never simply one-dimensional, but rather is somewhat nuanced. Nonetheless (and not without disagreement) they can each be described in such a way:

1. Apostles extend the gospel.
2. Prophets know God's will.
3. Evangelists recruit.
4. Pastors (or Shepherds) nurture and protect.
5. Teachers understand and explain.