the multiplying church

I just got my hard copy of The Multiplying Church, by my good friend BobBob (Bob Roberts Jr.). I wrote the foreword for it and it is genuinely a good book by a great dude. Here is my foreword….

It was bono who once said, “”Dream up the world you want to live in. Dream out loud at high volume”. But it could easily have been Bob Roberts, the big-hearted, vision-on-steroids, huggy-bear, Texan who actually have ushered these words into the world. They just seem to fit the inimitable Rev. Dr. Bob Roberts Jr.. And boy, is he dreaming up a world for us to live in! Its called Glocal Transformation, and you had better hold on to them hats, because Bob’s vision is as big as it is stirring. And talking of Bono, the similarities are worth noting at this point because as far as I can predict, Bob’s ministry trajectory is increasingly taking him along similar paths of glocal nation-building and peace-making in the name of Jesus.

In his first book Transformation, Bob set out a vision for a discipleship that has the world, as well as the local church, in mind. His belief is that the transformed human must lead to a transformed humanity. As I see it, the primary focus in that book remained on the individual, but nonetheless he constantly pointed the reader outward to the world beyond the local church, city, and nation, to what he calls the Glocal world—the highly interconnected reality that all of us now have to live in. In Transformation, Bob envisioned a new way of engaging the Glocal to achieve glocal transformation. He rather cleverly called it “domain jumping” and it involves the willingness to join the Kingdom agenda within the different domains of life (e.g. education, politics, religion, economics, art, etc.) and not limit mission and ministry to the religious, or churchly, sphere. In Bob’s vision of the church, mission always seems to involves a seriously expansive agenda.

In his next book Glocalization, Bob developed these ideas further but focused the reader on the radically changing social, political, economic, and cultural, patterns of the world in which we are all called to live and love in. Drawing inspiration from early church history and the emerging church, and the church in the developing world, he called us to reconstruct a new missional operating system rather than a church program. He proposed ten major glocal issues that demand our attention: communicable disease, hunger, water and sanitation, corruption, migration and refugees, climate change, education, armed conflict, economy, and trade subsidies? Clearly in Glocalization Bob’s agenda has now moved beyond the narrow concerns of “the church” to that of God’s world in all its complexity.

In this book (The Multiplying Church) he lays out not only a vision of a multiplying (and multipli-able) church that can operate effectively in the Glocal context. And this turning of his attention to church planting movements has certain missional logic to it. For God’s church, when it is true and faithful, is by far and away the most powerful agent for the transformation of the world in human history. It is the next, and necessary, piece in the equation. But this is not just theory; Bob is at pains to suggest very practical ways in which we can actually begin the journey toward multiplication church planting. And make no mistake; we have a way to go in this regard. Most churches in the West are beginners when it comes to church planting, let alone in its exponential form. We know from history and experience that a genuine encounter with Jesus result the activation of people-movements that get to change the world. If we wish to transform this complex, glocalized, world in which we live, then multiplication church planting must become a vital part of the missional equation. There can be no dodging here: The 21st Century absolutely requires that we adopt a movement ethos and approach, and The Multiplying Church is Bob Robert’s valuable contribution to the missional agenda of God’s people in God’s Glocal world. We are in real need his guidance.

But what intrigues me the most, and what is perhaps of most importance in the work of Bob Roberts, is that the man himself is well worthy of study and emulation. Bob has an innate capacity to accumulate very important ideas and reconfigure them in ways that the average person can grasp. Make no mistake; he is a very well read, intelligent, “domain jumper” theologian himself. I have had wonderfully wide-ranging discussions with him on numerous occasions and he is disarmingly bright. But intellect aside, what is really distinctive about him is that as a genuine practitioner he does not stop at the ideas-in-themselves. His more primal instincts (thank God) are application as well as demonstration; and it is here where he makes his greatest contribution. He is a genuine apostolic pioneer—the real deal.

Quite honestly, it is exceedingly hard to find anyone comparable with Bob Roberts in the world today. Where does one find a charming, unsubtle, Texan engaging really effectively where experienced, delicately nuanced, diplomats fear to tread? Which Southern Baptist preacher do we know of that gets to meet prime ministers, presidents, warlords, political dissidents, mullahs, communists, or whatever, and somehow bring them together around tables to talk peace and justice? Which local pastor anywhere is involved in “nation-building” (his phrase) in ways that he is? And where do we find a paid-up conservative Evangelical like Bob addressing the glocal issues listed above with such practical, all-encompassing, compassion? And all this whilst at the very same time keeping the living message of Jesus, as well as active missionary church planting, at the center in the equation?

I ask again, who goes where Bob goes and who does what he does? And with the silence that flows from that question I rest my case: the man is worth listening to because God is doing something unique in and through him. We must pay attention.

BTW, Bob is blogging the contents of the book over at his site at glocal.net

April 30, 2008 | Filed Under muliplication |  

Comments

8 Responses to “the multiplying church”

  1. 1
    Alan Hirsch Says:
    April 30th, 2008 at 9:59 pm

    Has anyone read this yet? I’d be interested in your take.

  2. 2
    Deebs Says:
    May 1st, 2008 at 9:25 pm

    wow! i hope bob isn’t wearing a hat when he reads this! might take him awhile to get it off! :)
    but seriously - sounds like a great book; i’d be interested to read it - will definitely check it out. i’m currently reading tim costello’s “tips from a travelling soul searcher” - though it’s now a bit old, tc’s social comments on the globalised world might tie in nicely with bob’s take on things.

  3. 3
    Bob Roberts Says:
    May 1st, 2008 at 9:52 pm

    Thanks for the blog Alan - you da’ man - taught me all I know!

  4. 4
    Alan Hirsch Says:
    May 2nd, 2008 at 1:07 am

    Deebs, I have always played with the idea of introducing Bob to Tim. I think they would like each other. Maybe it will happen.

  5. 5
    Janet Says:
    May 2nd, 2008 at 9:06 pm

    Must get this book!!! It sounds a ripper. Thanks for the review Al.

  6. 6
    Bob Roberts Says:
    May 2nd, 2008 at 11:26 pm

    I’m going to do an “Alan”! I’m going to blog what I perceive the highlights of the book to be on glocal.net starting next Monday - Where in the world are you today Alan?

  7. 7
    Alan Hirsch Says:
    May 3rd, 2008 at 9:13 pm

    Swedenski! Back to the US tomorrow.

  8. 8
    Victor John Says:
    May 7th, 2008 at 10:09 pm

    Alan did a geat job in Sweden!Woke up the Swedes.
    I got to get Bob’s book.sounds exciting.

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