the Etymologicon

This book by Mark Forsyth is, as its subtitle concisely proclaims, something of a circular stroll through the hidden connections of the English language. It's been my go-to toilet book for the past six months or so, and honestly it's far more interesting than you'd maybe expect and certainly far more entertaining than I did. Everything from farts to frankfurts to Milton to nutshells to China to organs to testicles to cynicism to the fascinating story of the somewhat arguably insane self-made eunuch murderer who did an astonishing bulk of the legwork on proofing definitions for the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary... having finished this book I don't think I'll ever look at my own language the same way again, to say nothing of the truly bizarre island culture that spawned it. A must-have for Werd Nerds, and if you're anything like me in terms of reading habits - it works brilliantly as a toilet book as the chunks are pretty much exactly poo sized. You know what I mean.

5Q

This book by Alan Hirsch is quite possibly the best work dealing with the nature and proper practice of Church that I've ever read. It literally [okay, figuratively, but very much] blew my mind.

   It's probably not the best of reasons for checking out a new thought-leader but my first encounter with Alan Hirsch was hearing him talk at a Fresh Expressions conference earlier this year which I was sent to for work purposes; it was an incredible weekend all round, at which I was also introduced for the first time to Ignatian reflexive prayer and the whole concept of orthopraxis - but I digress; he mentioned anecdotally how he met his wife, who now helps him run a range of missiological ecclesial initiatives, when tripping on LSD, and I thought that "this alone makes him a much more interesting figure to be hearing talk about the church and stuff than most other people at these kind of conferences." Though I may very well have misheard or misremembered this, so if Alan or anyone with any kind of quasi-legal responsibilities for him thereabouts wants to push me on this particular cited anecdote, I will happily remove it from the post.
   In any case, this book was about as psychedelic as theology gets, so buckle in.

   This book is effectively a gigantically thorough unpacking of Paul's model of the Church as the Body of Christ - as we're given in Ephesians 4: 1-16 - which is well worth a read before you dive into the rest of this post, as it'll help make sense of it.

   First then - what even does he mean by 5Q - it is Hirsch's coined term to describe a kind of fivefold quotient, much like the IQ or EQ of intellectual or emotional capacities; only it's describing five distinct elements which, he argues, though with deeply grounded and in my opinion thoroughly convincing roots in Scripture and orthodox Christian doctrine, are latent as psychosocial forces/powers within all of mankind - demonstrably synthesized to their fullest and most perfect extent in the single personal being of Jesus Christ, and thus distributed as empowering drives among his people. We did say all of mankind, as Hirsch does argue this too, but we'll come back to that and deal with the ecclesiology first. The five foldings of quotient herein are:

• Apostles: those who push the Body onto new ground & so aid its development
• Prophets: those who help the Body listen well to what the Head said/says
• Evangelists: those who share the Body's goodness with others around it
• Shepherds: those who maintain functional unity of the Body's members
• Teachers: those who remind the Body that & how the Head's cleverer than it

As clearly laid out in the Ephesians passage. Not controversial stuff, even though much of the pragmatic holistic reality of these quotients doesn't seem to be realized to too widespread an extent in many Christian cultures today... Anyway. Each of these five quotients is unpacked by Alan in great depth and detail, far more than I've given above; with many a helpful scriptural example as well as broad pointers for looking at sorts of roles within the life of Christian communities or wider society that map onto the particulars. There is far more granularity and intricately considered detail to this whole model in Hirsch's book than I could summarise here - plus buttloads of excellently illustrative diagrams.

   The basic point though is that this 5Q can be taken as a means of apprehending the real-life latent capacities present within the psychosocial collective intelligence of the Church as the Body of Christ - and this is why this book is such a mindbomb: Hirsch, in one deft book - has married metaphysical Christology to managerial ecclesiology in a holistic model that makes total theological sense and is easy to derive pragmatic applications for. Just reread that last post-colon half-sentence, because it shows why this model of Church is a potential game-changer - in ways nobody, but God, can fully imagine.

   Hirsch does make clear distinctions between the capacities as lived practices and as the categories for which people might be expected to 'pick one': he argues that all humans do have all five latent within them, which within properly developed spiritual communities we might expect people to become proficient at performing all five elements - but it is more common to see individuals excel at one or two;* and it is this that makes us, as the Body, an interconnectedly-self/Christ-reliant psychosocial system in order for these quotients to be effective. As I mentioned earlier - there can be derived a pretty strong theological gist for the meta-existence of 5Q as being latent within literally all of Creation: I'll not delve into his arguments here as this post's already quite long and you know what I get like when metaphysics are involved, but the keys provided by his arguments and model unlock a view of all humankind whereby I can now kind of see what he means, with the apostolic and prophetic and evangelistic and teaching and shepherding tendencies designed for the Church but usable to all - handled, to greater or lesser degrees of actual efficacy through relative faithfulness to these quotients' intended purposes - by all, and in all things. It's a crazy new view that I can't unsee; and that I just wish to God the Church by and large would come to embrace wholeheartedly very soon - because it gives linguistic legs to the workings of an organic mechanism that is already there, but well overdue its MOT.***

   If you're a church leader or planter or thinker or attender or whatever - this, above all the other books I've read this year - is the one I'd most ardently recommend. I'm actually getting well excited just typing about it - and liably expect a second post as I reread soonish.

* I have since done the APEST online test to determine which of the fivefold quotients I'm apparently gifted in - I'd recommend checking it out here - and if Alan's test instrument is to be believed, my strongest element is the prophetic - which, by this stage, wasn't any much of a surprise** - followed relatively closely by evangelism, which did surprise me.

** One of my colleagues really freaked me out earlier this year - as after everything that I'd been unlearning and learning last year she completely unbidden one day in January as she passed my desk said to me "I think you're a prophet"; and other than the fact that I'd read a verse or two from Jeremiah at that day's noon prayer moot I had no meaningful idea where that could have come from other than the usual place, which is the source of all true hunches, which is God, which annoyed me a bit as it meant I had to learn how to be this thing that I'd only very recently decided I seriously believed in as a spiritual vocation. Ol' King Jesus has a pretty funny sense of humour like that. Anyhoo, I doubt you're reading this, Alison Wooding, but you kickstarted my maddest not-career path yet - so - cheers?

*** There's four pretty handy appendices also, though two of which I found particularly of impact and topical heft. One dealing with the plague [don't think he uses this word but as far as I'm concerned now it basically is] of cessationism that has been a quite powerful stumbling block to the development of many church communities' 5Qs. And a second that roundly and somewhat dishearteningly tells the story of how a lot of churches, and to not-inconsiderable degrees Christian cultures at large, have basically exiled the A/P/E functions to seriously retain only in any meaningful strength the Shepherding and Teaching, as this facilitates a model of church where Bible-knowing elders can be in, and stay in, control; without any of those pesky prophetic reminders/questions or apostolic hazardous horizon-shifting or God forbid! the influx of those ignoramus noobs that evangelistic members of the congregation would otherwise keep dragging in. Most of this sentence is my own sentiment but echoing the same gist as the appendix.

Encounters on the Edge: A Short Intermission

This booklet (online as pdf here) by George Lings (see also) is a practical, example-rich, missionally-minded consideration of how churches can engage with the arts better in a variety of ways, be that to reach new people, develop relations or deepen faith journeys among older ones, or whatever - it takes a much broader tack than just Messy Church, and for anyone in church leadership who'd like to think of ways of bringing creativity into your ecclesial life (which, trust me, is worth doing but bloody difficult oftentimes) I'd recommend checking out this as it's a fab little primer.