Some thoughts on "Missional" church

I'll admit that the whole "missional" church movement holds some appeal for me. Maybe it's just the thought that a whole church could be built on the mission of Jesus and it's central purpose be the mobilize its members to fulfill that mission or perhaps its the newness of it but there is a certain amount of appeal to the whole thing. 

To learn more about the movement I've been reading a book by Alan Hirsch called "The Forgotten Ways". So far I've only read the first 2 chapters (plus foreword and introduction) but I'm picking up on Alan's main assertion that the church needs to get back to a system much more akin to the early church than to the religious system we've come to depend on. In this I am not sure he's entirely wrong but so far I've got at least one problem with us reverting to a "house church" mentality. 

The cultural context of the first century church was vastly different than ours. I think it's wrong to assume that we could simply look at how the early church grew and apply it to the 21st century and see the same results. Alan would point to the church in China as an example of this system working in the modern world. Again, totally different cultural context. I don't know that loosely organized house churches are the best result of a radical rethinking of the church. 

I think that the church in North America does need to begin to think much more like missionaries in a foreign culture than it currently does. If we fail to recognize that this culture is vastly different from the one inside the walls of the church and we don't begin to come to them instead of insisting that they come to us we will fail to be all that we can be by God's power. God's kingdom does need people with the courage to try new things on behalf of the kingdom. There's just something about house church that doesn't jive with me and I can't see jiving with a number of other people in our society - even those who aren't church people.