On the Verge

By 2011, the church landscape in North America was caught in a painful squeeze. On one side stood millions of declining traditional congregations slowly dying of institutional arthritis. On the other side stood successful attractional and multisite megachurches that had grown rapidly in the 1990s and 2000s, but were now hitting a hard ceiling.

Even the most effective megachurch pastors were admitting behind closed doors that their model was largely reshuffling existing Christians rather than generating viral, self-reproducing movement into lost culture. They wanted to become missional. They wanted to multiply. But their entire organizational architecture—budgets, staffing, buildings, governance, and scorecards—was designed for central accumulation, not decentralized sending.

Dave and I had traveled together, taught together, and spent hours in intense dialogue. Dave was leading one of the most innovative multisite churches in America, while I had spent two decades analyzing the historical and theological DNA of viral movements. We saw that leaders lacked a transitional roadmap. They knew where they were (stuck in an institutional model), and they knew where they wanted to go (a multiplying movement). But they had no bridge to get from here to there.

On the Verge was written to be that bridge. It is a strategic, structural manual for leaders who refuse to let their churches settle for comfortable plateaus and are ready to lead their entire system across the frontier.¹

The foundational reframe of On the Verge is that movement is a distinct organizational operating system: we must change the internal coding of the church before we can change its external fruit.

Most church revitalization efforts fail because they attempt to bolt new missional activities onto an old institutional operating system. A church adds a community service day, launches a few small groups, or adopts contemporary branding—while keeping its underlying scorecard firmly fixed on Sunday morning attendance and financial giving.

On the Verge insists that you cannot solve an operating system problem with an application update. The book introduces the concept of the Verge Church—a community living at the dynamic threshold between the institutional and the organic, intentionally transitioning its core systems from maintenance to movement:

• From Accumulation to Deployment: Shifting the primary scorecard from how many people gather in the building to how many disciples are released into the world.
• From Centralized Control to Distributed Intelligence: Empowering networks of reproducing micro-churches and missional communities rather than funneling all activity through a professional staff.
• From Programmatic Management to Apostolic Genius: Re-activating the six elements of mDNA at an organizational scale.

A Verge church does not abandon its gathered worship; it re-anchors its purpose as an empowering launchpad for decentralized, reproductive mission.²

On the Verge moves across eleven chapters, taking leaders through a comprehensive diagnostic and strategic process.

Chapter 1, "On the Verge of the Future" (p. 25), diagnoses the contemporary ecclesiastical landscape, exposing why conventional church growth models have plateaued across every sector. Chapter 2, "The Silver Imagination" (p. 56), is the conceptual heart of the opening section. Drawing on systems theory and cultural history, it argues that leaders must develop a new leadership imagination—what we call the "Silver Imagination"—to navigate rapid discontinuous change. Chapter 3, "Mission to the Mind and Heart" (p. 86), focuses on internal cultural change. Before a church can alter its organizational charts, it must dismantle the mental models of passive consumerism that have formed its people.³

Chapter 4, "Apostolic Genius — The Genetic Code of Movement" (p. 124), integrates the six elements of mDNA from The Forgotten Ways directly into the organizational framework of the local church. Chapter 5, "Verge Vibe — The Operating System of Apostolic Movement" (p. 150), defines the distinctive ethos of an apostolic community: an adventurous, reproducing, risk-welcoming culture. Chapter 6, "Embodying Movement-Programming Practices" (p. 176), translates that vibe into concrete structural rhythms—demonstrating how Community Christian Church and other networks restructured their small groups into missional communities focused on neighborhood impact.⁴

Chapter 7, "Innovate or Die" (p. 202), confronts the resistance to change built into institutional governance, showing why organizations naturally select against true pioneers. Chapter 8, "Out-of-the-Box Innovation" (p. 228), provides concrete methods for fostering organic, bottom-up experiments. Chapter 9, "Gaining Missional Momentum" (p. 251), outlines the tipping points of organizational change: how to identify early adopters, build pilot networks, celebrate small wins, and create a flywheel of reproducing communities.⁵

Chapter 10, "The Making of an Apostolic Movement" (p. 280), zooms out to the network level, presenting a vision for multiplying hubs, church-planting movements, and translocal alliances. Chapter 11, "Resources for Verging the Church" (p. 308), provides diagnostic tools, assessment rubrics, and discussion guides for leadership teams.⁶

On the Verge represents the organizational and structural application of the movement theology established in The Forgotten Ways (2006).

Where The Forgotten Ways answered the theoretical and historical question ("What is Apostolic Genius?") and The Forgotten Ways Handbook (2009) addressed local missional community practice, On the Verge tackles the macro-level challenge of institutional transformation. It addresses senior pastors, executive teams, and denominational leaders who must navigate complex systems, large budgets, and established facilities.

The book directly anticipates the systems-level insights of The Permanent Revolution (2012) and 5Q (2017). The organizational transitions mapped here—shifting from hierarchical control to distributed fivefold intelligence—laid the direct groundwork for the 5Q systems diagnostic tools that Alan would develop six years later.

• The senior pastor of an established or multisite churchwhose attendance has plateaued, who recognizes that adding another campus or program will not produce a movement.
• The executive pastor or director of operationstasked with redesigning church budgets, staffing models, and scorecards around multiplication.
• The denominational bishop or network catalystlooking for a structured, field-tested process to guide traditional churches into reproduction.
• The leadership team of an attractional churchready to transition from a consumer-focused gathering into an apostolic base of deployment.

For leaders who want to master the fivefold ministry architecture required to lead this kind of apostolic transformation, The Permanent Revolution (2012, with Tim Catchim) is the definitive next step.

For those wanting to diagnose the organizational health and distributed intelligence of their entire leadership system, 5Q (2017) provides the mature systems framework.