Background
Hirsch was born October 24, 1959, into a Jewish family in Johannesburg, South Africa. He moved to Cape Town, in 1963 where he spent most of his childhood.
Alan Hirsch
Alan Hirsch
Alan Hirsch
Alan Hirsch
Alan Hirsch
Hirsch was born October 24, 1959, into a Jewish family in Johannesburg, South Africa. He moved to Cape Town, in 1963 where he spent most of his childhood.
Alan studied business and marketing at university in Cape Town.
In 1983 Alan Hirsch with his family moved to Australia. After having moved to Australia, he had a life-changing experience with the Holy Spirit that deeply affected him. A lawyer by trade, he began his writing career in the 1980s with a series of academic monographs that would be of interest primarily to other lawyers or to those interested in the crossroads where the practice of law and public policy meet.
He was called to go to South Melbourne Church of Christ in 1989. This church was later renamed "South Melbourne Restoration Community". Hirsch spent the next fifteen years leading this community (with wife Debra). 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.
In the 1990s, however, Hirsch tried to reach a wider audience with his two books. One is a young adult novel Off the Mat, written in collaboration with his mother, Shula Hirsch. Off the Mat was not an especially successful debut novel; one Publishers Weekly critic called the effort “plodding” and “by turns preachy and melodramatic.”
In contrast, the warm reception critics gave to Hirsch’s book Talking Heads testifies to his skill with nonfiction. In the Washington Post Book World, for example, Jonathan Yardley called Talking Heads “provocative and useful,” and a Publishers Weekly reviewer praised the book’s analysis as “a model of its kind.” In Talking Heads Hirsch trained his sights on television talk shows that feature animated ideological exchanges between journalists of contrasting political stripes. These shows include The McLaughlin Group, Crossfire, The Capital Gang, and others, and their “stars” include such well- known figures as William F. Buckley Jr., George Will, Sam Donaldson, and Patrick J. Buchanan.
Hirsch has authored or co-authored nine books from The Shaping of the Things to Come in 2003 to The Permanent Revolution in 2012.
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 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."
Alan Hirsch married Debra. They live together for over twenty years.