Here are a couple graphics that Ed and Alan use. They are helpful in clarifying their respective understandings of how christology, ecclesiology, and missiology relate. By the way, these guys are friends not foes, so I’m not trying to make them enemies (see Ed’s recent interview with Alan). I know you’ll appreciate that. Great discussion on the previous post.

Ed Stetzer

Alan Hirsch

Alan Hirsch advocates that Missiology should shape Ecclesiology.

Christology ? Missiology ? Ecclesiology

Ed Stetzer advocates that Ecclesiology should precede Missiology.

Christology ? Ecclesiology ? Missiology

Which do you support and why?

Loved this from Ed Stetzer’s new article, “Simply Missional”:

There are so many unaddressed issues in our books (intentionally so) that prevent “missional” and “simple” from being comprehensive church models…

All types of churches should be simply missional. What we are advocating is for church leaders to distill their ideology of what church is to the irreducible minimum that defines a church as God’s gathered people, sent to a particular community as His redemptive gift to that community.

We need all types of missional churches–big, small, traditional, contemporary, with country music (did we say that?), hip-hop, some with guitars, some with organs. We need churches in homes and churches in well-marked buildings.

The container is not the issue. The issue is not staying contained.

Well worth your time, an article by Stetzer on living life as “simply missional.”

In his book Church Planting Landmines, Gary Rohrmayer and Tom Nebel warn planters of ten landmines to avoid, especially post-launch. In the Foreward, Ed Stetzer writes:

Most of us don’t listen well. I usually don’t. Most of us have to learn by painful mistakes. Yet, those who God blesses most are those who listen best. This book could save your church plant. More importantly, it could save your marriage, your health, your ministry, and so on…if you listen.

In summary, here are the 10 Church Planting Landmines:

1. Ignoring personal health and growth
2. Lack of leadership development
3. Leadership backlash
4. Personal Evangelism Entropy
5. Corporate Evangelism Entropy
6. Inadequate Enfolding Strategy
7. Fear of Money
8. Underestimating Spiritual Warfare
9. Misfiring on Hiring
10. Delaying Missions Engagement

Being a “missionary” in North America is common parlance among church planters and missional advocates, and though center of gravity of global Christianity has certainly shifted to the South and East, I don’t think that puts the West on an even mission field with many non-Western places. To be sure, we should all redemptively engage peoples and cultures with Pauline missionary passion, but more than passion is at play in planting missional churches.

In order to effectively mobilize and strategize for the global glory of God, it seems that the missional movement needs to hold missio Dei in one hand and missio ad Gentes in the other.

Read the rest here…

Ed Stetzer will be teaching a course on missional communities at Trinity Divinity. Here is the syllabus. Here is the course description: 

Transformational ministries in today’s rapidly changing culture require churches that are “missional” from a biblical, theological, and cultural perspective. This course will help you better understand the cultural context in which you serve and teach you how to apply biblically faithful and culturally relevant missiological strategies to your ministry. Special attention will be given to North American cultural shifts, the missional/sending nature of the church, effective communication in various cultural contexts, and emerging ministry patterns in North America.

Ed Stetzer lists at least 10 Elements to Christian Movements:

1. Prayer Prayer must be a conviction that establishes its priority. Before we see movemental Christianity, we will have to be praying, asking God to change us.
2. Intentionality: We will also need to show the intention of being movemental (see the next 8 elements). As of now, I believe our focus is primarily defensive and incremental, not intentional and exponential.
3. Sacrifice: Change will not come without giving something up.
4. Reproducibility: Movements do not occur through large things (big budgets, big plans, big teams). They occur through small units that are readily reproducible.
5. Theological Integrity: Churches wanting to be involved in transformative, movemental Christianity hold firm and passionate positions on biblical views.
6. Incarnation: Movemental Christianity recognizes that the gospel is unchanging, but the expressions and results of the gospel will vary from culture to culture.
7. Empowerment: Movements only occur when the disempowered are given the freedom, and then take up the responsibility, to lead.
8. Charitability: A movement of God cannot be contained in a single movement or theological tradition. Therefore, movemental Christianity requires charity to maintain our firmly held convictions while rejoicing for and speaking well about those with whom we differ but are being greatly blessed by God.
9. Scalability: When God begins to move, and believers allow movement Christianity to begin to grow, structures must be able to rapidly re-size to not stifle such movements.
10. Wholism: Movemental Christianity will practice wholistic ministry much in the way of Jesus.

Read the whole post here.

Roland Allen is basic reading for a church planter, Missionary Methods: Paul’s or Our’s, in particular. People like Tim Keller, David Hesselgrave, and Ed Stetzer have relied on Allen’s foundational insights. J.D. Payne offers a guided tour through Allen’s life and thought in the following article: The Legacy of Roland Allen: Part One-His Life. An excerpt:

In 1912, Allen published his classic work Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? The title of the text revealed much about the book’s content. Allen advocated that the missionary methods of the Apostle were not antiquated but rather to be applied to missionary endeavors in any day and time. Allen stated that “I myself am more convinced than ever that in the careful examination of his [St. Paul's] work, above all in the understanding and appreciation of his principles, we shall find the solution of most of our present difficulties.” Toward the end of the work, Allen poignantly wrote that “at any rate this much is certain, that the Apostle’s methods succeeded exactly where ours have failed.”

The following year saw Allen’s publication of Missionary Principles. In this work Allen advocated that the indwelling Holy Spirit provides the missionary zeal. For Allen, the end of all missionary desire is a worldwide “Revelation of Christ.” It was his desire to discuss principles not only related to foreign missionary work, but principles that “could be applied to any work anywhere.”

In recent news, the Pew Foundation released figures that reflect a highly tolerant, pluralistic Christianity in the U.S. However, these figures are being disputed by the Lifeway Research Group based on the wording of the Pew Foundation’s question regarding the exclusive claims of Christianity: “My religion is the one, true faith leading to eternal life.” Pew concluded that 70 percent of Protestants are universalist in faith.

Though Lifeway researchers agree that universalism is widespread, they argue that the “religion” in the Pew question is easily interpreted as “denomination” by many Chrsitians, which would skew survey results. As a result, they published thier own research:

“In total, 31 percent of Protestant churchgoers agreed (strongly or somewhat) with this universalistic statement compared to Pew’s 70 percent. This makes for a difference of 39 percent between the universalism in the LifeWay Research study and the Pew Study.”

Despite the numerical differences, it is clear that Christian and Evangelical belief has increasingly become less Christian and less evangelical. Ed Stetzer comments:

The Pew research is helpful even though this question needs clarification. However, the bigger issue here is why there are so many self-identified evangelicals who sit in evangelical pews but do not evidence evangelical beliefs, particularly in regard to universalism.”