Tag: Ed Stetzer

Stetzer to Teach a Course on Missional Communities

Posted on July 29, 2008

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.

Stetzer on Movements

Posted on July 22, 2008

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 on Church Planting

Posted on July 11, 2008

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.”

Universalized-Not So Evangelical Faith

Posted on June 27, 2008

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.”