stetzer talking points

September 7, 2008

As many of you know, Thursday and Friday of this week, I had the privilege to hang with Ed Stetzer at a conference for Mississippi Baptists @ Camp Garaywa in Clinton, MS, just outside of Jackson.

This was, in part, an ‘intensive’ to launch my directed studies in missiology with Ed through Liberty Theological Seminary. I had a great time, learned a bunch, and got a big head start on my first paper re: modern missions history.

Instead of a play-by-play of each of the five sessions Ed keynoted, I thought I’d combine the larger talking points into one post - particularly those on the missional church. Enjoy…

*God is a sender by nature
*Missional means to live sent: a sent church and a sent Christian
*God uses the church to make known the manifold wisdom of Himself
*Missional does not necessarily mean contemporary
*Lack of ’sentness’ deforms/disfigures the nature of the Gospel
*Sentness causes us not to transcend, but to recognize and engage culture
*Gospel becomes reduced to “only come” when it’s not missional
*We’ve created an artificial three-tier approach to ministry: 1) lay person, 2) professional minster, and 3) missionary
*We have lost mission to: 1) ‘clergification’, 2) cultural wars, and 3) buildings
*We’ve created the very system we loathe - an unhealthy clergy co-dependence
*We have to give ministry + mission back to the people God empowered for the ministry + mission
*Forms have driven church rather than missions
*Most churches tend to reflect old culture - those successful in last paradigm has the most difficulty in current paradigm
*A church that is incarnational is interested more in the harvest than in the barn
*Are we going to be protectors of common subcultures or missionaries?
*Irony of our subcultures: we should look similar and live differently than the world - we have looked different and lived the same
*Evangelism is sharing the Gospel - missions is understanding people before we speak with them
*What is the mission? Great commandment/commission - to serve [Luke 4:18-19] and to save [Luke 19:10]
*Missiology: what focus + strategies should we use to most effectively expand the kingdom where we are sent
*The missional church is a biblically faithful, culturally relevant, and countercultural community for the Kingdom of God

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