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God does not want us distracted. He does not want our loyalties to be divided. Our allegiances are to be His alone. He loves us that intensely.
Ed Stetzer -
Global evangelism does not take place in a demilitarized zone but on the battleground of spiritual warfare. Satan, in vengeance and jealousy for that which belongs to God, is deceiving the nations and holding them in bondage to a lie.
Ed Stetzer
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If your church loves the way you do church more than your children, it loves the wrong thing.
Ed Stetzer -
If they do what missionaries do—study and learn language, become part of culture, proclaim the Good News, be the presence of Christ, and contextualize biblical life and church for that culture—they are missional churches.
Ed Stetzer -
Change requires decision making, and decision making requires action. Most churches don't make turnarounds because they never get to the action. Discussion only begets more discussion. Together, and led by the pastor, the church must decide on a course of action.
Ed Stetzer -
I mean, he himself defined his ministry as being focused on the poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed (Luke 4:18). So, therefore, we join him on mission not only when we proclaim his saving gospel but when we confront injustice, when we touch human need, when we seek to bring about changes that transform this world to look more like it will be when Jesus returns.
Ed Stetzer -
Being Missional means actually doing mission right where you are. Missional means adopting the posture of a missionary, learning and adapting to the culture around you while remaining Biblically sound.
Ed Stetzer -
Therefore, it is vital for churches to provide a clear target explaining the attitudes and behaviors of a disciple; you must have a clear definition of disciple.
Ed Stetzer
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It’s not enough for Christians merely to recognize that the world isn’t what it ought to be and that people are suffering in ways they shouldn’t have to suffer.” Instead, our “sorrow and indignation” should prompt us to act in ways that “subvert” that brokenness.
Ed Stetzer -
A mature Christian recognizes that correcting every wrong on the Internet would take more hours than a full-time job. If you snap every time your great-aunt’s friend’s cousin thrice-removed makes a snarky comment about “all the contradictions in the Bible,” it will consume you and your joy.
Ed Stetzer -
Everything created in the world should be seen in the context of existing for God's glory.
Ed Stetzer -
The institutionalizing of the church is essentially its immunization to an evangelistic impulse.
Ed Stetzer -
Your denomination is not defined by a style. So don’t let style become a point of contention.
Ed Stetzer -
The impetus for our mission task is to understand that everything we are—everything that happens to us and everything that we do—is to align us with the kingdom purpose for God to be exalted among the nations.
Ed Stetzer
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The cultural distance between our churches and communities continues to widen, making it harder and harder to communicate the gospel. Being missional means moving intentionally beyond our church preferences, making missional decisions rather than preferential decisions. Today, people, churches, and denominations desperately need to apply the lens of intentional missiology to North America, not just international fields. The most effective comeback churches will be those that intentionally think like missionaries in their context.
Ed Stetzer -
Consolidating power and merely delegating responsibilities are sufficient ways to maintain a single community, but they are terrible ways to exponentially reproduce Christian community. Movements occur only when the disempowered are given the freedom and responsibility to lead, along with the accountability to make it happen.
Ed Stetzer -
Being missional means moving intentionally beyond our church preferences, making missional decisions rather than preferential decisions.
Ed Stetzer -
It's ironic that most evangelical churches are filled with people who live very much like the world but look different from it. It should be exactly the opposite. We should look similar to those in our community but act differently.
Ed Stetzer -
If Satan can get us to interpret our mission task as populating heaven with as many people as possible, we will resort to going only to those places of receptivity and harvest and neglect doing what is needed to reach the unreached and penetrate the dominions of darkness with the light of the gospel.
Ed Stetzer -
When we have every right (after all it’s “our church”), when we have always done it that way (no reason to change if we like it), and when we are in prominent positions (we have earned it), we can easily make it about us.
Ed Stetzer
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The church stands no hope of engaging the age of outrage unless we root out the lie that the solution to sin lies anywhere outside of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He is “the true God and eternal life” (1 John 5:20). Salvation is not coming on Air Force One. And Jesus will not come riding on a donkey or an elephant. Those who fail to see such things have been lost to the idolatry of the moment.
Ed Stetzer -
Barna is correct when he writes, "After fifteen years of diligent digging into the world around me, I have reached several conclusions about the future of the Christian church in America. The central conclusion is that the American church is dying due to lack of strong spiritual leadership. In this time of unprecedented opportunity and plentiful resources, the church is actually losing influence. The primary reason is the lack of leadership. Nothing is more important than leadership."
Ed Stetzer -
Just as the true fruit of an apple tree is not an apple, but another tree; the true fruit of a small group is not a new Christian, but another group; the true fruit of a church is not a new group, but a new church; the true fruit of a leader is not a follower, but a new leader; the true fruit of an evangelist is not a convert, but new evangelists. Whenever this principle is understood and applied, the results are dramatic.
Ed Stetzer -
This leads us to an important spiritual principle for growth: comeback leaders know that our Lord considers commitment to Him and His desires an indispensable ingredient to growing spiritually and numerically.
Ed Stetzer