Ed Stetzer Quotes
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Being missional means moving intentionally beyond our church preferences, making missional decisions rather than preferential decisions.
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But too many Christians are content in their own salvation and allow an ethnocentric provincialism to dismiss the imperative of God’s mission to the nations.
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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.
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Teaching people to become like Jesus, outside of the power of Jesus, dishonors Jesus.
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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.
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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.
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Put your 'yes' on the table and let God put it on the map.
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We do not see the divine intervention for which we yearn in our country because we think it is for us and our needs rather than an impetus for God’s mission.
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Outrage has no time for dialogue, and it won’t be distracted by nuance or even truth.
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What we see happening as we move further into the twenty-first century is a sovereign God moving through global events to open doors once closed to the gospel.
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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.
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Belief followed by strategy and culture moves people to community.
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The institutionalizing of the church is essentially its immunization to an evangelistic impulse.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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The Christian life is not about finding safety and comfort; it’s about finding yourself in a dangerous place of vulnerable compassion.
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God has made relationships His chosen delivery system for the gospel of hope.
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Scripture teaches us to contend for the faith (Jude 3) and contextualize to culture.
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90 percent of heart patients who are told to change their lifestyle habits or die, choose death over change.
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Missional churches act faithfully and intentionally wherever God gives them opportunity.
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Just as the mighty sequoia would topple without a community of supporting trees, believers who seek transformation apart from a Christian community are vulnerable to spiritually topple in the winds of adversity.
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God does not use extraordinary striving. He uses extraordinary availability to reach the world with the message of his Kingdom.
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A vision must be credible. Since the vision caster is probably you, the church must trust you and its other leaders. The congregation's experience with its leadership helps them have the confidence necessary to follow the leaders' direction. As a leader, you have a “credibility tank.” Every time you have a success, you add to that tank. As you add to the credibility tank, you make it possible to cast an even larger vision. On the other hand, each time you fail, your tank is drained. Then you have to restore that credibility before pressing on to a new task. Build your credibility by casting a progressively larger vision. Begin with small victories. Celebrate what God has done through your people. Whenever possible, throw a party at church to help your people see that growth is occurring and lives are being transformed. Then move to bigger victories!