Ed Stetzer Quotes
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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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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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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.
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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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Community is essential when it comes to successfully living out the Christian walk in a day-to-day context. So the math is simple: More community = More disciples.
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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.
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God does not bless us so we can enjoy a prosperous lifestyle but to make His way known throughout the earth.
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Missional churches act faithfully and intentionally wherever God gives them opportunity.
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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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Put your 'yes' on the table and let God put it on the map.
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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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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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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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Christians need to grasp the hypocrisy of engaging online in a way that would be wholly intolerable if we were face-to-face with others.
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All of us are busy. Life isn't slowing down, it's speeding up, and our Daytimers reflect the fact. Yet that is precisely why we need to take time to pray.
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Belief followed by strategy and culture moves people to community.
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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!
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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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We need to stop presenting community as just another option for the religious consumer and start presenting it as God’s will for everyone. It should be seen as the reality of those within the church and the refuge for those without.
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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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You cannot “save” a church without focusing on the important things that make it a church—scriptural authority, biblical leadership, teaching and preaching, ordinances, covenant community, and mission.
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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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We celebrate those comebacks because they inspire us to believe that seemingly impossible things really are possible.