Ed Stetzer is Director of LifeWay Research, where he is developing critical data to help church leaders interpret the culture and the future of the church. Prior to that role he was at the North American Mission Board Center for Missional Research. He has been a pastor, a church planter, author of several books, and is one of the cutting edge guys in terms what’s happening in the contemporary church. Preaching editor Michael Duduit visited with Ed in his Nashville office.
Preaching: You’ve written a whole lot about the missional church—the issue of being missional. I suspect there are still some pastors out there who are saying, “That term
missional is kind of like
postmodern. Everybody has his or her own definition. What does it mean?” So Ed, what does it mean for a church to be missional as you understand it?
Stetzer: It’s important to put that caveat “as I understand it” because there are different impressions. I’m did a series of posts at EdStetzer.com kind of unpacking what “missional” means to different people, and there are surprisingly diverse ideas. For me being missional has to do with being focused on God’s mission, living as a missionary. And it has to do with the fact that the church doesn’t have a mission – the church is joining God in
His mission.
God, by nature, is a sending God. Francis DuBose wrote a book in 1983 where it as the first use of the term missional, and it is called
God Who Sends. Ultimately God is a sender. He sent Jesus. Forty times in the Gospel of John Jesus says, “I am sent.” And then at the end in John 20:21 he says, “As the Father has sent me so send I you.” That’s us. So we’re sent to people.
And that has a vast impact on the church and its ministry when you understand it as part of the call of the church – central to the call of the church is to be on mission. It has to do with the way we do ministry. It has to do with we don’t exist for ourselves. The church must not and cannot be a dispenser of religious goods and services where picky Christians go and look, as if it’s a cafeteria to serve their own spiritual buffet. Instead it is focused on God’s mission. It’s engaging its culture so there’s a cultural relevance to it. But ultimately it’s focused on the Kingdom and the mission of God for His purposes.
Preaching: If I’m in a missional church, what are the implications of that for me as a preacher of the gospel?
Stetzer: That’s a fair question. I think ultimately one of the shifts that we have to begin to see take place in missional churches is really the shift from
attractional to
incarnational. Much of the church growth movement was built on the idea that if we did certain things we’d attract certain people. And I don’t think that’s inherently wrong. I don’t think attractional is necessarily sinful.
