What the MISSIONAL church IS and IS NOT: Reggie McNeal and Ed Stetzer (in their own words)

First, a simple overview of the MISSIONAL CHURCH:

Reggie McNeal on the MISSIONAL CHURCH:

Ed Stetzer on the MISSIONAL CHURCH:

Rockbridge Seminary students who have completed the online course “The Theology and Practice of Evangelism” may benefit from following Ed Stetzer’s blog and viewing additional presentations by Reggie McNeal.

10 STUPID THINGS that keep churches from growing

Geoff Surratt, pastor of ministries at Seacoast Church in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, wrote  Ten Stupid Things That Keep Churches from Growing: How Leaders Can Overcome Costly Mistakes. Here are the 10 stupid things, according to Surratt, that keep churches from growing:

1. Leaders do it all
2. Establishing wrong role for the pastor’s family
3. Second rate worship experiences
4. Low quality children’s ministry
5. Promoting talent over integrity
6. Clinging to bad location
7. Copying another successful church
8. Favor discipline over reconciliation
9. Mixing ministry and business
10. Letting committees steer the ship

The Christian Post wrote this about #1 on the list (“Leaders do it all”):

Out of the 10 mistakes he covers, the most common and the first to be addressed in the book is “Trying to Do it All.”

A comical quote at the bottom of the chapter page cleverly conveys the problem that pastors often find themselves in: “Just because I’m the janitor doesn’t mean I can’t perform your wedding.”

“Pastors tend to default to doing everything themselves rather than working through people in the congregation,” Surratt explained to The Christian Post. “They take on a lot of different hats and wind up overworked and underproductive because of that.”

When Surratt was the pastor at Church on the Lake in Texas, a small church with less than 50 people when he took over, he was simultaneously the head pastor, Sunday school teacher, bookkeeper, worship director, administrative assistant, groundskeeper, maintenance man, and janitor for a time.

“As I look back on my time at Church on the Lake, I can’t help but wonder what I was thinking,” Surratt confesses. “Trying to do all (or most) of the work themselves is the number one stupid thing pastors and leaders do that inhibits their church from growing.”

Listen to Geoff Surratt and his wife Sherry discuss the book on Leadership Network’s The Show:

Rockbridge Seminary students may also benefit from:

• Ed Stetzer’s interview with Goeff Surratt
• Reading Goeff Surratt’s blog

Does your church hide Jesus?

Jared Wilson, pastor of Element (Nashville, TN), has a new book out titled Your Jesus Is Too Safe: Outgrowing a Drive-Thru, Feel-Good Savior.

While reading Ed Stetzer’s blog interview with Jared about his book, I was struck by Jared’s response to one of Ed’s interview questions.

Ed:

You survey quite a few false Jesuses from contemporary culture in the Introduction–Grammy Award Speech Jesus, Hippie Jesus, ATM Jesus, etc. Which one do you think is most prevalent in the church right now? And what is the book’s response to it?

Jared:

I don’t have the research resources that you do, so I can’t put a figure on this, but I can tell you that my biggest concern is actually about an Invisible Jesus. Jesus, the Best Supporting Actor. Cameo Appearance Jesus. The “Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain” Jesus.

In way too many churches – just one would be too many, but I know this is a larger problem than that because I have experienced it myself and I hear from many others across the country who have as well – Jesus barely or rarely shows up. He may make an appearance in an illustration or something, but he is not the point of the message. Sometimes his name is never mentioned. Perusing church websites or pastor’s blogs or Twitter feeds, they hardly ever mention him.

It’s bizarre. It’s distressing. But it makes sense given the current state of evangelicalism.

Wow! Something to think about. Is your church hiding Jesus?

Read IMonk’s review of Is Your Jesus Too Safe.

Learning Communication from Andy Stanley

If you hear him speak, you’ll know that Andy Stanley knows something about communication. He shares some of this knowledge in Communicating for a Change: Seven Keys to Irresistible Communication (Multnomah, 2006). Andy is senior pastor of North Point Community Church in the Atlanta Metroplex. 

If you have completed the Rockbridge Seminary course “Preaching/Teaching for Life Change,” you’ll be particularly interested in knowing more about Andy Stanley’s approach to communication. I consider Andy a master communicator.

Ed Stetzer recently interviewed Andy about communication for Ed’s blog. Here are excerpts from Andy’s responses to questions.

Communication all about engagement

There is this myth that people say, “Sermons need to be short because people today have short attention spans.” That is totally irrelevant. People’s attention spans are as long as their engagement. If I’m engaged, I will sit and stay engaged until I have to go to the bathroom. The issue is: are people engaged, not how long the sermon is. 

As a pastor we tend to err on: Is the information true? Not even helpful, but is it true? That is, if I present true information that is true to God’s Word, then I get an A. No, we are teaching the Bible, so we are assuming it is true. You don’t get any points for that. Good grief, we are teaching the Bible–it better be true! The more relevant questions should be: Was the presentation engaging? And was the information helpful? If you have an engaging presentation with helpful information, people will come back next week for more of that. If you are engaging but not helpful, after awhile they will grow weary. It is interesting but I did not learn anything. If it is helpful but not engaging, then I am bored. And it may be stuff that I really need, but if you didn’t engage me, I can’t stay with you. You need to be helpful and engaging.

What about verse-by-verse preaching?

Guys that preach verse-by-verse through books of the Bible– that is just cheating. It’s cheating because that would be easy, first of all. That isn’t how you grow people. No one in the Scripture modeled that. There’s not one example of that.

Effective preaching or effective communication is for me … isn’t three points or four points. It’s really one point that is somehow connected to a passage and it is connected to a life. And then you should stop talking because you are done.

Andy’s preparation process

At a recent “Grow Up Conference,” I diagrammed my communication process as: Me–We–God–You–Us. The communication starts with Me– let me tell you something about me. Then We, this is something we all have in common. Then God, this is what God says about it. You, this is what you need to do about it. And We, wouldn’t it be great if we all did it. So it is a relational outline. Start with you. Connect to them. What does God have to say about this issue? What should you do about it? And what should we do about it?

So I talked structurally about what you hang on each of those pieces. You outline your communication relationally, and not just in terms of information. And it is so much easier. When guys bring their sermon outlines to me I say, “Alright, now where do you talk about you? They need to know who you are. And if you jump to the Bible, they’ve got to go with you. To me, that is the journey. It is me taking you into a conversation. And we start together and then we end together. We have a common problem and we find a solution. And we are all still on the same page.”

Becoming an effective communicator is hard work

I listen to my own CD’s all the time. In fact, on some Sundays I listen to all three services. And I want to get better and better, and I work on getting better. I listen for dumb habits that I have. I sometimes watch my own videos, which is horrible. That will either make you better or want to get out of ministry completely. I think I make it look easy, but it’s not. I work very, very hard.

Andy’s advice to preachers

Show up every Sunday morning with a burden that is so heavy that you feel like you will die if you don’t deliver it. And pray for that. Because if you don’t have that, then you just have information. The people will put up with all kinds of a lack of excellence if there is an intensity and a burden that has to be delivered. And many times I have looked at my notes and thought, “Yeah, this might be helpful, but God, what’s the thing I can’t wait until Sunday morning to deliver? And I honestly can’t wait for Sunday morning.

The other thing I always tell pastors, “If you preach from your weaknesses, you will never run out of sermon material.”

To read the full interview by Ed Stetzer: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5

To see Andy in action, watch as he speaks at the 2007 Catalyst Conference:

A Church Planting Blog To Follow

For Rockbridge Seminary students who are church planters or interested in church planting, you may find Ed Stetzer’s blog helpful to follow. Here is more information about Ed from his blog:

Ed Stetzer has planted churches in New York, Pennsylvania, and Georgia and transitioned declining churches in Indiana and Georgia. He has trained pastors and church planters on five continents, holds two masters degrees and two doctorates, and has written dozens of articles and books. Ed is a columnist for Outreach Magazine and Catalyst Monthly, serves on the advisory council of Sermon Central and Christianity Today’s Building Church Leaders, and is frequently cited or interviewed in news outlets such as USA Today and CNN.

Ed’s primary role is President of LifeWay Research and LifeWay’s Missiologist in Residence.

A good place to start is Ed’s recent blog “Starting a Church without Losing Your Soul.“