On Blogging.

I am not very good at it. As a matter of fact, I think I may be the worst blogger ever. But, today, I am turning over a new leaf.

I post regularly at The Resurgence website (www.theresuregence.com), if you define “regularly” as meaning once every quarter. And, I am even less consistent at the Missional Network website (www.missionalnetwork.org).

But, now I am in Nashville and I have a new 26 item job description. And, slipped in the middle of that fun list of things, is doing a blog. And, I’m in. This is the Lifeway Research Blog. You can get at it from www.lifewayresearch.com or from www.edstetzer.com.

This blog will be a mixture of several things. We will look at research and discuss it here. In just a couple of weeks we will release some groundbreaking research on the dropout rate for the transition years from high school to college. Several guest bloggers will both write and interact here. Whenever we release research, this will be the official forum for interacting with us. You can post questions, question our assumptions, or say we are the smartest people ever for doing the project (thanks, mom, for dropping by).

In between major projects, the blog will focus on other things. For example, I am about to create and interact a series of posts on the use of the word “missional,” its origins, uses, and challenges. Missional is a true wiki-word, but my observations will not be “this is right and that is wrong.” Instead, we will look at different views of the word and then I (and some friends) will share our opinions, cautions, and opportunities.

I will occasionally post on things “SBC” related, but that is not the focus of the blog. Yes, I will be my normal charming and honest self when posting about my denomination. Grin.

My first two posts on the denomination will be coming soon. The first is called, “Why I Stayed in Denominational Leadership.” The second will be called, “Why I Was Thinking about Leaving.” I plan to try and highlight some challenges, but also focus on much of the positive things going on—like Jerry Rankin’s plan to “finish the Great Commission” in our lifetime.

Finally, I will share some thoughts on the everyday journey. I am not sure if that will be particularly exciting, but I find that God teaches me many times through interaction with others—so, I bought a camera and I am off to blog world.

My plan is to blog three or four times a week. And, occasionally, to say something worthwhile.

The really smart IT and communication guys here are Lifeway tell me that they will help and we will be improving the look and functionality. Soon we will post audio files, links to upcoming events, and some other nifty features.

Also, expect Thom Rainer and Brad Waggoner to post from time to time (they actually have full editing privileges, so you never know when they might just drop in.)

Finally, we are going to try to make this a “real” blog, not just a series of articles where we don’t interact. Comments will be open (with some moderation if you post links since we do not want spammers here). When I write my columns for Catalyst Monthly and Outreach Magazine, and when I write articles elsewhere, they will be cross linked here so we can interact as well. I can’t guarantee that I can interact like the best of the bloggers, but I will try to do so at least once a day.

So, that’s it for now… more tomorrow. Today I am up at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis speaking at a church planting conference. My friend and “brother from another mother,” Steve Childers is the head of Global Church Advancement and they are a great group.

The word is that John Piper has some interesting things to say “via video” and I will be blogging on it soon.

Ed

John Piper is speaking on church planting. Interesting comments. As always, God-centered and theologically driven. But, in this case, it had a surprising ending.

Piper takes the month of July off. (Sign me up for that.) Thus, he is speaking via video.

His focus is, “I will build my church.”

I = A Risen Christ, worthy of eternal worship, is the one who plants the church.

Will build = Christ builds His church through “ripping the gates of hell off of the human heart… so they can see.”

My = The church belongs to Jesus Christ and Jesus is already at work in the city where you are planting. “For I have many people in this city” (Acts 18:10)

Church = Only one institution in the entire universe is given the promise that Jesus will build it.

Then… John speaks of his morning devotions from Mark 4.

Surprising quote for a church planting seminar: “You don’t know how to grow the Kingdom of God… beware of books, beware of conferences, and beware of seminars that tell you how to plant the church.”

Hmmmmm...

Today I shared on planting biblically faithful churches in emerging culture and on developing core values. I am heading out of town to Irvine, CA for a different conference. The Global Church Advancement Seminar conference will go on till Friday. Be sure to follow updates from Drew Goodmanson and David Wayne.

By the way, it was encouraging to see an ad from the Minnesota / Wisconsin Baptist Convention and the North American Mission Board advertising on the program. It was great to see Leo Endel and Steve Melvin there and get to brag on them in front of the group when I led my session.

Ed

Last week, I spent the morning lecturing for Roy Fish in his D.Min. class at Southwestern Baptist Theologcal Seminary.

Roy is one of the most godly, irenic, and gracious people I know... and he has an unstoppable passion for sharing Christ.

What a blessing it is to have a man like him in my denomination and serving God's people. And, how encouraging is it that Geoff Hammond's first action as president of NAMB was to name former interim presidnet Roy Fish as a NAMB ambassador?

There are few living people who deserve to have a school named after them-- but I am glad Roy Fish is on of them and I am glad to call him friend.

It is also great to find someone like Roy who can show you where the cigar was once held in a certain seminary presidential painting. Grin.

He made an interesting comment about my ministry which made me think-- and I plan to comment on it in a couple days.

Ed

Honestly, I don’t know many Lutherans.

I have heard that they have a radio monopoly and suppress all dissent in Lake Wobegone (where all the children are above average).

There are more of them in the North Central states than where I was born (NYC) or served (Buffalo, Erie, Louisville, and Atlanta). There may be a huge colony of them in Nashville, but I am guessing not.

But, if these Missouri Synod Lutherans live out their new plan, there might be a lot more of them.

I am blessed to be a small part of their training.

I am speaking today and tomorrow on Facilitating Church Planting Movements at Concordia University. The meeting is sponsored by the Center for U.S. Missions. (You can subscribe to their newsletter here—it is well done and thought provoking.)

Their goal is to plant 2000 more churches by 2017, the 500th anniversary of the day some guy nailed something to a door in Germany.

The description of my session is as follows:

“Two days focused on how missional judicatories, churches and individuals can facilitate church planting movements in their sphere of influence. Through the Facilitating Church Planting Movements Training, participants are trained in moving from church addition, to multiplication, to movements. This seminar presents the latest research and helps us determine a missional future to plant churches across North America.”

Now, I had to look up what judicatories were (since they were “missional,” I figured I would like them), but the rest sounded good from the start.

Most of the materials I will present are materials that we developed at NAMB in the Church Planting Group and research we did at the Center for Missional Research. I will also present some of the research we completed for a Leadership Network study that will be released in the coming months.

I will post more later today on a thought provoking message one of their folks shared in chapel this morning.

Thanks to Kenny Stokes who left a note in the "Piper on Planting" blog post. We just talked on the phone. He is a great and gracious guy. I am excited that their church is getting even more engaged in church planting.

Here is some more of what Piper said. It is hard to hear the tone of voice through such things, but it was very pastoral.

And, remember, this was at a church planting conference led by what the web site calls "Today's Top Church Planting Experts," with a big thick book (Gospel Centered Church Planting) by the great Steve Childers on the table, and lots of resources. Context is important here.

Hear Piper's heart... It is powerful and we should listen. We can "do it all" in our own strength, but only God can build a church.

You might also want to check out their church planting residency program.

It is a blessing to learn and be challenged!

-------------------

Ed,

Thanks for your teaching at the GCA seminar here at Bethlehem Baptist. As I mentioned yesterday, I hope to invite you to come to Bethlehem to work with our church planters again sometime in the near future. Rest assured, Piper’s message was NOT a call for you to quit what you are doing, rather it was a call to all of us who (1) teach church planters and (2) all church planters themselves to go about our work in utter dependence upon the Lord who alone builds the church.

For the record, I took the time to transcript a larger chunk of John Piper’s closing admonition to the church planters on the first evening of the Global Church Advancement Seminar (http://www.gca.cc/). Piper closed his message which reflected on Christ’s words in Matthew 16:18 as follows:

“‘…I will build my church.’ (Matthew 16:18).

Jesus never said, I will build my social service agency. He never said I will build my parachurch ministry. He never said I will build my university or my Christian college or my Christian school. He said, “I will build my church.” One institution in all the universe is given this promise. ‘I will build my church.’ So, brothers, be encouraged that you are about something extraordinarily important.

Let me just give one last counsel or piece of advice. This comes right off of my devotions from this morning. I was reading in Mark 4 (vs. 26-27), where it says, ‘The kingdom of heaven is as if a man should sow seed on the ground. And then he sleeps and wakes, night and day. And the seed grows and sprouts. He knows not how.’

And my closing exhortation negatively is you don’t know how to grow the kingdom of God. Beware of conferences. Beware of books. Beware of seminars that tell you how to plant the church. You don’t know how to plant the church. The bible says you cannot know this. This is God’s doing. It is mysterious, it is deep, it is awesome. You go to bed at night. You get up in the morning. You sow your seed. And it sprouts. You know not how.

Watch out for know-alls. They don’t know how to grow the church. If they think they know, it isn’t the church they’re growing. This is a work of the sovereign God. It is a profound and supernatural mystery to open the heart of Lydia (Acts 16:14), to liberate the servant girl (Acts 16:18), to shatter the prison and the heart of the jailer (Acts 16:32-33).

So, my counsel is, brothers, give your life to sowing. Take this glorious Word of God and preach it. Preach Christ. Preach the scriptures. Preach the cross. Most of the people in the world don’t know what is in this book. And faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

‘I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.’ (Matthew 16:18).
And I will do the decisive building, says the Lord. Conferences and seminars and books that tell you YOU can do this, should not be listened to. They should direct you to Christ and to his word. And to the fact that we don’t know anything about how God saves sinners at the depth of their being.

This is a mystery. This is a glory. And amazingly he uses us. He won’t do it without the faithful proclamation of the word of God. Be faithful to the word and God will use you to build his church.

God bless you. I love what you are doing. I love you. May he make his name great in this conference.”

(END OF PIPER QUOTE)

As I mentioned in the first post, we will use this space to discuss research releases.

The upcoming release on post-high school church dropouts will be important. There will be several guest bloggers who will join us... stay tuned.

After that comes the alcohol study...

If you have not done so, check out the Lifeway Research home page and subscibe to the newsletter. You will receive notices when the research is coming out.

Upcoming Releases

Church Dropouts August 6, 2007
This study is an in-depth look at the percentage of young adults who stay in church vs. drop out between the ages of 18 and 22. Insights will include reasons some leave the church and others stay, as well as what can be done to encourage more to stay in church.

Perspectives of Pastors and Laity on Alcohol September 18, 2007
This study reveals the beliefs and attitudes of Protestant pastors and laity toward drinking alcohol.

Great worship at the Good Shepherd Chapel at Concordia University yesterday morning.

The view is simply amazing:

It was refreshing... particularly after flying in very late and finding the hotel mis-entered my reservation and I had no room (and there were no other rooms in the city!)

Thanks to my helpful hosts (and rescuers), I slept in a college dorm room (during football camp). The college dorm is fine as it builds character to sleep on the slab bed. But, those football guys sure were excited about their 4a.m. run. Ugh.

Anyway, the highlight of the morning was when Robert Newton, Bishop of California / Nevada / Hawaii District of the LCMS shared the morning devotion. He shared much more than I can list here, but I was intrigued by his explanation of Luke 24:46-48.

Luke 24:46-48 (HCSB): "He told them, 'This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.'"

These are the things that are written…
1. “Christ will suffer…”
2. “Rise from the dead…”
3. “Repentance and forgiveness will be preached in his name.”

He explained that we often think that there are only two parts to the gospel… death and resurrection. Jesus lists three that "are written." In other words, the spreading of the gospel is a fundamental to the gospel.

A quote:
“The gospel does not end with the resurrection… it ends with a sinner hearing it in his ear.”

Put more bluntly:
“It is a moot point if he simply died and rose and nobody heard about it.”

"Every Sunday the saints gather and forget the world…”

What do you think?

My Lutheran friends rebuked me yesterday.

I promised them a blog post on “The Baptist and the Bishop,” based on my conversation with Robert Newton and some good natured ribbing about our different denominations.

But I am a little behind... this blogging thing is more work than I imagined.

I promise I will write that post on the plane home today.

According to the folks here at the conference, Newton is the LCMS thought leader on the missional church. (I interviewed him as part of my research on the missional church.)

Newton emphasized that the Great Commission is the most important, not one of the important, parts of the missional church focus.

See his course on the missio dei here… good stuff.

More soon… but I love talking mission, missional, and missiology with missiologists...

This whole “Friday is for Photos” thing is intriguing. Unfortunately, I have a tremendous lack of creativity in that area.

I can’t even spell “Phriday” the way you should to be hip and trendy.

For better photos, see Joe Thorn, who always has an incredible knack for getting the right shot.

But, I did find one that I wanted to share… and I have been saving it for a couple of weeks now.

So, for my first photo in “Occasionally Friday is for Photos if I Find a Really Good One,” I attach this one:

I have a wonderful wife who has given me three wonderful daughters… I am blessed beyond measure. It is interesting how, with three daughters, my life tends to revolve around playhouses.

Good times.

This past Sunday, I visited Peace Community Church.

It was nice to attend a new church that meets in a high school (like my former church plant, Lake Ridge Church). The good thing is that I do not have to worry if the chair rows are crooked. (That is Mike’s problem at Peace... and, for the record, the chairs were straight).

Before I visited, I called Mike to find out about the church… and soon discovered that we had actually talked earlier. Turns out I helped him with his dissertation. (Mike has his Ph.D. at Southern Seminary and wrote his dissertation on Spurgeon and church planting.)

Pray for Mike as you think of it… church planting is hard work. He seems to be headed in some good directions but, if you have ever planted, you know how hard the first year is. I was impressed with his passion and commitment. And, church planters are near and dear to my heart.

Visiting P.C.C. reminds me how difficult it is to find a church—and how bad I am at it. Perhaps that is why I gravitate toward church planting.

More soon on the church hunt…

Every Monday, I will post something about mission, missions, missional, or missiology.

Here is the first-- a guest blog from a missionary living in a Muslim country. He cannot use his name because, well, many people in the world are not excited about what he is doing. So, we will call him Bob.

Feel free to interact with him in the comments.

Ed

"Bob" wrote:

For a little more than a decade my family and I have been living in Asia. Our desire has been to “model and multiply missions and ministry among Muslims.” By that, we mean that we want to be directly involved in praying for and sharing the gospel with Muslims, seeing them discipled and brought into the fellowship of the saints. And we want to be teaching and encouraging others to do the same thing.

Often people ask us why we do it. Why have we left our families, our culture and our homes to live in the third world with Muslims? Why are we not back in America where life is “easier,” our boys can get a “good” education, where it is “safe” and we can care for our ageing parents? Honestly, sometimes I ask myself the same question.

Perhaps you have heard the following complaints, “Mission work is expensive and dangerous. Besides, most people don’t want to hear the gospel anyway, otherwise why would missionaries have to go into these places undercover.” Today many people are accusing mission boards of being reckless for sending people to share their faith in a dangerous, hostile world.

And it is not just foreign work that is so dangerous. Papers carry the story of a student being killed for her faith in a Colorado school. I have had a gun pulled on me in Louisiana when inviting someone to a church function. If people are not interested, why bother? Why not just join with people like Hasan (not his real name) who recently said, “I pray that there are no Bridge People in heaven—they are just evil, hateful people who deserve to go to Hell.”

So, how can we answer these questions? What is the point of communicating the Gospel with non-Christians? I have a brother who is an atheist. He told me once that he was sure I was too smart to believe in the gospel so I must be doing this for the money. Now, we have been extremely blessed by the generosity of Southern Baptists through the Cooperative Program and Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, but we took a fifty percent salary reduction to come here, so I couldn’t be that smart if money was my motivation!

Johannes Bavinck, in An Introduction to the Science of Missions defined the aim of missions as "To glorify God, establish the kingdom, and convert the heathen." In practice, this process is generally accomplished in reverse order. We share the gospel with those who have not heard it in a way they can understand. Then we gather them into congregations where they can be discipled and join others in worship. Those congregations become a part of the Universal body of Christ, reflecting God’s glory throughout eternity.

Bavink was not the first missiologist to make this correlation between evangelism and the glory of God. In John 15:8, Jesus said “This is to my Father’s glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

If you are a Christian you know the greatest joy available to human kind—a personal relationship with the Almighty Creator. We do not share our faith to “stem the Islamic tide” or “defeat the postmodern agenda.” We share our faith with others out of a sense of love for God and those who are separated from Him. We share out of a concern for His glory.

Being invited in to train the leadership of another denomination is not a privilege I take lightly-- but I am especially blessed to find friends who share a common passion for churches that engage culture in biblically faithful ways.

I felt that kinship with Bob Newton (my fellow speaker) and Mike Ruhl (the conference organizer).

I was very impressed with the passion, intellect, and spirit of Bishop Bob. (The Missouri Synod Lutherans don’t typically use the term bishop, although it is accurate to do so-- and quite fun, might I add.)

We talked on several occasions about the orgin of the missio dei terminology and how it has morphed over the years.

We also shared some good natured ribbing about our denominational distinctives. We both would have some clear and dear theological distinctives that would keep us in seperate denominations-- even though we are both passionate about reaching the world for Christ.

Finally, my friend Dave Olson helped me to see why I don't know many Lutherans (see my original post here). You can find out more at Dave's American Church Research Project.

I think the most challenging job in ministry may be leading stagnant churches to reengage their communities for the gospel.

If you are near Marion, IN tomorrow come join us and we will talk more about it.

And, I have found that many discouraged pastors come to events like these-- pray that they will receive a fresh wind from the Lord.

Tomorrow, I head down for a day in Atlanta for a meeting sponsored by the North American Mission Board. New NAMB president, Geoff Hammond, has been facilitating a discussion about the future of church planting, evangelism, and sending missionaries in our convention.

In our SBC polity, state conventions are not districts of the national office. Instead, they are seperate organizations that choose to work together. The same is true with the local expression, the association. So, few people have to come to this meeting, but they do. Interestingly, this year has marked a record attendence.

Could it be that we are ready to cooperate to reach North America for Christ?

You can, and really should, watch NAMB's presentation in San Antonio. You can do so by clicking here (click on the video archives).

I wrote Geoff an email about his presentation in San Antonio: "In your report, you made much of God's mission, missionaries, and cooperation-- I believe God was glorified, and Southern Baptists were encouraged, by your report."

I will do two presentations in Atlanta: one focused on the research from Comeback Churches and the other looking at best practices in church planting.

Tomorrow, I will post on the future of denominational mission agencies.

Ugh.

On the way to the NAMB State Summer Leadership Meeting, I blew a tire and missed my flight.

Tonight is at an Indy hotel then of to the Atlanta meeting in the morning... in time for my sessions.

I was going to say that it was the predetermined will of God that I had a flat tire, but since I am visiting with the Wesleyans I will just say that God had foreknowledge of it.

;-)