If I were in touch with the times, I would have read Stetzer's similar book, Planting Missional Churches. But it took me a while to figure out that all the cool church planters had stopped using the word "postmodern" and started using the word "missional" a couple years ago.Ed Stetzer is a Southern Baptist missiologist who has become embraced widely by church planters of many different denominational stripes. I picked up my free copy of this book from Ed at the National New Church Conference in Orlando in April of 2006.
I thought these were some of Stetzer's most helpful thoughts:
"There is no basis, biblically or theologically, for the territorial distinction of missions and evangelism...the church must learn to exegete its culture and reflect on the culture from a biblical perspective." [28]
"Very few churches volunteer, [as the early church at Antioch did], to send the best of their leaders and to contribute significant amounts of money for the establishment of new congregations." [45-46]
Stetzer has led teams that have planted 3 churches and he has researched the planting of many, many more. He includes a lot of practical wisdom for Christians who want to plant churches that plant more churches. I don't get as much joy from reading missiology books like this as I do from reading a good biblical theology book, but this book was helpful to me as I am in the middle of planting a new church.
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