Advance10: Gospel Community in Context by Ed Stetzer from Vintage21 Church on Vimeo.
Jacob asked me to listen to this, and it was well worth my time. Ed Stetzer speaks to pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention, and his message is like one I would never expect (in a very good way).
In case you do not have the time to listen to the message, I have included some of my favorite quotes:
In most minds, building+clergy+program = church. The church is a body sent on a mission for the kingdom.
It's not a fellowship so we can feel good. It's a fellowship to promote love and good works.
It's not to get together, it's to go on mission.
Even the way this [church building] is designed actually pushes you from engaging one another. I'm elevated...you're not. I'm kind of a big deal...you, not so much. That's why I'm on a stage and you're on a floor. This is clearly a stage designed by someone who finds it important to be admired by large groups of people. ...It creates in you and me a passivity, rather than an activity.
One day every church says: We have become more about the string (structure, setup) than the mission we are about. We go from week to week just trying to keep going what we have today.
Preach the gospel, not quaint moralism.
We have to stop thinking of church as a what and think of it as a who.
You can't do community without proximity.
The greatest sin in your church is that we've made it acceptable to sit there week after week and do nothing and call ourselves followers of Jesus.
One of the reasons that most believers are unengaged in mission is because most believers are unengaged in community.
I'm tired of Christianity that looks like churchianity that looks like passive spectators.
Aren't these great quotes? And isn't it shocking to associate them in any way with the Southern Baptist Convention?
Ed's message led to a great conversation between Jacob and me about how we can be more intentional with and available to God in reaching out to people outside of our local Body of Believers. It was just a beginning but I am excited about where it may lead.