Notes from the Trail

I read Stetzer’s Planting Missional Churches while I was at Glorieta this summer – mainly because I had borrowed it from Jackie Flake last year and wanted to return it to him at the conference. The book was a HUGE encouragement to me.

A friend at Lifeway had gotten me an autographed copy of this book, Breaking the Missional Code, and I was just as impressed with it as I was with Churches.

Perhaps one of the most helpful concepts in the book is found early in the first chapter where Stetzer underlines the necessity for the North America church to realize that it must view its own culture as a “foreign” culture. We are no longer living in a “Christian” society – if anything, it’s post-Christian. Because of this reality and the great need to contextualize ministry strategy, he urges a “glocal” view. It’s a combination of thinking that sees local and global at the same time.

I was relieved to read Stetzer again (he did so in Churches point out – almost incessantly – that all the postmodern hype that has infiltrated church leadership conferences from coast to coast is simply that – hype. Yes, postmodernism is real and here. However,

It is important to note that the shirt to postmodernism has not happened everywhere – it has not yet impacted many in the church culture because the church culture acts as a protective shield, unmolested by a secular culture’s music, literature and values. 

Stetzer also notes that there are large “pockets” of people in our country that still live in regions where baseball, apple pie, and fried chicken for Sunday lunch are still a reality. Postmodernism has not impacted these people’s lives to the same extent as other areas of the country.

I see this evident in my own community. The strange thing is, that even with a four-year college, Monticello exhibits a surprising resistance to many of postmodernism’s tendencies.

The rest of Breaking the Code urges leaders and church members to become missionaries to their own towns, neighborhoods and local culture. We must think all over again about how to reach those we live among. We can no longer assume that “they” are like “us.” With international students, local ethnic populations, business associations and more, even the most sleepy Southern town may be more glocal than we realize.

Any church that continues to do church as usual will quickly discover that it’s only ministering to its own and not making a relevant impact on its community. Stetzer has dozens of practical suggestions and processes for “breaking the missional code.”

Beginning with the heart of Father God for all people and progressing to a renewed affirmation that all Christians are “sent” into the world for the purpose of bringing others to the Father, Stetzer and co-author David Putnam hold back no punches in their passionate endeavor to urge churches to get back in the game of missions, beginning at home.

At one point, they lament,

“If only God’s people would spend as much time and money learning how to be witnesses as they do reading a fiction series on the end times, then maybe we would not be living on the only continent in the world where the church is not growing.” 

As they enumerate the ways to break the code, the authors remind us “the church is one of the few organizations in the world that does not exist for the benefit of its members”. Indeed, they take time to unpack the damage some of the recent church movements of the past have caused for Christendom in North America in particular. We have also been guilty of “exporting” a flawed methodology overseas as we’ve done missions.

There are a few chapters that bothered me in their sheer pragmatism. I kept getting a conflicting whiff of “it’s-not-about-methods” to “try-doing-this.” However, some of their practical suggestions are extremely helpful and at times challenging.

Their chapter on “Best Practices of Leaders and Churches that Break the Code” is one of the best in the book. They quote the staff at Northpoint Community Church in Alpharetto, GA…

It’s easy for the needs or interests of insiders to ultimately drive the priorities of any organization. It’s just the natural tendency of any group to become insider-focused. 

It’s a powerful reminder that any group that becomes more concerned about buildings, programs and those inside the walls than those in the community that God sent them to reach will ultimately morph into more of a religious club than a church of Jesus Christ who stepped into time-space that men may know Him.

In short, if you’re looking for a great book about the church that will make you think but also lead you to application, look no further. This one belongs on your bookshelf.

Here’s the scene: a pastor is deeply frustrated about the steady degeneration of his society. In addition to this, churches are in sad shape across the country. Members of churches are self-consumed and refuse to be held accountable for their spiritual lives. They actually get offended when a pastor seeks to point out issues, sins or rebellion in their lives.

In addition, churches are splitting left and right. Some entire groups won’t tolerate other groups. The pastor continually warns that such division will only discredit Christianity as a whole in the eyes of society.

To make matters worse, many pastors have abdicated their role as spiritual shepherds and simply seek to preach and teach bland self-help material, passing it off as the Gospel of Christ. They avoid controversial matter, for fear of offending someone. They do not seek to discipline nor disciple their members, nor are they training leaders to carry on the work of the ministry.

You may be thinking that this sounds pretty normal. However, Richard Baxter addressed these concerns and many others in his book The Reformed Pastor during the mid-1600s. I wrote a while back about the importance of learning from “old dead guys,” and I stand by that. If you haven’t read any Christian books published prior to 1900 recently, your Christianity is certainly skewed, and you may even be guilty of what John Piper calls “chronological snobbery.”

Baxter has been called the “Prince of Preachers,” and this book (one of his more than 168 works!) is a demonstration of his deep burden for the beauty of the bride of Christ, his careful articulation of theology, and his extremely practical approach to Christian living and leading.

For pastors who avoid discipline (or church members who decry it), Baxter said:

The tempter surely has gained a great victory when he gets but one godly pastor of a church to neglect discipline… if it were well understood how much of our pastoral authority and work consists in church guidance, then it would be also discerned that to be against discipline in the church is tantum non to be against the ministry. Again, to be against the ministry is to be absolutely against the church. And to be against the church is near to being absolutely against Christ. 

Sir Stephen James, writing of Baxter, said, “Men of his size are not to be drawn in miniature.” I am afraid that any attempt to summarize this book or the man in one-entry blog would do just that. I highly encourage any Christian leader to read, digest, and allow this book and its hard-hitting practical advice to reform your ministry. At the very least, it’s a humbling evaluation tool.

This small book by Baxter would cause large waves in the evangelical pool if but half of the pastors in your area would read it. It is a great discussion tool for practical and personal ministry. Much of the book was originally written to be an address to a group of protesters – Protestants. Baxter does not pull any punches. When talking of ministers’ communion with one another, he says:

Do not grow strange to one another. Do not say that you have business of your own to do when you should be at any such meetings or other work for God… Even if you could do without the benefit of such meetings, yet the church and our common work required them. Do not then show yourselves condemners or neglecters or such necessary work. Distance breeds strangeness and foments dividing flames and jealousies. Communion will prevent or cure this… Ministers have need of one another. 

Before one thinks that Baxter doesn’t have much to offer the Christian layperson, I would urge anyone with the desire to learn to read the book as well. It has so much to say about the attitude and practice of laity as well as pastors.

Considering that Baxter was both a political leader and prison frequenter during his tenure as pastor should interest you as you do more research and reading into his storied ministry. I, for one, am putting one book on my wish list: A Life of the Reverend Richard Baxter.

According to Wikipedia, Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted is, “without doubt, his most famous and enduring contribution to Christian literature… This slim volume was credited with the conversion of thousands and formed one of the core extra-biblical texts of evangelicalism until at least the middle of the nineteenth century.”