Prolific author, missiologist and all around good guy, Ed Stetzer, has teamed with Georgia pastor and all around really good guy, Philip Nation, to author the WMU theme book for 2008, Compelled by Love: The Most Excellent Way to Missional Living. As part of their “Blog Tour” the authors have graciously agreed to an interview at ie:missional.
The word â??missionalâ? is being used by many people. What is your brief definition?
Ed: You are right. And for most people, it does not sound like a real word. For the purposes of this book, we use a very simple definition: missional is to live sentâ??living like a missionary and focused on the Kingdom. To the average Christian, they know that missionaries go places to tell the Good News of Christâ??s redemption and serve a place to show the effects of Christâ??s redemption. They live for Jesus and his mission. For a more extensive conversation on the word, check out my blog at http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/meaningsofmissional.html
Give us a sense of what biblical love looks like to you.
Philip: Biblical love is much more sacrificial than I previous admitted. Like most, I had grown accustomed to romantic-comedies giving the definition of love: boy meets girl, happily ever after stories. The Bible gives the sense that love has a purpose and a cost. God wants to glorify himself and one way he chooses to do it is through the death of his Son.
How do you want people to be changed after reading this book?
Philip: Changing perspectives is one of the big changes I hope people experience. I want the people who read this book to look at their neighbors with a new mindset that is birthed out of their kingdom citizenship.
Ed: My hope is that people will engage their communities with a deeper passion and at a more rapid pace. From all that we know, the church is not impacting culture as it once did. Being missional will mean that Christians seek to immediately get in the middle of their community to make a difference through serving the hurting, showing Christ, and communicating the Gospel.
With so much being written about the missional idea, how is this book different?
Ed: This book is for everyday believers â?? not only pastors. It will be helpful to pastors in their own lives, but our focus is people, not just leaders. Hopefully, the book will give the â??whyâ? behind much of the â??whatâ? pastors are asking their people to do.
Both of you have varied backgrounds but church planting is the common denominator. How did church planting prepare you for writing this book?
Philip: Iâ??ve always been around traditional churches. And I entered the ministry as a teenager. But planting a church has taken me way outside of the church sub-culture I had grown accustomed to in my life. Church planting widened my perspective of just how far most of my neighbors are from God. Planting has also made me more patient with the â??sinners and tax collectorsâ? Christ was so fond of hanging with â?? whereas before, they scared/offended me.
If churches and denominations do not adopt a missional understanding of the church, how long will it be before they are not merely philosophically irrelevant but functionally so?
Philip: As you have here, we all normally think of relevancy as an issue of how we engage culture. So the short answer is–not long. Speaking in and working in understandable ways is critical to any work we assign a missionary sent to foreign fields. It is equally important for all Christians who â??stay at homeâ? to work on our own turf. Without speaking in the koine language of our setting, it is a bit silly even to speak.
Additionally, let me set my answer in another-and I think more important-direction. A church without an understanding of Godâ??s mission is already irrelevant to Godâ??s purposes. So, as in our book, I would point peopleâ??s attention to be in step with the heart of God first and then his work through our lives will be a more naturally outworking.
Compelled by Love is available through amazon.com and at Lifeway stores.
Great interview Marty…I just wished they would have picked another subtitle…
“The Most Excellent Way”? Reminds me to much of another book whose author promoted that idea but didn’t live it.
Comment by David Phillips — June 11, 2008 @ 5:51 am
David-
I thought the same thing. As a matter of fact, I almost linked to this book for fun.
Comment by Marty Duren — June 11, 2008 @ 7:18 am
Love = to pursue always and unconditionally–despite all costs to myself–the total well-being of another simply for the prize that one has become to me. You and I have been loved–and are loved–that way (cf. John 3:16; Matthew 22:37-40; etc.).
If the SBC and its affiliating churches were a donut franchise, and desired to remain in business, we’d continually be focused on “relevant” and not consider doing so a big deal–though an important one. If, as donut shop owners and managers, we really enjoyed making/eating/selling donuts and it was all we ever hoped to do, but we began to see repeated references in donut industry literature to customers wanting their donuts delivered out the drive-up window much less often in a cardboard box and much more often in a lady’s hat, we’d have 3 basic choices: (1) be offended by the need to change and go out of business immediately; (2) be offended by the change and spend lots of money to try to alter the public’s mind about what it really wants; or, (3) have no feeling one way or the other about the public’s desire for change, invest heavily in lady’s hats, and keep on making/eating/selling the donuts. In social systems theory, the concept is the outward-focused one referred to as “adaptation” and it’s one of the four main problems each social system (purposeful people-groups of any size) must deal with well today in order to see a tomorrow (in the beginning, God created . . . a solar system; when He began creating other beings, He was making social systems).
So, Ed and Philip’s book is about a biblical concept which is commonly known, but not so consciously-so–and one which requires a good deal of spiritual and emotional maturity to deal with on a regular basis (too few vocational ministers understand the concept; too few believers in our churches have that level of maturity; it’s a leadership concept which can be taught–and one which can aid in predicting the future of the donut shop or local church).
Way to go, Philip and Ed!
Comment by David — August 13, 2008 @ 8:06 am