speaking engagement with Ed Stetzer

I’m listening to a live seminar with Stetzer from the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary and it’s ok so far. He uses that strong language that Southern Baptists are so known for…can’t fault him for that I think he’s a very good “middle road” for moderns wanting to make effective progressive changes without carrying with it the strongly liberal language that can turn them off.

He said that Hirsch challenged him and gave “the Forgotten Ways” a positive review which is encouraging. He of course qualified that he doesn’t agree with all of it but found it a good challenge.

Here are some random notes as I listen:

He speaks about how we need a better Christology…who is Jesus and what has he sent us to do? He talks about how we need to stop calling people “back” to something. We need to call them “forward” to Jesus, to be sent. I think that’s good.

He also suggests that we need to better and more accurately define the Gospel so we can regain confidence in it. He suggests that we have lost confidence in the Gospel primarily because we have misrepresented the Gospel. He states that we need to contend for certain distinctives (even those distinctives of our tribes) and then contextualize the rest. He encourages us not to love Jesus and hate his bride. I think that’s a good challenge. Along those lines he speaks of the frenetic innovation going on - frenetic? I think that might be a bit strong but probably a bit true. In addition to that he talks about the trend against denominationalism. He seems to be concerned about that. I don’t feel that concern but then again, I grew up non denominational so I have never felt denominational loyalty. To my detriment? Maybe, good thing to consider.

He also says that **missiology and *ecclesiology is going to be the key for the Church in the next 10 years (something I’ve heard from many other evangelical “leaders” as well). He recommends starting contextualized and bringing people to what needs to be contended for. Holding our distinctives strongly in one hand and everything else loosely in the other. In other words, the language that I tend to use is “meet them where they’re at and bring them to where they need to be”. I agree with the heart of that. I think how that looks is certainly going to be very different depending on one’s preferences and convictions and tribes but the heart of it is good - we can’t forget about why we’re in this gig in the first place after all.

He recommended this website which is FANTASTICALLY COOL. It gives all sorts of useful demographics.

He keeps referencing penal substitution, hell, a “bloody cross and an empty tomb” (he has so far used that phrase 5 times in an hour), the authoritative Word of God and just talked about how he wants to “norm the norm” (that phrase makes me chuckle and think of the other meaningless phrase - the truth is the truth hehe) of the mainstays of the Gospel message…a noble cause although I’m not sure what it really means in practice.

He seems to be focusing on how Christians have lost confidence in the Church because we have lost influence in the culture and he has a fear of forgetting Christ and the Gospel. I’m honestly not sure if I share that fear (I see it here and there but no more than I ever did before - perhaps that has more to do with my experiences) but it’s a good reminder to those of us who are being experimental.

All in all it was a decent talk with some good challenges and reminders - now they’re doing some q&a which I’m interested in hearing more than the original talk. I’ll come back and share what was good from that.

*from wiki :

ecclesiology deals with the doctrines pertaining to the Church itself as a community or organic entity, and with the understanding of what the “church” is —ie. its role in salvation, its origin, its relationship to the historical Christ, its discipline, its destiny (see Eschatology) and its leadership. It is, therefore, the study of the Church as a thing in itself, and of the Church’s self-understanding of its mission and role.

In addition to describing a broad discipline of theology, ecclesiology may be used in the specific sense of a particular church or denomination’s character, self-described or otherwise. This is the sense of the word in such phrases as Roman Catholic ecclesiology, Lutheran ecclesiology, and ecumenical ecclesiology.

**missiology from wiki:

Missiology, or mission science, is the area of practical theology which investigates the mandate, message and work of the Christian missionary. Missiology is a multidisciplinary and crosscultural reflection on all aspects of the propagation of the Christian faith, embracing theology, anthropology, history, geography, theories and methods of communication, comparative religion, Christian apologetics, methodology, and interdenominational relations. One of a missiologist’s most difficult challenges is to distinguish between practices that are essential to Christianity and therefore must be practiced by Christians in all cultures, and other strictly cultural expressions of Christianity that can be changed and adapted to a different culture.

[tags]Stetzer, podcast, assemblies of God, missiology[/tags]

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