Speaker: Ed Stetzer. Topic: Toward a Missional Convention
Audio Page
I almost did come to this session. This for a different reason that I skipped last night. I’ve heard Stetzer on many podcasts, read his books when I was at Lifeway, and ultimately found his perspective wanting. Don’t get me wrong…I want to like this guy and I’d really like to learn from him. That’s why I keep downloading podcasts, picking up books, and dragging my tired self out of bed to hear him at the conference. However, his presentation was more of what I had gotten before and thus I am left disappointing.
Here’s the thing: Stetzer has some good material. However, it is washed out in his insistence that the church of this culture must meet the culture with its own culture. Aggravating the main problem there is the wash of statistics and pragmatic motivations that he uses to bolster his thesis. I just disagree fundamentally.
This morning he specifically said that a chief problem was that churches today were trying to reach the current culture with cultural methods from 50 years ago and that the solution was to meet this culture with the best of the current culture. That is a recipe for repeating the same mistake he’s diagnosing. One, culture is not monolithic. If the church is to reach culture with culture they will be repeatedly running behind, always trying to understand culture and apply the knowledge only to reach the field about 15 minutes after culture has shifted direction or emphasis or what we’ve understand about culture isn’t the right part of culture to try to use, etc ad naseum. Furthermore, as I’ve said, reaching culture with culture leaves the church looking like the guy who is trying to be cool but running about one trend behind what is current. We become a trivialized church who looks ridiculous. Where is the message espousing the transcendence of a gospel that is greater than current cultural affinities. Where is the gospel that creates a new culture, a new community in the redeemed, that is greater than the culture we’re living in today?
The other quibble (and I admit it is probably a petty gripe) I have with the presentation is that the first part played like an advertisement for using the word “missional.” I’m not a buzzword guy and hearing ads for them is a chief aggravation.
I wanted to pose the questions above to Dr. Stetzer – I’m sure he could adequately answer them from his perspective – but the last question in the alloted time was given to a guy who wanted to give his testimony of Christian experience and thus the opportunity was lost.
[...] Original post by Jeff Wright’s Blog [...]
I agree completely! I read a Stetzer book titled “Planting Missional Churches” last year. My thoughts were the same as yours. I took what was of value.
Arrg! Testimonies! The true sign of a subjective religion. Some people mean well, but I can’t get around the fact that this whole testimonial aspect of Christianity, a testimony to a subjective feeling, arose when the Kantian dichotomy forced many Christians into the realm of “faith” and out of the realm of “fact.” It is a Romanticized religion. Also, as Horton, et al., has pointed out on the White Horse Inn, appeals to religious experience are the height of arrogance. To think that what I personally experience is the standard by which other people should judge reality, i.e, whether God exists, is a very man-centered and relativistic idea.
Forget what I said about christian testimony because I am not quite sure what kind of testimony you are talking about. If you were talking about testimony to how a pastor has done something in a church, this is quite different. I responded too quickly.
Chase,
Don’t worry about the disclaimer. It was my fault. I composed that blog post while listening to the gentleman go through his lengthy monologue and childishly posted my frustrations.
I’m still not sure what the gentleman’s point was but I do know that he was an elder believer and thus deserves more respect than I gave him in the post.
Just an FYI: the part I was criticizing was more of a “my life in Christianity” rather than a testimony to, using your example, the faithfulness of another servant. Regardless, I should have written the post without the comment or with more respect.