By Ed Stetzer Community is the vehicle of God's mission. In this blog series, we are looking at the topic missional effectiveness. Once again, missional effectiveness is embracing the totality of the missio Dei—including its message, movement, and marks—and enacting it in the life of a local church. So far, I have covered the message... Continue Reading →
Towards Missional Effectiveness: The Movements of God’s Mission – Part 3 of 7
By Ed Stetzer The mission of God is attractional and incarnational. I don’t know why, but I have a fascination with yo-yos. Now, I can’t yo-yo. Nevertheless, I find it amusing and entertaining as a skilled yo-yoer (if I can use that term) cast the yo-yo out with great rhythmic force only to have it... Continue Reading →
Towards Missional Effectiveness: The Message of God’s Mission – Part 2 of 7
By Ed Stetzer God is on mission to glorify Himself. In the first post I explained that missional effectiveness is embracing the totality of the missio Dei—including its message, movement, and marks—and enacting it in the life of a local church. I don’t know about you, but I have been on many honey-do runs in the... Continue Reading →
Towards Missional Effectiveness: An Introduction – Part 1 of 7
By Ed Stetzer What is mission? What is missions? What is missional? Like most people, I want what I buy to work and be effective at what it was created to do. For instance, I have a smartphone that keeps track of my life. I call, text, surf the web, tweet, Facebook, use Maps to... Continue Reading →
Stop Just Going To Church
By Jeff Vanderstelt It all began in a boat on a lake with a few fishing poles. It was there, surrounded by the lazy water, my dad and I would have a key conversation that would change the trajectory of my life. My dad was giving me a simple update on his life and shared... Continue Reading →
So, What Is a Nazarene?
Today marks the first day of the Church of the Nazarene’s Global Conventions and General Assembly. These events are held once every four years and this time in Indianapolis, Indiana we are expecting more than 15,000 attendees and delegates for times of corporate worship, training, fellowship, and business. However, maybe we are getting ahead of... Continue Reading →
3 Steps To Develop A Culture of Service – Part 2 of 2
This is part two of the article published in the previous post. Repeat it The pulpit (or table, in my case) will always be a key place to shape the values and culture of a church. When the pastor repeatedly inserts the idea of serving others into messages, writings, and conversations, it has an impact on... Continue Reading →
3 Steps To Develop A Culture of Service – Part 1 of 2
By Ed Stetzer Having a missional culture established through instilling it, repeating it, and celebrating it will provoke members to love and good deeds. Why is it that churches often get stuck and turn inward, and what can be done to reverse this inwardly-focused approach? Often times, as a church grows larger (or even just... Continue Reading →
Upper-level Vision
By Scott Armstrong What is your passion? What gets you out of bed even on the bad days? When I was a teen, I probably would have thought of such questions as irrelevant or even dumb. I was driven to get good grades, but I was probably just as passionate about eating ice cream or... Continue Reading →
Why Jesus Never Commanded us to Plant Churches – Part 2 of 2
This is part two of the article published in the previous post. Do our actions match our words? We say we want to see churches planted from out of the harvest, but our actions and our leadership practices do not often match our words. And the sad thing is that even when faced with such inconsistencies,... Continue Reading →