What is the Mission? Why Does it Matter? Part 2

Episode 695: How you plant a church is shaped by missiology and what you end up with is shaped by ecclesiology. Host Ed Stetzer hashes through different approaches to both with Nathan Knight and Rivers Partin.

In This Episode, You’ll Discover:

• Nuances in the theological motivation behind three church plants
• Ways to strike a balance between alleviating earthly suffering and eternal suffering.
• How to explain to your people what it means to be “incarnational”
• Why ecclesiology is more than bylaws you use when your church encounters a problem
• How being a church differs from being a mission idea or mission outpost

Helpful Resources:

• Ed Stetzer’s book Breaking the Missional Code
• Ed Stetzer’s article What 9Marks Purists Should Know About Church Planting
• Christopher Wright’s book The Mission of God
• Brad Briscoe’s books: Missional Essentials, The Missional Quest, Next Door as It Is in Heaven
• Interested in learning more? Check out our Church Planting Primer
• Are you ready to enroll in our Church Planting Masterclass?

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Sharable Quotes (#NewChurches):

The Christian understands that there’s more to this than trying to alleviate earthly suffering, but we have a deeper desire to relieve eternal suffering. @NathanKnightDC

My motivation is we see the kingdom of God breaking into the world. Part of our mission is to work to make the world more like Jesus would want it to be. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” @EdStetzer

We use very incarnational language: We’re the way Jesus shows His love to people in our neighborhood. We want to see people’s eternal destiny being changed. We also start with it’s an act of worship to serve and the results are up to the Lord. — Rivers Partin

It’s a kingdom work even if I don’t see someone repent that day, because we’re bringing about restoration in this place. We’re planting seeds and we’re allowing the Lord to to do the growing. — Rivers Partin

So much of the epistles are concerned about people not persevering and enduring. So when you think about the mission of the church, I’m going to front-load knowing so much of the work of the Church is to make sure and get the person to their deathbed still following Jesus under the power of the Holy Spirit. @NathanKnightDC

Your ecclesiology really matters. It’s one of the things that I think people don’t think about until there’s a problem. They think of ecclesiology as almost like the bylaws to use when we have a problem, but I think ecclesiology is a display of God’s glory that really matters. @EdStetzer

We spent most of our time just trying to understand what a church is and what a church does, what a pastor is what a pastor does, since that’s what we were endeavoring to be. As a consequence we front-loaded all that ecclesiology into the work of the church so that she would be set up to take in those new believers and then orient into our life together. @NathanKnightDC

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