Customer Reviews

Breaking the Missional Code: Your Church Can Become a Missionary in Your Community

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is about how we do church. More specifically, it is about the need to reinvent or change the church in order to make it more attractive and welcoming to the culture where it is planted.

The book contains some very challenging and helpful information for church planters/pastors/leaders and local church mission teams. For example, the authors begin with a helpful picture of the U.S. changing "glocal" (global/local reality) culture and practical steps to identify the unreached/unchurched people in their community. I also appreciate the emphasis on discipleship and the acknowledgement and warning that we an actually attract a crowd without having a church.

Every church should continually examine human imposed traditions and customs, which can cause a church to stagnate and die. The church must be willing to grow, adapt and try new things to stay healthy and effective. However, the book puts too much emphasis on style, technique and marketing know-how. The authors point to the many "successes" of other churches as a defense of the importance of being missional.

My concern is that while these successful churches have found a niche in their community and experienced growth, some grow as s a result of marketing rather than conversion. When we reinvent the church in order to attract the world, there is a tendency to eliminate or compromise the gospel, because it is divisive, offensive and even foolish to the world. Breaking the Missional Code touches on this fact but continues to advocate style and technique over the importance and power of the gospel itself. There is a great temptation for niche churches to offer another, more palatable, gospel in order to avoid offense. The result can be that many people stay and even invite others for relationships and become members of a Christian club rather than becoming followers of Christ.

The second thing that tends to be eliminated in these churches is the teaching of the whole counsel of God. This is done in an attempt to be relevant and to avoid the controversial truths of Scripture. I find this to be the greatest weakness of this book. It focuses on what people want rather than what God demands. The one area of greatest need in any church is the clear and bold preaching of God's Word.

It does not take cleverness or slick marketing strategies to grow a church or to make the gospel more attractive to the world. It takes authenticity in the life of believers that they meet. See the advise given by the Apostle Paul to Titus for his ministry to plant a healthy church on the island of Crete. Mission is not some hidden code to be broken. It is the work of God in the life of His Church (believers) and found in the power of the gospel. The Word of God, not the latest marketing book, is our best source for reaching the lost and it is Christ Himself who will grow His Church.

I recommend this book as a resource to help leaders examine church traditions that may be a barrier to reaching others and as a tool to think about specific mission strategies. However, read it with a careful and discerning mind being careful not to compromise the non-negotiable God ordained standards for an effective and healthy church.

Dr. Ed Stetzer is one of the most important Christians in the country thinking through the issues that arise when the gospel and a culture intersect. There is a great buzz lately about being holistic missional Christians engaging culture but very little insight on what that means or how that is achieved. This book is a very important and timely contribution, particulary for those Christian leaders in the emerging church conversation. This book combines the best of biblical thinking and practical insight to help you interpret your culture so that Jesus can be most effectively introduced to people. Most importantly, Ed is not simply giving prescriptions for reaching a culture but rather principles for reaching any culture with the mind of a professor and the heart of a church planter.

Combining studies on theology, ecclesiology and missiology with a vast array of quotes and insights, this book is a very important book for pastors attempting to transition churches from programmatic to missional or for planters seeking to learn the "code" of the culture where they are planting.

Stetzer and Putnam write, "A church that is incarnational is interested more in the harvest than in the barn."

"The answer is not to make all of our churches look alike. The answer is to have everyone seeking the same thing: to glorify God by being an indigenous expression of church life where they are."

"Over a decade ago, George Hunter began informing us that secular people had 'no Christian memory' and that the church no longer enjoyed a 'home court advantage.'"

"The key to breaking the code of a community is to have the heart of the Father for that community. The only way to do that is by spending serious amounts fo time with the one who loved Jerusalem deeply enough to weep over it."

This book could be described as a how-to manual to understand the people in each culture around a local church and developing a strategy to break those codes, since, using their memorable phrase, cultures in Opp, Alabama are different from those in Seattle, Washington. (I've been through Opp-definitely different.) This is a book that I wish I had had before we started our transition. It you are a pastor praying through the decision to transtion to reach your community, this book is perfect for your congregational leadership.

Other, important points include how the attempted by-the-book cross application of mega-church principles was doomed to fail on a large scale and a brief distinction of how emerging is not the same as missional and a 3 part breakdown of the former (Relevants, Reconstructionists and Revisionists).

This book has some good content, but in its attempt to present methods for people to use, it ignores the fact that the Bible has shown models and methods that make a ton more sense then reiterating over and over terminology that has been created for the point the authors are making. Read the book, but look at what the Bible says. Hopefully you have studied the Bible first.

This book points out what we already know and that is that the gospel faces an increasing hostile or indifferent culture. Therefore the US has now transitioned to the mission field that is ignorant of the gospel. This book encourages church leaders to break old patterns of thought and be open to new approaches. The authors stress that the church must connect with the community in various ways and must make it "safe" for those being drawn to Christ to enter the fellowship of believers. However I only give this books three stars because 1) much of the advice isn't that novel and 2) there seems to be a "consultant" flavor to the book (a little too much like business marketing). It seems to be a little too much marketing centered rather than God centered. However having stated these reservations, I do recommended the book for those looking for new ideas and approaches to reach out the their community.

The book is great for developing a vision for transforming a dying church into a vital part of the community. The book seems to repeat itself. Great information, not fun to read.

Breaking The Missional Code is a balanced perspective on building a biblical church ministry and is must-reading for anyone striving to reach their communities for Christ while at the same time struggling to understand where they may be going wrong. It will also be helpful for those who are suspicious of contemporary church models and fear they are all watering down the faith or discarding critical doctrines. It is an important book that seeks to reach beyond our tendencies to expect everyone to do ministry the way one person or group thinks it should be done. With recommendations from such diverse leaders as Rick Warren, Dan Kimball, and Mark Driscoll, the authors have surveyed the landscape of evangelical America and pulled together biblical and missional components from both contemporary and traditional models of various denominations and geographies. And they demonstrate that reaching people for Christ doesn't have to be devoid of either sound theology or contemporary applications. Those who have done ministry by the Purpose Driven book or the Willow Creek book and failed will find encouragement in Stetzer and Putman's exhortations to do ministry by The Book, not by following fads and trends or by implementing church models that reach specific demographics in Barrington, Illinois, or Orange County, California, but by digging deeper into the community to determine the unique cultural obstacles in their respective communities and then communicating the gospel in a way that doesn't create non-biblical barriers to people receiving and understanding the gospel.

Everything runs its course... 10 yrs ago we were all discussing the latest church growth ideas; the latest buzz word bandwagon is "missional". It's well written, but it'll join all the buzz word books on your shelf you've read over the years. Check the listings on Amazon, there's several rehash and reworkings of this theme.... this is just one more.

My first exposure to Ed Stetzer was throught the Resurgence.com and Mars Hill Church of Seattle. This book is an excellent as well as careful study on being a missionary to your surrounding community and just what that means. All American pastors would do well to give it a read. Too often churches speak of missions as something that happens on a far off continent with no consideration for being missional in their own communities. Good book. I would read another book by these authors.

Ed & Dave's book is helpful for pastors and churches where fantastic numerical growth may be unlikely but still want to be faithful to our Lord's mission and calling to us. If big church "success" models evade you, this book reassures that one size does not fit all. At the same time, it encourages and guides every pastor and church to the challenging work of "missionaries" in their unique community. Because it is easy to read and understand I am reading it with others in my local church to help us all have a common understanding of the opportunity before us.