Ed Stetzer: Evangelism as reconciliation
WAKE FOREST (BSCNC Communications) – Ed Stetzer is quite a cool guy. He uses words like dude and tweet (check out his twitter feeds) and isn’t afraid to showcase a tacky preacher tie on his blog. Stetzer plays Wii with his daughters. He wears cool glasses and has been told he could totally pull off a “rockabilly” hair cut. He travels all over the nation preaching and teaching. And he has finally, at long last, realized that cool people hang out in the Mac World – so he’s made the transition over to the other side.
More than that, Stetzer is cool because he can ask, and answer, the hard questions. Well, perhaps not so much the hard questions as the uncomfortable questions. Yet, Stetzer is always straight up with his answers. In other words, he is honest. Is the Southern Baptist Convention shrinking? Yes. Yet, the denomination is not doomed, as Stetzer noted in a January 2009 blog post. Do unchurched young adults think the church is full of hypocrites? Yes. Yet, as Stetzer writes in his latest book, Lost & Found, more than 60 percent of unchurched adults ages 20-29 would attend church if truth were presented in a way that relates to their lives. Not only that, more than half this demographic would attend church if they thought people actually cared about them. Are more and more Southern Baptist churches plateauing or declining? Yes. Yet, Stetzer’s 2008 book on comeback churches indicates that, with a renewed missional focus that is intentional and indigenous, churches can turn around.
Stetzer, missiologist in residence at LifeWay Christian Resources, asks these sort of questions because he cares about the Gospel and he cares about people. During a dialogue session Feb. 16 at the 2009 state evangelism conference at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Stetzer turned the tables and gave those in attendance opportunity to ask questions. His response to the first question got right to the heart of the conference theme, “A Great Commission Resurgence.” The question: What did Stetzer tell the state executive leaders in their meeting the day before? In order to engage culture with the Gospel, Baptists must stop the tendency to “talk past each other” and must be committed to a missiology that is centered on the Bible and an ecclesiology that recognizes the cultural context has changed, thus being more open to new forms or methods. Fifty years ago churches all looked the same – not anymore. The reality is that the “methodological consensus has collapsed.” Churches that do church differently have a hard time cooperating. Instead of cooperating around methods, churches must cooperate around Holy Scripture, a biblical theology, a common confession.
Stetzer, 42, calls himself an “interpreter to older generations.” So, how does a church reach youth and adolescents, one attendee asked. Stetzer responded, “we have expected too little from young people” and must acknowledge them as “people who are ready for deep spiritual discipleship.” Youth ministry must move to a “robust engagement” of the Bible.
Not surprisingly, Stetzer was asked to comment on the recent Baptist Press article about Mark Driscoll. He focused his discussion on Driscoll’s talking about sex from the pulpit. Frank discussions of sexuality are hard, Stetzer said, and for some, never possible. For someone like Stetzer who pastored in New York among prostitutes and drug addicts, not talking about sex just wasn’t an option. What culture needs is a “robust, biblical, God-centered answer” to questions about sex. “Let’s pretend it’s not there isn’t working anymore,” Stetzer said. “People who love Jesus shouldn’t have to go into the world to find answers about sex.”
Stetzer also answered the question about responding to traditionalism, and how to help older generations understand culture changes. Churches must learn to value engaging community more than their own personal preferences. Pastors must “teach people to fall in love with their community,” he said. Similarly, someone asked how to engage younger people in state and national convention meetings. “What you celebrate you become,” Stetzer said. As an example, the stage at these meetings should look like the people who leaders want to engage. The tribal identity that existed in the 1980s has broken down and “you can’t guilt people any longer,” Stetzer said.
The final question of the afternoon was directed at the bureaucracy – how can it be overcome? Very simply, “it’s not your job to wait for the bureaucracy to respond,” Stetzer said. Go engage in God’s mission and the bureaucracy will catch up, he said.
Ministry of Reconciliation
After Stetzer’s question and answer session, he took the platform to kick off the afternoon plenary sessions. Stetzer spoke from 2 Cor. 5:16-21 and sought to answer this question: How can believers represent Jesus well and live so they represent Jesus’ agenda and not personal preferences? “We ourselves have become distracted as the Corinth church and “look and live more like the world,” Stetzer said. First of all, this text from Corinthians points to believers having a new perspective and seeing people different, not in a “purely human way,” Stetzer said. The human way sees people as “us vs. them” or “right vs. wrong.” Too often believers see the world as the enemy and do not see individuals as prisoners of war who can be set free by the Gospel. Without a new perspective on humanity, believers become known as people who are mad all the time, who scorn and who do not love, and when this happens the church is “producing religious people” and not people in relationship with Jesus. The Gospel is not about walking an aisle and shaking the preacher’s hand; the Gospel is about “lives being changed for the agenda of God.”
A new perspective on humanity is no good if the church is not set on the mission of reconciliation. “We are called to reconcile a lost world to Jesus,” Stetzer said. Evangelism is not inviting people from one church to another or simply inviting people to church. “That’s not reconciliation, that’s recruitment,” Stetzer said. The “come and see” strategy is not as effective anymore; “go and tell” must become the mantra.
In order to reconcile the world to Jesus, believers must represent Jesus and His Kingdom. The loyalty must be to become “ambassadors for Christ,” Stetzer said. When this happens, it “breaks down factionalism.” No longer will Christians identify themselves as being with this group or that group. No, they will be seen as ambassadors on a team together. It seems that with difficult times comes the greatest chance to be an ambassador. With debates surrounding the definition of marriage, a failing economy and a culture that more and more despises the things Christians value, difficult times are not on the way – they are here.
Stetzer closed by speaking on verse 21 of the Corinthians text, which is about the doctrine of imputation and the truth that God made Jesus to be sin for wretched sinners. This truth is so important because in it, believers have the motivation and ability to do everything else listed in the text. Think of all the things you’re ashamed of, Stetzer said. Jesus did not stand in that sin, or become immersed in that sin, he became sin, and “that changes everything.” Believers can never get over the Gospel and the fact that it changes lives. A Great Commission Resurgence will not come until Christians commit to reconciliation and to the truth of the cross – His love compels us.
