Planting Missional Churches 2

Chapter 2 of Stetzer's book is on Redeveloping a Missional Mind-set for North America. I loved it from the get-go because he admitted that there is a great big country right about USAmerica. The one that most consumer oriented Christian writers ignore because there's just not enough Christians there to support the Christian merchandise machine. Not that that's a sore point with me...

The chapter begins with some horrible math and misuse of statistices (as do most) but then settles down into a valid assessment of the influence of madern rationalism on Christianity in the western world. To the point that, in my estimation, Modern Western Christianity has become more modern and western than it is Christian.

Here's some great quotes:

p.19 "The end of Christendom allows the church to recognize that the gospel is distinct from Western culture."

p.22 "Instead of engaging in missional thinking, churches tend to fall back on one of two positions...an appeal to tradition of an appeal to technique. Neither is the response of a missional congregation."

p.24 "The church absorbed in technique is convinced that it's missional - that it's techniques actually are actually expressions of misison, while they are actually methods that replace missional thinking."

p.29 "Most church planters start the church in their head and not in their community."

A great and accuarate warning for the western church that pastors must put some thought to.