The church is one of the few organizations in the world that does not exists for the benefit of its members. The church exists because God, in his infinite wisdom and infinite mercy, chose the church as his instrument to make known his manifold wisdom in the world. – Ed Stetzer
Insightful pastors must seek to lead churches as missionaries.
Jude 3 Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that the Lord has once for all entrusted to us, his people.
We need to shift from canned approaches to missional ones which means we must have a specific strategy to reach local people who were different from those in other parts of the country and the world.
It is nice to read books on how Rick Warren planted the church in Saddleback or Cesar Castellanos G12 in Colombia but to copy the strategies they use would be counter productive. We have our own culture code to break. Blanket statements to church growth don’t work anymore.