Quotes from Ed Stetzer

Put your 'yes' on the table and let God put it on the map.

Don't let your church be a cul-de-sac on the Great Commission highway.

God has made relationships His chosen delivery system for the gospel of hope.

Teaching people to become like Jesus, outside of the power of Jesus, dishonors Jesus.

We have to assess: Are we making disciples along the way as we draw people to our churches?

The Christian life is not about finding safety and comfort; it's about finding yourself in a dangerous place of vulnerable compassion.

The institutionalizing of the church is essentially its immunization to an evangelistic impulse.

As ambassadors of Jesus Christ, they were consumed with the task given to them by God. Any authority and influence they had were not their own, or even connected to their brilliance or dynamic leadership strategies. Rather, they were servants of the King. Their allegiance was to his priorities, and they discerned the many ways they could walk in obedience to show and share the gospel in a world of great need.

Change requires decision making, and decision making requires action. Most churches don't make turnarounds because they never get to the action. Discussion only begets more discussion. Together, and led by the pastor, the church must decide on a course of action.

A biblical theology of persecution creates a framework for understanding God's sovereign purpose in allowing the evil dominions of darkness to inflict suffering on His children.

Consolidating power and merely delegating responsibilities are sufficient ways to maintain a single community, but they are terrible ways to exponentially reproduce Christian community. Movements occur only when the disempowered are given the freedom and responsibility to lead, along with the accountability to make it happen.

Just as the mighty sequoia would topple without a community of supporting trees, believers who seek transformation apart from a Christian community are vulnerable to spiritually topple in the winds of adversity.

Church leaders—including pastoral staff, elders, deacons, and leadership teams—must see community as a biblical nonnegotiable, an essential for transformation, a necessity for building lives that stand the test of time.

Reading church history and allowing it to influence our worldview reassures us not only that God has promised to be with us, but that he has delivered on this promise to every generation of believers regardless of the trials and tribulations of their time.

We need to stop presenting community as just another option for the religious consumer and start presenting it as God's will for everyone. It should be seen as the reality of those within the church and the refuge for those without.

when we have every right (after all it's "our church"), when we have always done it that way (no reason to change if we like it), and when we are in prominent positions (we have earned it), we can easily make it about us.

It's time to live as people shaped by a gospel-centered worldview.

Teaching people to become like Jesus, outside of the power of Jesus, dishonors Jesus.

The health, long-term mission, and viability of the church are not going to be determined by those who gather on Sunday morning. The future of the church will be determined by the depth of its disciples.

You have the Holy Spirit inside you, empowering you and enabling you to live on mission. In a world at its worst, live out your calling to be a Christian at your best in the age of outrage.

If Southern Baptist churches sent just 1 percent of their members to reach the nations and peoples of the world, instead of five thousand there would be 160,000 missionaries (according to our reported membership of sixteen million in 2009). The support should not be a problem—not financially, logistically, or in human resources. Could not 99 percent of the church adequately support the 1 percent sent to the nations to fulfill the mission of God?

The central conclusion is that the American church is dying due to lack of strong spiritual leadership. In this time of unprecedented opportunity and plentiful resources, the church is actually losing influence. The primary reason is the lack of leadership. Nothing is more important than leadership."

From a leadership perspective the biblical role of staff members is to "equip the saints." But there should be a place where staff can practice "being a saint.

At the end of the day, in spite of the risks, do life with your people. They need to see you struggle and process your day-to-day walk with Christ. They need to see you desire community, and you need to see transformation take place among your community.