I was thankful to have recently found this post from Ed Stetzer, who distills my book, Gaining by Losing: Why the Future Belongs to Churches that Send, into 20 statements. If you want a recap of the book in 2 minutes (without all of the riveting and self-deprecating stories), this list has you covered.
1. Jesus did not say come and grow, but come and die. (17)
2. We live by losing. We gain by giving away. What we achieve by building our personal platform will never be as great as what God achieves through what we give away in faith. (18)
3. Study after study shows that most Christians have never even shared their faith—most indicating that somewhere 90 percent of evangelicals have never shared their faith with anyone outside of their family. (22)
4. The church is now Jesus’ vehicle for the completion of his mission. Jesus finished the purchase of our salvation, paying the full price for our sin on the cross and shattering the powers of death in the resurrection, but the mission of salvation is not yet complete. (31)
5. Blessing the community might certainly include growing a big church, but it would also mean giving away some of our resources. (42)
6. A “sending” ministry always starts with a heart exam. Sending out people and giving away your resources, you see, will most often compete with your church’s “bottom line,” not benefit it. (44)
7. Ask yourself, “Are there mission fields in our backyards that could contribute to the global spread of the gospel that we have overlooked because they don’t enhance the bottom line of our church? (46)
8. The question is no longer if we are called, only where and how. The call to follow him is the call to be sent and to send. (49)
9. The cross of Christ provided Paul with the motive for sacrifice, a measure for his sacrifice, and a mission in his sacrifice (2 Cor. 5:14–21). Paul wanted to see others reconciled to God as he had been reconciled. (62)
10. This intensity to do comes only from being soaked in the message of what God has done. (63)
11. It is neither guilt over what you are not doing nor excitement over how God might bless you that produces true, lifelong generosity. It is deep gratitude for what Christ has already done for you. Remembering the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ does more to compel generosity than a hundred sermons that pummel you with guilt. (66)
12. Serving Jesus at work is about far more than giving a Christian theme to your business or staging awkward conversations about Jesus. It is about doing your work for the glory of God and the benefit of his creation and leveraging appropriate opportunities to make disciples as you go through life. (81)
13. Amazement led to attraction; attraction led to observation; observation led to confrontation and worship. (96)
14. Get this: Of the 40 miracles recorded in Acts , 39 happen outside the church walls. (105)
15. For those of us in the Western church, I think we are at a crucial decision point. I love seeing big audiences gathered to hear the gospel, but if we want to reach the next generation, we are going to have to equip our people to reach them outside the church. (107)
16. What Jesus did on earth for his thirty-three years was only what he began to do and teach. The book of Acts is about what he continued to do and teach—no longer through his incarnated body, but through his Spirit in the church. (116)
17. If you want to be a “sending” church, you have to develop a process for producing leaders. Without a process, it is unlikely you will move the leadership needle much in your church. As the old saying goes, insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. (125)
18. God calls his leaders, not to a platform to build a great ministry for themselves, but to an altar where they die unto themselves. This means sending out our best with abandon. (131)
19. Let me be clear: The church’s primary objective is to preach the gospel, not to beautify the city, care for the poor, or renovate the ghettos. That’s because the gospel testifies to what God has done to save the world, not what we can do. The gospel is an announcement about Christ’s finished work. (138)
20. In the Bible we find no gap between the call to follow Jesus and the call to engage in mission. (172)
(Original post here.)
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