Below is the first part of a sermon on ‘Making Disciples’ given by Ed Stetzer at the Verge 2010 Missional Community Conference.
I think it is very challenging and well worth watching:
Here are a few quotes from Ed’s sermon that need to be taken seriously:
“I am sick of knowledgable, religious people not living on mission and then criticising those who are”“a knowledge base needs to lead to an action life”“any system that disempowers or demotivates the people of God is unhelpful and perhaps sinful….because it destroys the common good”“something is wrong when an on mission serving Christian is unusual”“when we (leaders) do for people what God has called them to do, then everybody gets hurt and the mission of God gets hindered”“disciples do, they don’t just learn. They do what they learn. They don’t just listen, they do what they hear”“there is so much dead weight (in the church) because we have taught them (the congregation) to know and not do”“you cannot disciple people with books, you disciples them life on life”“obedience based discipleship lead to mission shaped disciples”“if we agree that everyone is gifted….then why are half the people in your church doing nothing”“it has become normal for huge parts of the body to be dead weight rather than mission shaped disciples……we have made it acceptable to sit in church week after week and do nothing and call yourself a follower of Jesus, and in doing so we have hindered the mission of God”
This is all challenging stuff. We need to listen to people like Ed Stetzer because we have a lot to learn about mission in our contemporary culture from faithful servants like him.
You can hear the second half of his sermon here.
Deliberate Disciple 