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.

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.