Friday is for Heart Songs
Ed Stetzer and Thom Rainer’s new book, Transformational Church: Creating a New Scorecard for Congregations, will be one of the texts in the Master’s level class that Ed and I will be co-teaching in the Fall at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Every day I get more excited about the class. I think what we will be covering is critical for the 21st century church. Critical.
Here’s how the book opens in chapter 1:
Transformation + Church
For followers of Jesus, these are two of the most important and powerful words in the world.
We treasure the concept of “transformation,” because radical change is the heart of the Christian message and because the power of the gospel changes everything–lives, churches, and communities. (p.1)
As Ed and I plot out the content of the class, I have begun to reflect on those first two sentences. Here’s a couple of thoughts:
- For too long the third leg of this stool has been absent, namely, transformed communities. Ed and I want to address how to change that. We are designing a class that will help your community love your church and the transformative blessing you bring to its neighborhoods.
- Transformed lives–lives that move from darkness to light, from the kingdom of this world to the kingdom of our God, from wickedness to righteousness, from uninvolved, apathetic, and crumbling families to harmonious, fun, and stable families, are desperately needed in our world. It will be thrilling to help congregational leaders and church planters think through the issues and obstacles to overcome to make that happen.
- Churches that are known for their faith, hope and love, their zeal, service and compassion, their exaltation of the risen Christ and their sacrificial love for their neighbors–those kind of churches have the capability of changing the world. We are looking forward to providing a class that will truly seminal in the development of such churches.
The class, through a quirk in the schedule, has a terrible time slot. But Ed and I are convinced that God is going to make this class a transformative experience for all of us, faculty, students and auditors alike.
So here’s the schedule:
Missional Leadership for Congregational and Church Planting Ministry
Monday – Thursday — August 29-September 1: 3:15-6:05 PM
Friday — September 2: 8:30-4:30 PM
Saturday — September 3: 8:30-4:00 PM
Terrible time, great class. Seating is limited, register soon.
(See also Wednesday’s post.)
