Each week, the Flourish team would like to recommend resources that will help you on your journey of Church Renewal. While we don’t endorse every single idea from every single resource we are attempting to cultivate a useful resource list for you.
Resource: Breaking the Missional Code, by Ed Stetzer and David Putman
Background: Ed Stetzer is one of the most well-known church thinkers in America. David Putman has several books to his name including two with Ed. Ed and David were a the forefront of helping the evangelical church in America begin to think differently about our calling. This book was suggested to me by a good friend who recognized the beginning of a seed of doubt I had in my mind that I knew how I needed to go about leading the local church. He challenged me to read this book and it rocked my world.
Take-aways: There are two essentials things that are needed in order for us to new churches planted and others renewed. First, we have to really “own” that out ministry context has significantly changed. This is the passion of the first chapter. Second, we have to seek new equipping to help us “think” like missionaries because seminary didn’t teach us to do that. And many of us didn’t get into pastoral ministry thinking that it was going to be missionary work. Hopefully, seminary education will catch up reality and there are hopeful signs of that. For now, we’ll have to lean into equipping ourselves and this book can go a long way towards that end.
Source: You can purchase the book in print.
Bonus content: If you need more convincing to consider picking up the book, Trevin Wax and Tim Chester both found the book helpful. Hard to beat those reviewers!
