Breaking the Missional Code

I just finished reading Breaking the Missional Code: How Your Church Can Become a Missionary in Your Community by Ed Stetzer and David Putman.
Ed Stetzer is an experienced church planter who did research for the North American Mission Board (NAMB) at the time that he wrote the book, and now does research for LifeWay Christian Resources and also consults with NAMB. David Putman is also an experienced church planter.
Stetzer and Putman challenge the reader to see North America as a mission field, and use the same techniques in North America that international missionaries use-- particularly understanding the culture and context of your environment and making sure that you do not allow cultural barriers to prevent you from getting the message to people. Too often, pastors have tried to imitate the methods of other successful pastors like Rick Warren or Bill Hybels, rather than trying to discover the unique culture of their own community (which is what they call "breaking the missional code") and then applying that knowledge to designing ministry for their own community. The authors stress that every community is different, and within each community there are different cultures that need different kinds of congregations. A truly missional church will recognize this and seek to plant other churches for other cultures, such as ethnic groups, postmoderns, multi-family housing dwellers, etc.
The authors stress that in today's culture that is changing from modern to postmodern, we should no longer see missions and evangelism as separate activities, nor should we see discipleship and evangelism as separate. To "break the missional code," we must see that postmodern people will often come to the gospel through a slow process, through building relationships and through Bible teaching, since they often come from a culture that is ignore of the Bible, although open to spiritual things. Postmoderns may actually worship, participate in community projects with a church, attend Bible study and listen to sermons for a year or two before being ready to make a commitment to Christ. Thus the missional church must see that missions and discipleship are part of the process of doing evangelism.
This was a thought-provoking and challenging book. Every church leader would benefit from reading this book.

Dr. Geoff Hammond new president of NAMB

I'm very pleased to share that yesterday our board of trustees elected Dr. Geoff Hammond as the new president of the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Dr. Hammond grew up in Africa, the son of Southern Baptist missionaries, and was educated at Spurgeon's College in London. He came to the United States where he met his wife, Debbie. He has served as an IMB missionary in Brazil, and associational missionary in Arkansas, and a church planter and NAMB missionary in Virginia. For the past five years he has been the associate state executive for Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia.

I'm excited that we are getting a missionary to lead our mission agency for North America. I'm also excited that we are getting a man who is humble, brilliant, and a good listener. He understands that North America is a true mission field, and that we need to have a passion to reach the vast array of cultures who have come to North America. He speaks Portuguese, some Spanish, and he can converse in both American and British English! Pray for him as he moves his wife Debbie, and son Nicholas to Georgia. They have a son, Timothy, whom they will leave behind in college in Virginia.

The search committee did an excellent job. They left no stone unturned in the process. Dr. Hammond was given psychological tests, management tests, and submitted to all kinds of background checks. The search committee resisted political pressure to select somebody else's favorite. In fact, they told us that they received phone calls and letters for candidates, but they ignored the outside political pressure. Nobody on the committee had any personal connection to Dr. Hammond, although one member had met him when he was a missionary and had his picture on his refrigerator for years to pray for his missionary work. The trustees had a roll-call vote, yet the vote was an enthusiastically unanimous vote to call Dr. Hammond as our new president.

You can read an article about the election in The Christian Index here, which includes a quote from me.

You can read an interview with Dr. Hammond here.

You can see photos of the meeting here.

To see a video introducing Dr. Hammond (and hear his soft British accent), click here.