Ed Stetzer and David Putnam, Breaking the Missional Code: Your Church Can Become a Missionary in Your Community. B & H Publishing, 2006.
Companion volume: Stetzer, Breaking the Discipleship Code
Referenced in: Missional Communities – Missio Dei
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
Ed Stetzer is one of the most astute observers of churches today. As a highly respected academician, he writes with scholarship, balance and insight. As an experienced church leader, he writes out of practical awareness. This book reflects a thread that runs throughout his writings, that to be “missional” one does not have to adopt a new model that jettisons all established practices. From a missiological perspective, however, a church that wants to be truly “missional” in their context must know how to discern the unique features of that setting and craft well-suited approaches.
This is one of the better texts available on helping the average church leader understand the new North American context and know how to “break the missional code” in order to become more effective in their specific location.
Stetzer addresses a reality faced by many who read missional material, and that is some churches and the communities that surround them are still largely unaffected by the postmodern ethos. He says:
The issue is that you have to decide where you are living. Are you in a community firmly entrenched in the worldview of modernity? If you seek to lead your church to reach postmoderns, you will first need to convert people to postmodernism and then to Christ. Is that really our mission? Maybe you are in an area of the continent that is more comfortable with traditional approaches and churches. Great! Become missional in that context, not a trendy community somewhere far away. For too many, they love their preferences and their strategies more than they love the people whom God has called them to reach. (5-6)
But for those who may hear this as justification for modernistic entrenchment, Stetzer reminds us that many have not experienced the postmodern shift “because the church culture acts as a protective shield, unmolested by a secular culture’s music, literature, and values.” (7) Even beyond the church, there are “pockets” of culture in general that still live in much the same manner as their parents before them. However, even though the societal shift has not yet made its fullest and deepest impact, many people can see the meteorite of cultural change moving their way. They can see the changes taking place in their children’s lives—how they think and reason, how they view life, and how they act differently. Evangelical churches, firmly rooted in modernity, sit in a culture that has moved beyond modern ideas. Language has changed, music has changed, and worldview has changed. Our churches need to decide whether they will be outposts of modernity in a new age or embrace the challenge of breaking a new cultural code. (8)
Some churches have broken this code and become quite effective in the new era. Most churches, however, languish both in terms of fostering true discipleship among their members as well as reaching unbelieving populations.
To deal with this, Stetzer provides sixteen chapters on how to both understand the new era and know how to engage it:
- The Emerging Glocal Context – surveys the changes occurring in North America that are bringing the world to our doorstep
- Breaking the Missional Code – describes churches that have broken the cultural code, and the many different ways it occurs.
- Responding to the Commissions of Jesus – discusses the missional implications of the commands of Jesus.
- The Missional Church Shift – defines what is meant by “missional” and helps churches find strategies that connect with people in their context.
- Transitions to Missional Ministry – describes how effective missional churches look different than the successful churches of the past, and shows how some of these churches transitioned to missional ministry.
- Values of Leaders and Churches that Break the Code – highlights the values and purposes of missional churches that are transcultural and eternal.
- Contextualization: Making the Code Part of Your Strategy – provides a very simple and workable plan for analyzing and understanding your community in order to reach it.
- Emerging Strategies – offers a picture of some of the more nouveau methods being used by some missional churches.
- Spiritual Formation and Churches that Break the Code – discusses how understanding the spiritual nature and function of a missional church enables the church to focus on its purposes.
- Revitalizatoin to Missional Ministry – shows how established churches can be revitalized as they reinvent and reintroduce themselves to their communities.
- Planting Missional Ministries – describes the effectiveness of church planting in the missional era and how the innovative ways of these new churches.
- Emerging Networks: New Paradigms of Partnership – discusses the how churches are working together to accomplish God-given vision
- Breaking the Code Without Compromising the Faith – instructs on how to engage in missional code-breaking without changing or compromising the faith.
- Best Practices of Leaders and Churches that Break the Code – describes how code-breaking churches function as they conduct missional ministry.
- The Process of Breaking the Code – offers a step-by-step process to understanding and strategizing to reach your community.
- Breaking the Unbroken Code – presents motivation for churches that are having special difficulties in breaking the code.
This is my first recommendation for understanding all things missional. I also recommend a follow-up volume by Stezter and Putnam, Breaking the Discipleship Code.
From the Publisher
Across North America, many pastors are excited to see churches growing as they achieve their mission to connect the message of the gospel with the community at large. Still others are equally frustrated, following the exact same model for outreach but with lesser results. Indeed, just because a “missional breakthrough” occurs in one place doesn’t mean it will happen the same way elsewhere.
One size does not fit all, but there are cultural codes that must be broken for all churches to grow and remain effective in their specific mission context. Breaking the Missional Code provides expert insight on church culture and church vision casting, plus case studies of successful missional churches impacting their communities.
“We have to recognize there are cultural barriers (in addition to spiritual ones) that blind people from understanding the gospel,” the authors write. “Our task is to find the right way to break through those cultural barriers without removing the spiritual and theological ones.”
About the Authors
Ed Stetzer has planted churches in New York, Pennsylvania, and Georgia and transitioned declining churches in Indiana and Georgia. He has trained pastors and church planters on five continents, holds two masters degrees and two doctorates, and has written dozens of articles and books. Ed is a columnist for Outreach Magazine and Catalyst Monthly, serves on the advisory council of Sermon Central and Christianity Today’s Building Church Leaders, and is frequently cited or interviewed in news outlets such as USAToday and CNN.
David Putman is executive pastor at Mountain Lake Church, which is located just outside Atlanta, Georgia.
***For additional information on this resource, including reviews, click the bookstore links. Check the reference at page top or the links below for resource guides on related topics.***
See Resource Guides on Related Areas:
- Missional Perspectives, Introduction
- Missional Church Resources, Introduction and Index
- Church Leadership and Renewal, Index to Resources
See Resources on Over 100 Areas of Ministry Leadership: