About two years ago, I got a call from a guy I had never heard of named Ed Stetzer. Ed called me up to say that he was planting a new church in Atlanta named Lake Ridge Church. It just so happened that I pastor a church in the Cleveland area named Lake Ridge Church and we had bought up the existing web domain names www.lakeridgechurch. Ed was wanting to know if we would part with one for their new church. We decided to let Ed have the .net name for the price we paid for it. He seemed like a nice enough guy on the phone. I was just hoping that this guy wasn’t a crook. Turns out he was ok.

Yesterday I was privileged to be able to sit with Ed and several church planters in the Cleveland area to have the fires of being missional fanned by Ed. Many of you know that Ed is the Research Team Director and Missiologist at NAMB in Atlanta. Ed is leading the charge in the SBC as well as other evangelical circles to spread the message of becoming missional not just being on mission. What is missional you might ask? Ed painted the missional definition as “God uses us to do missions in different places with different people in our culture.” He was basically saying that we need to know the whys of missions, not doing missions just because. Ed is one of the guys in the SBC who has a real pulse on our culture and how to reach those that live and exist in it. I like Ed, he is not afraid to ruffle the denominational feathers and pluck a few if need be. He isn’t a theorist like many writers, circuit speakers or denominational leaders. He has planted successful churches in Buffalo, NY, Erie, PA and in Cummin, GA and is using his knowledge to make a difference, not to build a reputation.

Ed has a new book coming out that every pastor and church planter should be required to read titled, Breaking the Missional Code that will be out in a few weeks. (Young guys take note, shameless plugs get you places in life.) While with us, Ed was gracious enough to give us an abbreviated talk on what the book emcompasses. His premise is that in order to reach the people in the culture, we have to live in the culture and seeks ways to break the code of the culture. There definitely is a code that if figured out will allow you to break into a culture and begin to evangelize it for Christ. Breaking the code means that we have to recognize that there are cultural barriers (in addition to spiritual ones) that blind people from understanding the culture. Ed shared that, “we must remove the stumbling blocks so the only stumbling block is the cross. Our task is to find the right way to break through those cultural barriers while addressing the spiritual and theological ones as well.”

My wife and I had lunch a couple of weeks ago with Glen Kreun of Saddleback Church and I asked his thoughts on the happenings at NAMB with Bob Reccord. During that conversation, I asked who he thought would make a good replacement for Bob or whose name had been thrown out there and Ed Stetzer’s name came up. I don’t think Ed’s ambition is to be President of NAMB, although I could be wrong, but he is the kind of guy that we need in our upper leadership of the SBC along with guys like Johnny Hunt, Rick Warren, and Ronnie Floyd. Maybe we need to start a write in campaign to vote Ed Stetzer for something! Just joking Ed. Please don’t ask me to take this post down.

Ed’s website is www.newchurches.com