Planting Missional Churches 1: Tradition vs. Technique

I’m doing a few series kind of interacting with and starting discussions about themes in some books on church planting. This series comes out of “Planting Missional Churches” by Ed Stetzer.

On page 22, Stetzer begins a discussion of tradition versus technique. He claims that we can do either to the extreme. He says that a church can rely too much on tradition, which will make the church irrelevant.

Have you ever seen a church like that? Well, of course you have, because almost every church is like that! If these churches were relying on biblical traditions I would understand. But most all of the traditions are man-made. Traditions like using an organ, having an invitation at the end of the message, wearing suits, sitting on pews, singing hymns, having Women’s Circles, Sunday School. Where do we find any of those traditions in the Bible? Answer? Well, no where. Yet so many churches hold on to those traditions as if they’re from God. What’s depressingly ironic is when a church will become completely ineffective in it’s mission of reaching living people whose eternity hangs in the balance, because it’s holding on to traditions created by dead people whose eternities are already decided. That’s just sad (and weird).

Next time I’ll tell you what Stetzer says about churches who rely too much on technique. It’s good stuff…

– featured on newchurches.com