Over the years I have had the pleasure of building a friendship with Dr. Ed Stetzer who kindly joined our Acts 29 Church Planting Network board last year. Ed is a rare combination of rigorous biblical theology, pastoral kindness, and keenly honed missional wisdom. He has penned one of the best books on church planting (Planting Missional Churches), has one of the best church planting websites (www.newchurches.com), and has recently published a book titled Breaking the Missional Code: When Church Can Become Missionary in Your Community. I had the privilege of reading a pre-release copy of the book and found it a very timely contribution to the missional church conversation, with insights that were very practical and sorely needed by some emerging types who have lost their theological moorings in an effort to be culturally relevant. Ed was kind enough to answer a few of my questions about his new book:

What is missiology?
There are some great technical definitions of missiology, but let me use a popular one. If evangelism is telling people about Jesus, missions is understanding them before we tell them.

I think Christians often assume the gospel and church are intelligible to all people simply becuase they make sense to us. But, communicating requires understanding how people think-and missiology helps us to do that.

Spiritual barriers and blindess exist, and they keep people from understanding the gospel. Only God can address the stumbling block of the cross. However, we also believe there are cultural barriers that keep people from understanding the true meaning of the gospel and the purpose of the church. Missiology helps us present the gospel in a manner people can understand in their culture.

Practically speaking, missiology is about removing barriers and making way for the cross.

Why is missiology so hot today?
I think people have started to see that a biblical church that is relevant to today's culture requires some fresh thinking. Lots of people have, in the last twenty years, looked to missiology as the tool to explain how to reach people. This book is a practical missiology for churches.

With the convergence of the local and global, we need to recognize that we live in our "glocal" world. This book helps leaders think through how to apply some missionally sound strategies in their own churches.

To me, missiology is "hot" because it provides real answers for those who wonder why they are not more effective in seeing tranformed lives through the power of the Gospel. Missiology provides handles for those who are have a sincere desire to do whatever it takes to get the Great Commission done.

What is the central concept of your latest book?
In Breaking the Missional Code, we talk about the fact that "culture matters." It does, but there are few practical tools on how to engage culture. Our book is intended to be a practical handbook on how to apply this in your church.

In this book we recognized that if the Great Commission is to be realized, all people need to hear the gospel and experience church in a language they can understand. In a world where "all nations" can no longer be defined in simply linguistic terms, this is not easy. Since our context is made up of many people groups, population segments, and cultural environments, one size does not fit all-and we want to help churches find their biblical expression in every culture.

The companion book, Planting Missional Churches, is the second edition of Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age. It is updated with a few new chapters and lots of new examples.

What compelled you to write it?
I think evangelicalism is struggling with issues of ecclesiology and missiology. Ecclesiology, or the theology of the church, tells us what the church "is." I think we have developed patterns birthed out of "church culture" that many are finding less helpful in emerging contexts. So, the church needs a change-but that change needs to be a biblical transformation.

Only from a biblical foundation can and should the church address issues of culture. Our hope is that this book will help by practically addressing how the North American church can contextualize the gospel in such a way that churches take on an indigenous form in their setting. When this happens, impact and multiplication will take place.

Our hope is that this book will help people to think biblically and missiologically about their church and its setting.

How does it contribute to the growing discussion of gospel and culture engagement?
I hope it helps and reminds people that cultural engagement is not about goatees and indie rock. It's about planting and pastoring churches in your community and not in your head. It matters where and who you reach and serve.

I am unapologetic that we need to be culturally relevant. But, without biblical fidelity, cultural relevance has no purpose. My hope is that this will help churches to "contend for the faith once delivered" (Jude 3) even while they contextualize and "become all things to all men... to save some... for the sake of the gospel..." (1 Cor. 9:22-23). Our hope is that churches will be biblically faithful and culturally relevant-that they will contend and contextualize.

Who would be best served by reading your book?
Pastors and church leaders who value biblical fidelity and want to know how to engage culture. In addition, those who take the fulfillment of the Great Commission seriously will benefit. It is not enough to plant or grow one church in most contexts today. Most communities will require multiple expression of church. One can grow a great church and still fail at the "Great Commission." I hope every leader and pastor will find this book helpful when seeking to make the missional transition.

Who do you find is most resistant to the ideas you present in the book? Why?
I would think there would be two groups.

First, some people want to believe that culture does not matter. Whole ministries exist to preach against cultural engagement. But, preaching against culture is like preaching against someone's house-it is where they live. Some of it is good, some of it is bad, but some people will not be able to see that it matters at all.

Others want to be so a part of culture that they do not realize there is a cross, a substitute for our sin, a Bible, and teachings that are binding on our lives. They will object to the parts that say what the gospel and the church "is" and why that matters.

What do you hope the book achieves?
That God will receive more glory as His church remains deeply committed to scripture and reaches people in culture. That will be accomplished when pastors and leaders everywhere come to see that we are standing in the middle of the mission field-and that makes them and their churches missionaries for the glory of God.