I attended an event today about “Transformational Church” by Ed Stetzer and Thom Rainer. The book was written based on research Stetzer coordinated in churches throughout the U.S. After writing the book they developed an assessment tool and other resources designed to help churches develop strategies to become more like the transformational churches in the study. For more info, go to www.transformationalchurch.com.
In the six-hour seminar I attended, I didn’t hear anything new. In fact, I came away feeling pretty good about the church where I recently stepped down as pastor to work for the Peninsula Baptist Association. I feel our church would score rather well in these categories as they were described to us. I know most of Lifeway’s constituency is in more traditional churches, and their products reflect this. Stetzer and Rainer are probably the two most cutting edge folks working on the denominational level with the Southern Baptist Convention.
Topics covered included:
Missionary Mentality, Vibrant Leadership, Relational Intentionality, Prayerful Dependence, Worship, Community and Mission
Before passing judgement on this new tool, I’d like to get some feedback from a church that has taken the assessment survey and gone through the consultation process. I’d be curious as how it stacks up to Natural Church Development, and the Church Health assessment tools. I spoke with one of the consultants who is available to come into a church to walk them through this process. It didn’t sound like their training was as rigorous as the training for NCD (which I went through several years ago).