Ed Stetzer on Acts 17 and Engaging the Culture

In this sermon at the Jubilee Church in London, Ed Stetzer discusses cultural-engagement and the task of proclaiming the Gospel.

Acts 17:16-34 is a really great passage because it offers us insight into how Paul took the Gospel to a society that was uninfluenced by the Judeo-Christian worldview and deeply pluralistic (read Sarah Tennant’s article on Acts 17 in our first issue of the Thinking Matters Journal). Here, Ed looks at what it means to live missional lives and especially what this means for our interaction with culture. He charts out a biblical understanding of this relationship and examines the difference between contending with the culture (Jude 3) vs contextualizing for the culture (1 Cor 9). He argues that we can learn from Paul in the way he:

1. Acknowledged the spiritual questions of the culture.
2. Understood the culture.
3. Acknowledged the positive and rebuked the negative, for the sake of the Gospel.

Downloads: LoDef DVD HiDef

Ed is someone who has thought deeply about mission, evangelism and church-planting. He is currently serving as the president of LifeWay Research, a ministry set up to assist and equip Christian leaders in encouraging church health and effectiveness.  Ed is also a contributing editor for Christianity Today and a Visiting Professor of Research and Missiology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age and Breaking the Missional Code (with David Putman).

For the audio version only, download the file here.

(HT: Adrian Warnock)