Jeff Vanderstelt is the visionary leader of the Soma Family of Churches and the lead teaching pastor at Doxa Church in Bellevue, WA. Jeff is the author of “Saturate,” “Saturate Field Guide,” and “Gospel Fluency” (2017). He and Jayne, his wife of twenty-three years, have three children; Haylee, Caleb, and Maggie.
Key Questions for Jeff Vanderstelt:
– How do you define the gospel?
– Where is the church missing the message of the gospel?
– How can a pastor in a smaller church get more community involvement in my ministry?
Key Quotes from Jeff Vanderstelt:
“We’ve missed how much the gospel impacts all of life.”
“In our preaching programs, are we just affirming an idolatrous view of man instead of a Christ-centered view of God’s people?”
“If the majority of conversion stories are primarily, somebody came and heard the preacher preach and came to faith that way, then you’re telling them that you can enter as an individual and leave as an individual and your conversion was largely individualistic.”
“Look at your week and see how much time you are putting into doing ministry and how much time are you putting into equipping ministers?”
“Ask yourself, if I were to put some time into a few for a season, what kinds of things would I train them to do to allow me to share leadership with more people in my church and redistribute a lot of my energies away from doing all the ministry for the people to equipping more people for the ministry.”
“The sin in our life or lack of fruit of the spirit is always connected to our beliefs, who God is and what has he done in my life.”
“Paying attention to our unbelief or wrong beliefs is key to understanding why we do what we do.”
“At the heart of your sin is a complete unbelief in the truths of who Jesus is and what he’s done for you.”
“Most of our thinking about discipleship and teaching has taken on this idea of, I’m the master teacher and you have to listen to what I have to say. There is potential for arrogance.”
“We have to do better about listening to people, better at asking questions. We have to assume that we don’t know everything.”
“When you give someone the opportunity to open up and share and you are genuinely interested in them, people will spill out all kinds of stuff that they’ve probably never told anybody. If those moments don’t happen you’re not really making disciples….it’s just information dump.”
“We believe the best place to disciple people, the Jesus commanded way to disciple people, is we have to disciple people in everyday places.”
