What is Your Mission? | Mission Musings

Hey friends, welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast.
Our series on mission continues today
as we go through the big picture of what is our mission?
What do we mean when we use this word?
It’s a familiar word.
It’s a common word.
It’s a word that if you’ve been in church,
you’ve heard it used.
You probably have been in situations where there’s even a committee or a
not a consensus on what it means.
There’s a lot of assumptions around this term,
and it’s a term
that in the church over the last couple of decades,
we have really been trying to focus on to kind of
reimagine, to re-understand what this word means.
And today we want to look in the broadest picture
of some of what we mean when we use this word.
Yeah, and when we talk about mission,
we have to start with some of those basic understandings that maybe we all come to the conversation with.
And, you know, I have been a part of a number of congregations now,
Clint, I’m sure you have as
well, where the idea of mission is thrown around at the leadership level,
even sometimes at the
congregational level.
And sometimes the temptation is to think of mission as that thing that you do
that you put on a wall in your building,
or it’s a phrase that you put on the front of your bulletin,
or you’re making a new website,
and what’s our mission statement.
And sometimes we boil that down to,
in some ways, a little bit of corporate speak,
what is the thing that we’re going to focus on
that makes us unique and different.
And when we talk about mission,
that’s not what we have
in mind.
What we’re talking about really doesn’t,
I think, even critique that we’re not arguing
for or against that.
I think what we’re doing is we’re arguing for a much more holistic
understanding of the church’s understanding of what it’s called to do,
both theologically and then out of that,
very practically.
And so the point,
the very long introduction here to say is,
when we’re talking about mission,
we’re not thinking about the particular sort of programmatic
or structural kinds of things that we sometimes find ourselves calling mission.
We have in mind a much sort of broader conversation.
But Clint,
I mean, I don’t know, maybe you disagree with me on this.
We don’t discount those things,
but that’s not what we are emphasizing here.
So I actually think one of the things that has happened,
Michael, is that the church has borrowed some of its language from the corporate world.
And in the corporate world,
mission has been a buzzword for a while.
And the idea of a mission,
particularly a mission statement, is something small,
something short,
something manageable, that this corporate idea
that the church has,
I think, adopted to a large extent is that you should be able to take all of
what you do and boil it down into kind of a sound bite.
And it’s interesting, as I look at what the
church is now doing with the word “mission,” it seems to me that we’re trying to do just the
opposite, that we are trying to expand the word,
that we are trying to remember and remind ourselves
that the mission of God,
the mission thereby given to the church,
is not something that we can
condense into a couple of sentences.
It’s not something we can make simple and pithy.
It is enormous.
It is all-encompassing.
And I think that is in some ways a richer conversation.
I think this idea of the small definition and the large definition,
not only is it helpful,
I think it’s accurate.
I think that historically we have moved to a point in the church where we kind of have
accepted a small working definition of the word “mission,” and we find ourselves in a position
where we’re trying to expand it.
So maybe a practical way to talk about this is we’ve all had
experiences in which we’ve had a good experience,
maybe at like a restaurant,
and then we’ve had
an experience that was just fine.
And the difference between those two often doesn’t boil down to the
things that were done as much as the spirit in which they were done.
And it’s really striking.
When you encounter someone who really cares,
when they care about what they’re doing and they care
about the experience that you’re having,
it shows through.
It’s authentic and meaningful.
And that too has been a buzzword over the last 10,
15 years, this idea that we should be authentic.
What I mean by that is it should flow naturally from who we are as people.
And so these smaller missions that
you’re talking about, Clint, these things flow naturally out of the larger mission of being the people of God.
The problem is we sometimes go the wrong way.
We start with our own preferences or
ideas or the things that we think we should be doing,
and we then go from there and try to connect
it to the larger mission.
We try to say,
well, hey, this is a thing that we are doing,
and it connects in this way.
It’s better to allow that natural progression from the larger calling that
we have as people of God,
and then for that to flow naturally into the specific ways that we do it,
because it becomes part of who we are.
Mission is ultimately a question of identity,
not a question of church programs.
And the only way that you can live that out is for that transformation to happen,
and then for it to affect what we do and how we do.
And it does have practical implications for
church budgets and for church programming and church staff.
If we don’t do outward-facing
things, we’ve clearly not been transformed by the identity that we’ve been given in Christ,
but yet,
in reality, if we focus on doing those things,
we just become a place that has programs
and that has outward-facing sort of intentions,
but it may not be connected to the deeper root
of who we’re called to be.
Yeah, I think if you want to boil it down very practically,
we have replaced the whole with the part.
So if you ask people in their churches,
what does your mission
committee do?
If there’s a group that is in charge of mission in a congregation,
there’s about a 95%
chance that that has something to do with possibly some local outreach,
but probably some worldwide programs,
some partnerships with what we call missionaries,
people out in other parts of the
world doing Christian stuff.
Maybe it is compassion and care ministries.
Maybe that is evangelism.
But we have in the church kind of said that’s what it means for congregations to do mission,
to partner with other people,
to do those things that we kind of don’t do.
In other words,
we’ve not asked about how those things are done in the congregation and through the congregation.
Mission committees tend to be,
by and large, a pass-through entity where dollars from the church
get outside of the church.
And there is nothing wrong with that,
but we have framed that as if
that were the whole of mission for a congregation.
And the reality is that’s only,
or should be at
least, only a small part of mission for a congregation.
But we’ve taken that as kind of normative,
and we’ve allowed the definition of mission to shrink based on that experience.
In my own experience.
Right.
And how is it shrinking in that,
I think, is a good question to ask.
Because ultimately,
we may be doing some of these tasks.
Say that we have a food bank.
Say that we are
going to serve in underprivileged communities.
Maybe we are partnering with Christians and
missionaries around the world.
The sense is aren’t we doing the mission when we send the dollars or
when we connect these places in need with resources that they have?
The answer is, of course, that’s a part of the mission.
The problem is when we get into the practice of essentially exporting
goods from where we are,
and those goods don’t allow us and our own lives to be transformed by
the work of God in those places and with those people.
When we send money and we’re not invested
in it, when our identities aren’t in any way shaped by that,
that is when we begin to see
that we’re not participating in this mission.
We’re rather just sort of funneling and continuing
sort of this practice.
And I want to make it clear,
we’re not being critical of churches who support
missionaries and mission projects.
That’s important.
In fact,
there’s a lot of healthcare
institutions.
There’s a lot of orphanages.
There’s a lot of clean water projects that would not have
happened without Christians and churches and organizations working together to make that
possible.
So to whatever extent people’s lives are blessed and supported and maybe even prolonged by these gifts,
thanks be to God.
But ultimately,
it’s not just a practice.
It’s not a one-way street.
It’s not just a practice of us sending these things out so that good gets done in the world.
It’s about us being formed and transformed into the kind of people for whom these gifts are a
normative part of our identity.
First as individuals, then as communities of faith.
So that other people might look in and see this is a continuation of a reality that has always been
for them.
That they are those who receive the gift of Christ and so therefore they know no other way
than to give the gift of Christ to those that surrounds them.
Some of that is financial,
but some of that lives in much more sort of practical,
much more everyday living kinds of
things.
And so today we’re going to work that out a little bit.
We’re going to frame exactly how
some of these things get lived out in our life both individually,
but then also in a much larger
sort of corporate communal frame.
I think maybe one of the telling markers is that when we talk
about mission from a small perspective or a small definition,
we tend to talk about individuals
and programs.
So people that we support who are doing quote-unquote mission or dollars that we
tag as quote-unquote mission and send to organizations and programs that support those things.
And again,
all of that the church should be doing.
All of that is important.
But the larger definition is how we interact with and participate not with people and entities,
but with the kingdom of God.
So maybe the most practical,
maybe the simplest example is evangelism.
I think every Christian would acknowledge that evangelism is part of our mission.
If we talk about what is the church called to do,
spreading the good news of Jesus Christ,
sharing the gospel is going to be on nearly everyone’s list.
But it’s one thing to say we raise money in Spirit Lake
and we send it to someone in China who’s doing that.
That’s wonderful.
But what do we do here?
How are we doing evangelism?
How are we sharing the gospel?
How are we participating in that work
of the kingdom here where we live?
And one question can’t replace the other.
We need both.
We need to be involved in the work in the world,
but we shouldn’t look past the work
in our own context,
in our own place.
So I think that larger definition of participating and
joining God’s work throughout the world and where we are,
it helps us kind of focus our
exploration here of what it means to do mission.
So I think a helpful frame for me when I think
of this topic of evangelism,
Clint, is that we sometimes get hung up on the idea of evangelism
as a thing that we have to go out of our comfort zone.
We have to sort of engage people.
We have to pull them to our side.
Sometimes we even think of that as maybe a little argumentative.
There’s this whole group that sort of thinks of evangelism as apologetics and sort of trying to making a case for the faith.
And I’m not saying that there’s not a time or place for that,
but I think the gospel
narratives paint a much different picture.
We don’t argue people in the kingdom.
Rather, we point to Jesus Christ.
And I think if you look at the gospel accounts,
the people who are the most
effective evangelists are those who are most willing to share their story of how they encountered
Jesus Christ.
And so evangelism, we think of, I think often is going out as a very external sort of process.
I think maybe actually a more helpful frame is to think of that as going
inward and being willing to reflect upon our faith story,
to name the moments in which we’ve
seen Jesus Christ at work.
Maybe that even begins with journaling.
It begins with a very
self-reflective spiritual practice where we’re willing to sort of see how God has worked in
our life.
Because when we see that,
then that becomes a foundation upon which we can share
the faith with other people.
We can sort of express to them in our own life experience.
You know, I’ve gone through dark seasons.
I’ve had a season of depression or a moment where I
remember our finances were tight or a time when my relationships were struggling.
Whatever those moments of our life have been,
we’ve all walked through difficult seasons that God has been
faithful in those seasons.
Evangelism sometimes is as simple as being mindful of what God has done
and then being willing and having the words that you can share that with other people.
I think that we often tend to confuse evangelism with proclamation,
you know,
something like Billy Graham Crusades or even the street preacher.
The idea that evangelism always
involves kind of verbal conversion or convicting others.
And that’s certainly true.
There is a place
for that in the work of the kingdom.
That’s certainly part of the evangelistic work.
But at its heart,
at its simplest,
evangelism is simply sharing good news.
And that can be done
in a variety of ways.
Evangelism is encouragement.
It is invitational.
If you look at the Gospels,
it is far more often,
particularly in the work of Jesus,
it is far more often invitational than it is confrontational.
It is an invitation to find yourself within the scope of God’s grace,
God’s plan,
and God’s ongoing work in the kingdom.
It is a call.
It is a welcome
back to who you were truly called to be and made to be.
And it is an introduction to know
and follow the one who has made you.
And we are intimidated by the word because I think
so many of us think it means we need to preach at people or hopefully at best preach to people.
But when we live out the faith and when we care for people and when we enact the grace of Christ
in an outward way toward others,
when we live a joyful and grateful lives,
we are being evangelical.
We are sharing the good news.
We are being examples of a transformed life.
And at our best as Christians,
that is, I think, the most effective way to do evangelism.
And that’s not to discount certainly preaching and proclamation.
It is to say that while there are
some that are called to do that,
we are all called to live lives that share the good news with those around us.
Yeah. A thing that strikes me,
some of the people who I’ve seen who have been the
strongest, what I would call evangelists,
people who have that gift of evangelism is,
you know, they’re strikingly,
they noticeably don’t think of evangelism as the work of the church.
And I mean that in the sense both that they don’t think of it as a thing that lives outside of their purview.
They recognize it’s a part of the Christian life.
I think, I mean, even more so though,
that these individuals often have internalized this idea that evangelism happens outside the walls, programs,
practices of the place where they are fed.
That they’ve come to recognize
that church is the place where we are nourished,
where we’re encouraged, where we’re filled up.
And then we leave that place so that we can be invitational in the world in which we live.
So these people,
they exude faith at the coffee shop when they’re sitting and having coffee and
donuts with others.
They exude faith when they’re with their family and they’re able to sit and
non-anxiously listen and care and support those who are going through difficult times.
That these are ways in which we show others the grace and love of Jesus Christ.
That we invite them
into a new way of being.
And it doesn’t happen in church.
So the temptation is that evangelism is
getting people to church or getting them to the crusade or getting them to the concerts or this
idea that it’s all about getting people into the thing that the church does.
And those are well
and good.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
In fact, that is some people’s road to the good news.
But that’s a very,
very small image of what we mean by evangelism.
Evangelism is really us recognizing that wherever we go,
that is God’s mission field.
Wherever we are living and serving and having relationships,
these are places we’re called to be bearers of the good news of Jesus Christ.
And that more holistic understanding of evangelism,
I think is less threatening, number one.
I think, number two, it’s far more effective when people see the humble and the
truly reverent person living their life as best as they can.
That is a far more compelling
evangelistic message than a slick,
polished, sort of intended message that we’re sharing with the world.
Yeah,
the proclamation ministries may be more dramatic in some senses,
but I think the
relational ministries are more endearing,
more enduring,
and more widespread.
I think far more
of us would say that we came into the faith not by the big event,
but by a teacher,
an aunt, an uncle, a parent, a sibling,
a spouse,
a someone, a friend, a coworker, who walked the walk of Jesus
in front of us and somehow found a way naturally to include us in that.
And so,
yes, we would all agree that part of what God wants for the world is for people to come to knowledge of his work in Jesus Christ.
And therefore, part of the calling of Christian mission is for every Christian to participate in that.
And I know that brings lots of uncomfortable images of where would you go if
you died tonight and do you know the four spiritual laws?
But that only doesn’t need to be,
I think I would argue,
probably shouldn’t be the dominant way that we practice the sharing of good news.
There are some for whom that works.
For most of us,
living an outwardly focused life and trying to
follow Jesus will be its own kind of evangelism.
And I think in some ways a more powerful version of it.
And we have to recognize that our temptation,
as we’ve already named to see
the mission of God,
our participation, that mission to be our temptation is to make it an
issue of proclamation about what we say in the world about saying the right things.
We fail to recognize the unbelievable power of what we do and the practices that we set ourselves to.
And I think maybe a good term for this, Clint, is outreach.
It’s certainly a good term when we
think of it in our organized practice of our Christian faith.
It’s those things that we
determine to do that are purposely looking outside the bounds of our own walls and our own relationships.
And I want to be very clear here.
It is a human temptation to dig in deep,
to circle the wagons,
and to create orders and systems for the people inside the group.
And this is a temptation for the church,
and it always has been a temptation for the church.
It’s been that reality that we have the group of people that we have,
and we try to accommodate
that group’s preferences and that group’s desires,
and we try to navigate that together.
But the mission of God is for the church to be the people formed and then sent to bring the good
news of God to all of the world.
And we can’t do that when we’re only focused on the internal
work growth support and encouragement of the church.
We, in other words, have to set our
sights beyond the people that we know.
This is unbelievably challenging.
Number one, it’s uncomfortable.
It’s difficult to think about how we’re going to be welcoming and opening to people
who don’t have the same experience or the same sort of faith story that we might have.
When someone comes to church, that always brings with it a risk because they bring with them a different set of
questions.
They may even bring with them a very different set of fundamental assumptions.
And now you have to listen.
You have to learn.
You have to connect with that person,
and you have to do this
dance of making that initial relationship.
That’s hard work.
Yet that is part of what we’re called
to do is to move our resources and our time so it’s not just dedicated to those within the church,
but to those without.
And I think maybe a very good example when this is functioning at its best
is something like VBS,
vacation ministries here at the church.
They include lots of kids from our
community whose families don’t consider this a place where they come every Sunday.
Is it a huge
ministry that brings in a ton of different people?
No.
But it’s one thing that a congregation can do
that is intentionally hospitable, intentionally outward facing.
We’re excited that your kids get
to come here and be with us for a week,
and we want to bless them and nothing more than that.
That is a kind of outreach,
a kind of opportunity to purposely sell our sights on,
“This is not just for us.” And in doing so,
we’re participating in a very different sort of
programmed intentional outreach ministry.
Yeah, I think I would say that historically, Michael,
and certainly currently,
outreach is one of the most powerful
tools that the church has at its discretion because it is not,
its focus is not on what we
gain out of it.
When we take a mission trip,
when there are people hurting and we seek to be helpful,
when the church takes a public role in addressing real needs of its communities and world without
benefiting from that other than knowing it’s doing its calling,
it’s doing the work to which
God has sent it to do,
I think that is a wonderful witness.
I’ve told this story before,
but in the Ocean Springs, Mississippi, to help with rebuilding.
And when we would hit the hardware store for supplies,
I remember just being aware of, almost overwhelmed,
that I remember a church van from
Connecticut.
There was our church van from Iowa.
There was a Dallas Baptist van from somewhere in Texas.
There was an independent church from Colorado.
There was probably in that Home Depot parking lot,
there were religious faith Christian organizations represented from maybe eight to 10
states who couldn’t have agreed on much.
If you had sat us all down and said,
“What do you agree on?”
it would have been a little bit of a struggle because there were evangelicals and there were
Catholics and there were Presbyterians and there were Episcopalians.
And yet,
there we all were
because people were hurting.
And in each context,
we heard the call of God say,
“Go help them.” And it was really interesting,
I think a profound moment.
If you look at historically who has gone
into those moments with an intention of trying to make them better,
it has been people of faith.
Now, it hasn’t only been people of faith,
but we’ve always been there.
We’ve always been on those front lines,
aid workers throughout the world,
mission trips throughout our region,
whatever that is, it has largely been Christians hearing that call of outreach that have been moved.
And I think because we have really nothing to gain personally from that in our organizations,
it is a powerful witness.
When the world sees that,
they see Christians not as sort of meddling
people who want to tell others what to do or who want to tell people who’s going to heaven or who’s not.
They just,
at our best, they see people who want to help because they believe that’s what God
has called them to do.
And I think that’s a powerful message.
It’s powerful.
It’s also dangerous because when we lose sight of that core value that we’re doing this because God has called
us to do it.
And we replace that value with some form of self-seeking.
Either we’re trying to build
our own kingdom and we’re trying to have everybody point back to us or what we simply just want to
feel good about ourselves.
The moment when we replace doing God’s mission as our driving force
and we replace that with any other self-seeking form of sort of public display,
at that moment, we’re doing far more damage than we would have ever done good.
Because ultimately,
instead of that act,
instead of that moment,
pointing others to the boundless,
endless grace and love of Jesus Christ,
it now becomes self-referential.
It becomes about us,
about our own effort and about our own work.
And the honest truth is we live in a cynical time.
We live in a cynical
age.
We live in a moment where culture is very,
very skeptical of people doing good for other
people.
That the assumption is in our moment that everything has strings attached.
So when we do
something and by the grace of God,
when we do it with the right motive and intention,
that is an incredibly compelling and powerful message.
When we make the mistake of replacing and inserting
ourselves into that spot,
we become a great stumbling block to the kingdom.
The thing that we should have been doing that would help actually I think goes a long ways to hurting because people
see, well, there’s another group of Christians doing a thing that is all about their own effort.
Their own agenda.
And that is not at all what we are called to be as the people of faith.
Ultimately, it’s not about the impression that it leaves others about what we did or didn’t do.
Ultimately, it’s about Jesus Christ being the center.
Us and our actions and our lives pointing to Him.
So this is an invitation to have an incredibly compelling message to the world.
It’s also an opportunity for us to make a huge stumbling block for those who are looking in to
see what the church is doing,
what Christians are about in the world.
Yeah, I would say that that outreach ministry is fairly transparent and whatever motivates it is
likely to show through pretty clearly.
And if it is not Christ-centered,
the world is pretty good
at sniffing that out.
I think that we will likely be found out if our motives are not the proper ones.
So I think I’d move us,
Michael, to one more kind of external idea.
And this is related
to outreach, but this is the idea of kind of social justice,
social ministry.
You know, the scriptures are full of calls to advocate on behalf of those who don’t have much power.
They’re also filled with accusation,
with accountability for those who abuse those
who have no power.
And the church really is called,
and this is probably the messiest aspect
of mission.
It is this calling to be at work in systems to try and ensure justice and fairness
for those who are sometimes oppressed,
abused,
taken advantage of for those who don’t have voices.
The church does this really,
really well in some areas.
And in other areas, the church
has caused a lot of controversy,
a lot of conflict.
These are sometimes messy and difficult waters to navigate,
but there is within the mission of God a clear calling to care for the poor and the hurting of the world,
but not simply in the aftermath of their pain,
but in the prevention and in the
origination of why those situations exist.
Why are there hungry people when there’s enough food?
Why are the poor not taken care of as well as they could be?
Why are some group of people
pushed to the fringe and receive less attention and less effort?
And when Christians encounter
that, it is incumbent upon us because of the work of Jesus Christ,
because of the kingdom of God
to be at work in those.
Now, I think this generates probably the most disagreement,
because Christians have different takes on things,
particularly when you’re dealing with
political structures and national questions,
worldwide global issues.
But this is part of
the mission of the church,
and it’s something that the church can’t simply not do because it
is at times uncomfortable.
Yeah, absolutely.
This is difficult, as you say, because of the specificity,
and yet it is no less required that we must focus and remember our calls,
the people of God,
to be a voice for those who may not have a voice.
I think that this is something
that we can easily pass over.
I’m going to throw this up here,
Clint.
This is from Luke chapter 4, verse 18.
This is very famously when Jesus is preaching at one of his very first sermons,
as told by the book of Luke.
And this is the text that he reads.
He reads, “The Spirit of the Lord
is on me, because he’s anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He sent me to proclaim
freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” He finishes here, verse 21,
“Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” And this is,
if you know this story,
there’s a quick road
from Jesus reading this and saying that this is fulfilled to Jesus being run out of town,
to have almost thrown over a cliff.
The crowd tries to get rid of Jesus.
The kingdom that Jesus
proclaims in every gospel,
as we see the gospel accounts of who Jesus was,
Jesus is out in the
world writing that which is wrong.
He’s healing bodies that are sick.
He’s feeding those who are hungry.
He’s setting free those who are in demon possession.
Jesus is out in this new kingdom
to uproot the things that get in the way of the people and their God.
And he does that
for the sake of every single person.
Jesus is always seeking to set free.
By the way, even those people who are doing the oppressing,
Jesus is working to undermine the oppression so
that they too can be in relationship with that.
That is the extreme grace and providence of Jesus
Christ that he is able to bring salvation and freedom to every single person in the conversation.
Now, the struggle with this is we live in a world and we try in our own lives,
in our own moments,
to try to live out this as best as we can.
And there are significant disagreements about the
best way to do that.
The problem is those arguments tend to get advanced far quicker than the central vision and goal.
We all must start at the table with the recognition and the shared reality that
our calling is to bring good news from the poor.
That Jesus meant it when he said he came to set the oppressed free.
That we should be part of losing those or bringing freedom for the prisoners,
recovery of sight for the blind.
This is what Jesus came to do and as his hands and feet in
it is also our calling in a conditional sense to bring the same to the world.
If we can start
at that origin point,
then some of the arguments of best practice and best ways forward,
those are arguments that people in a gracious and humble spirit can have.
But I fear that sometimes the
church skips to that and doesn’t start this shared assumption.
The faith has always been clear,
the Christian faith has always been clear,
though we’ve not always lived it out clearly,
that this is a fundamental core of who we are as those who live on this side of the kingdom of God.
I think that outreach to some extent and maybe more this idea of social righteousness
bring the church into contact with
the most uncomfortable scenarios,
both in terms of the issues and the people.
And these are difficult for us.
It is one thing to talk about,
yes, we want to care for the poor.
It is another thing to open the doors of the church
and know what to do and how to interact with people who are poor that show up.
And what do they truly need and how do we truly help?
It is one thing to say,
yes,
God wants justice in the world.
It is another thing to be aware of situations in which justice
might be delayed or denied to groups of people or to individuals and for the church to be at work,
to be advocates, to try and minimize or eradicate those situations.
These put the church on the
forefront of some, I think,
tenuous conversations and they are challenging.
But that certainly something being uncomfortable does not make it optional.
And so for the church,
there is simply no way to read the scriptures of either the Old or New Testament and miss the idea that we are
called to be at work in the world for justice, for equality,
for advocacy.
I mean,
if you don’t see
that in the in the scripture,
I would I think I would argue that we’re not reading it very closely.
So we move from that to not just the task that we have as those who are called to live in the world
so that justice is made more plain,
more clear because of our work as Christians.
That has an outward focus.
And in other words,
that will lead the world somewhere.
But we must recognize that
part of the reason that that task is difficult is because it requires the transformation of our own
imaginations.
It requires us to be willing to give up some privileges or some things that we would
love to have.
But for the sake of helping and blessing others,
we’re willing to let go of.
This is one of the core requirements for this thing that we call discipleship, the requirement
of being willing to let go of something so that God can work in us spirits that are more Christlike.
Discipleship is ultimately when we work in this kingdom of God,
when we live our lives with this
greater awareness of our task and calling as Christians,
then we recognize that there’s going
to be parts of our life that are going to need to be transformed so that they look more and more like the Savior.
That there are some things in us,
maybe it’s our anger,
maybe it’s our inability to trust,
maybe it is our fear and anxiety,
maybe it is just simply a kind of ongoing pessimism that
doesn’t let us live into what God has called us to.
That different things beset different people
at different times of their life.
But this is what we must,
as people of faith do in discipleship,
is allow God to work in us a new way of being,
to be transformed,
to be even in some ways
confronted by the reality of our own sinfulness and the requirement to trust God and to be renewed
in a new day.
And this is a task that doesn’t just happen individually.
For those folks who
sometimes ask, you know, why do we even need church?
Why can’t I just be Christian unto myself?
Well, this is part of the answer,
is that we must together as a body read scripture.
We must, as a body, be willing to submit to learning and leaning into the faith perspectives of others
because it’s in this process that we find the checks and balances to our own selfishness and
pride.
We find in the wisdom of others the ability for us to begin to more and more look like Jesus
because their vantage is required for us to see the vastness of who Jesus is.
So this one thing
leads to the next.
We don’t just serve because we’re called to,
though that’s a reason unto itself.
We serve because ultimately it will also work within us to transform our vision of the world
so that we can be the kind of people we’re called to be.
Yeah, if I could insert an idea here,
Michael, I think we’re kind of turning a corner.
So historically,
and I think in most of our
lifetimes, if we would talk about mission in a church,
we would talk outwardly, right?
Outreach, care and compassion.
Most people would say yes.
Evangelism, of course,
proclaiming the good news throughout the world.
Missionaries, sending people, that makes sense.
Social justice, we wouldn’t agree necessarily on what it should be,
but we would all agree that it should be done.
There would be arguments about the particulars of it,
but there would be by and large agreements
that Christians should be involved in it.
As we turn the corner to something like discipleship,
I think in some ways this is where the conversation of mission has been reinvigorated in our own day
that there are internal aspects.
In other words, there is mission inside the congregation.
It’s not all out beyond the walls.
We’ve historically said mission is what happens outside of the church,
but I think it’s helpful to realize we’re being pushed on that,
and we’re coming to again sort
of realize that there is mission that happens inside the church.
And I think you’re exactly
right, Michael, that one of those primary missions inside a congregation is discipleship.
How do we grow as Christians?
How do we become better at following Jesus?
If I’ve been in church
for 20 years and I’m just as good at following Jesus as I was 20 years ago,
if I only know as
much about Jesus as I did 20 years ago,
I’ve missed some growth along the way.
I have missed some opportunities.
Yes, there are up and downs.
Yes, there are struggles.
No, we never get there.
But as we grow in the faith,
we become hopefully better able to live out some of those aspects.
Maybe I’m less likely to fly off the handle.
Maybe I’m less judgmental.
Maybe I’m more loving.
Maybe I’m more gracious.
Those things that we seek to be in Jesus.
And most of us,
while we practice those
things on our own,
most of us look inside the church for some of that process to happen.
We look to Bible studies.
We look to worship.
We look to small groups and prayer groups and those
kind of things to help us grow deeper in the faith.
And so I think this is an interesting part
of the conversation as we turn to these last few things.
What does mission look like inside a church?
And I think that’s a part of the conversation that is relatively new and very interesting and a
wonderful challenge for congregations.
Right, because if we conceive of mission as the task
that we’ve been assigned,
then it becomes a thing you can put on a checklist.
But fundamentally,
the mission of God is who God is.
God isn’t out doing things in the world because he has to get
them done on a Monday or on a Tuesday.
God is consistent.
That’s the message we see throughout
the entire scriptures.
From the beginning to the end,
God has consistently been at work to be
reunited with the people who were separated by sin.
Within three chapters we have the problem
and God has been faithfully and consistently at work to reunite those who were separated.
Now, if that is true,
and we believe it is,
then fundamentally our task as Christians is not
just to put things on the to-do list.
This isn’t just a social helps call.
This is about us living
into new identities.
This is why we see the apostle Paul writing in the New Testament with language like
being adopted into the faith or being bound into a body.
These are metaphors or images that are
supposed to help us see that God is doing something bigger than we are.
So the mission is a thing that
we’re called to participate in,
which by definition means we can’t do by ourselves.
That we need to
make progress individually in our determination and our desire to be united in it.
This means then
that as the people of God participating in that mission will result in times where we experience some conflict.
A conflict with others,
yes,
but maybe even more significantly conflict with self.
And I think,
you know,
you, as you were thinking of this conversation,
Clint added a thing to our
conversation, which at first glance may not appear to make a lot of sense,
but we’re going to talk
here a little bit about forgiveness because fundamentally forgiveness is an essential call
as those who are participating in the work of God.
We must first receive forgiveness.
If we aren’t willing to receive it,
there’s no way that we’re going to be formed as people who can give it.
But this topic, most people, if you ask them to discuss the mission of God,
Clint, I don’t think most are going to start with forgiveness.
So how is it that you get there?
So I think in that larger theme,
I would say forgiveness,
and I would couple with that the idea of reconciliation.
And, you know, that is the heart of the gospel,
that God reached into the
world in Jesus Christ to reconcile the world with Him,
to reconcile people with Himself,
to forgiveness of our sins.
And the strongest calling that Jesus gives throughout the gospels
is to forgive others,
as I’ve forgiven you.
Every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer,
forgive us our debt,
like we forgive our debtors,
as we forgive our debtors.
Use our model of forgiveness,
and may we pattern that on you.
And so this,
I think I would argue that reconciliation and
forgiveness is at the very heart of the mission of God,
and those who are called into the faith
are, without exception,
called to live that out,
both in the larger sense,
forgive your enemies, bless those who curse you.
And in the internal sense,
when we get sideways with one another, when we disagree,
the church is always experiencing some sort of rub and friction.
There are always moments where we are bumping into one another,
and therefore it is a constant need
that we practice grace and forgiveness toward one another.
I think it would be very hard to
argue that it’s not part of our mission.
I think it is one of the clearest parts of our mission.
So we could have structured this conversation in a number of different ways.
The way that we went
with is sort of from that broader calling,
that broader mission, and we now sort of narrowed it
down towards what that may look like individually.
Consider for just a second had we flipped that
around, because it could have just as easily gone the other way.
We could have seen that ultimately
God works in the life of the individual,
right?
Think of every one of those gospel encounters
where a person is changed.
They can now see they’ve been set free from that demon that’s
possessing them.
They now go into the world to transform person.
What happens?
They become witnesses to the mission.
They become part of what God’s doing.
Because of the work that God
has done within them,
they now leave from that place,
and they join this larger community doing
what they’ve been called to do.
That is what reconciliation and forgiveness does within the
life of a believer.
It creates within us the kind of personal transformation that can connect us to a larger community.
It is a very practical practice that lives out the larger model,
that when we go
as a body and as churches and institutions,
we give money so that there can be clean water in
place so that the gospel of Jesus Christ can be heard in a land that maybe hasn’t heard it before.
These are all much grander tasks rooted in the reality that it is modeling the very forgiveness
and reconciliation we’ve received in Christ.
If those things become unpaired and we have nothing
at stake in it,
if we are not practicing the difficult art of receiving forgiveness through
confession and being reconciled,
then it’s likely the mission,
and even on the other side of that,
the proclamation will be false because it won’t take into account the reality of what must also
be true in us.
So that thing that we said earlier that the mission needs to be true to a work that
God is doing, this is the practical side of what God is doing.
We must be willing to engage in the
process of being willing to forgive,
yes,
that person,
whoever they are.
Yeah, and I think that’s
part of the problem,
Michael, as I see it anyway,
is that we have framed mission as something
different from and added to our faith.
And realistically,
mission is simply the practice of our faith.
Mission is the thing our faith calls us to do,
to share the good news,
to care for the poor.
There is not a difference between our faithfulness and God’s mission.
Our faithfulness is the extent to which we enter into God’s mission.
How faithful we are
is how engaged we are in what God wants to do in the world for whatever reason with our help,
which is a crazy idea that God invites us.
God doesn’t need us,
but calls us to participate,
invites us to participate.
And so to whatever extent we live out the faith,
we live out our mission.
And I think as we have separated those things historically,
I think we bear much fruit in this season in which they seem to be coming back together,
at least there are those who are trying to make that case,
and I think wisely so.
And so
we’ll finish here with one again that I think will probably not sound like something that we
have historically talked about as our mission,
but worship and stewardship.
And I put these only,
I put these together only because they are both responsive.
They are both what we do
in response to the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
As we come into the faith and we realize what God
has done on our behalf,
it does something in us.
And what it does in us is joy,
is worship,
is stewardship.
A life now lived toward what can we return to God,
not what can we get from God,
not what can we take from God,
but because we have received,
what can we now offer?
And we can offer praise,
we can offer prayer,
we can offer stewardship of our time and our talents and our treasure.
And this too is our mission,
not in the classic sense of a mission committee,
but in the real sense of the thing our faith leads us to do.
And the thing that Christians,
both in churches and outside of churches,
are invited to practice.
And I think it’s not something,
there’s not a credible depth to it.
It’s not particularly complicated,
but it’s very important.
Yeah, Clint, would you say that this is fair?
We’ve framed this conversation
around the question, what is our mission?
And to some extent,
we’ve taken very broad strokes at
teasing out some of the things that are in the field of being faithful.
But this isn’t an exhaustive list.
And maybe the best sort of concluding note to bring this conversation to
its end, is to say that that is the operative question.
That fundamentally, we’re called as Christians to be asking,
what is our mission?
Every day, to wake up with a new awareness
that God is at work,
that God by God’s providence and care by the work of His Spirit is actually
alive at work in the world.
And if we have faith in that work,
then our job is to wake up and ask,
God, what are you doing?
How can I be the hands and feet that participates in that task?
So therefore, this question becomes relevant individually,
but then also communally,
that we look in our communities,
we look within our church families,
we look within our nation and the world,
and we say, God, where are you working?
That is the place where we then seek to add our effort to whatever
extent we’ve been given those gifts.
And so my encouragement for you is to not take from this
conversation a list of things that you would need to do better to be a better Christian.
That’s not the spirit in which it’s offered.
I think this conversation is really to begin to tease out some
of the fundamental building blocks where you would start asking that question,
what is our mission?
And then the Christian life would be one in which we daily, weekly,
yearly,
for the rest of
our Christian life and discipleship,
be living into that question.
And that is what we’re called to do
as those who follow Jesus Christ.
Yeah, it’s really interesting, Michael.
It’s easy to
encounter the question, what is our mission and want to jump to what is my mission?
And yes,
you probably do have a mission.
There may be very specific things to which God is calling each of us
to pray for this person,
to invite this neighbor to church,
to serve as a Sunday school teacher.
There may be some specific callings that God is placing on each of our lives,
but they happen under this much larger umbrella of what is the mission of the Christian movement.
What is the mission of God and what ways are we called to interact with it,
to coincide with it, and to
participate in it.
So down the road,
we will have some thoughts on what is my mission.
How do we discern that?
But in this introductory conversation,
I think it’s much more helpful and much more
important to stay at this larger level.
What is the mission of the people of Jesus Christ?
What are the things to which God wants us to be involved in the world as we work together with him in what
looks like the movement of Jesus Christ among the people?
And that’s where we start.
Well, friends, we’re grateful that you would join us for this conversation as we continue on with this
series.
We’re excited to jump back in with you next Thursday.
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