“I will say to the captives, ‘Come out,’ and to those in darkness, ‘Be Free!’” Isaiah 49:9
The highest aim of mission-minded people is not self-protection but self sacrifice, to empty themselves of themselves in order to be used by God and filled with the Spirit of God. They know first hand what addictions do to people but they are willing to go where others will not to bring healing, renewal and hope to those others have written off. They are willing to set aside personal comfort, convenience and control in order to touch the lives of those still too frightened to believe. They’re willing to be inconvenienced, discomforted, and spent all “to live a life worthy of the calling which we have received.” Ephesians 4:1
Theologian Christopher Wright wrote that, “It is not so much that God has a mission for his church in the world, but that God has a church for his mission in the world…mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission—God’s mission.”
More often than we realize, we confuse the church for the mission. As Wright said, the church does not necessarily have “a mission” as much as God’s mission of redemption has a church.
There is an intentional phrasing here. Today, “missional” is a popular church word. It’s a good phrase, but it carries a little baggage. Being mission minded is an effort to balance the realities that the church was made for God’s mission and that the church is itself a mission (in that God is consistently working in His people, transforming us to reflect the character of Christ.)
When we keep both of these things in front of us, they actually balance one another out. If we forget that God is actively working in us to change us, we can become consumed with being “on mission” and end up feeling morally superior to those we are sent to serve. We serve them not because they need us, but rather we serve them because of Christ work within us.
On the other hand, if we fail to see that the church was made for God’s mission, we end up huddled together and failing to be the instruments of redemption that we were created to be.
Our expectation is this: as we become more Christ centered and live lives driven by the Kingdom of God, we naturally become Mission-Minded people whose focus is on God’s mission to advance His kingdom here on earth not on building our own little kingdoms.
Being mission minded allows us to speak with confidence about the power of the Gospel without being condescending because the Gospel keeps us from basing our identity on the approval of others. Because our value is centered in the Gospel and our lives are Driven by Grace, we do not feel the need to win arguments or prove ourselves through evangelism. We proclaim the Gospel because we love people and we love people because God first loved us.
As a Mission-Minded church we have true hope for everyone. The gospel has produced a real hope that sees no one as hopeless, every life as a miracle in the making and every situation as a potential transformational moment.
As Mission Minded People…
- We are committed to avoiding ‘we-them’ language, or language that separates people of different political, spiritual, social positions, or is disrespectful of people who we disagree. Instead we engage people by humbly admitting our own weaknesses and failures, while demonstrating the joyful difference the Gospel makes.
- We are committed to sincerely listening to people and their stories. We want to understand, love and respect them unconditionally, and serve them by showing them how the Gospel meets their deepest longings.
Disturb us, Lord, when We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.
Prayer of Sir Francis Drake, December 1577
“As a Mission-Minded church we have true hope for everyone. The Gospel has produced a real hope that sees no one as hopeless, every life as a miracle in the making, and every situation as a potential transformational moment.”
For the last week or so, as I have walked to and from my house, I have noticed the flowers growing in each of the two yards on either side of the street as it nears its intersection with one of the more heavily-traveled streets in town.
Of course, my eyes and my thoughts have so frequently been initially drawn to the tall-standing and regally beautiful, yellow Day Lilies, which seem to not only glory in being in the sun but also in absorbing its supposedly yellow light and shining it back for all those who pass by to see. Confident and established, they seemed to know what they are all about and the purpose that each serves by itself as well as in fellowship with the many other Day Lilies blooming and growing around it.
In sharp contrast to the community of Day Lilies and on the other side of the street is the plant that not only catches most of my attention but also holds my heart. It is a brownish, truly dead-looking, single miniature rose twig, not bush but twig, growing no more than five to six inches tall in a frequently and very well-mowed lawn. As meticulous as the owners are about the appearance and up-keep of their yard, I cannot fathom, why, in the midst of the other well-pruned and shaped shrubs and trees, they purposefully have left this sole, dead-looking miniature rose twig uncut and removed.
Perhaps, if they have neared it with their pruning shears, God’s Spirit has caused them to refrain from destroying it because He knows that it has a gift to share and a purpose for its life if they are only patient.
For the last week or so, as I have walked to and from my house, I have looked and wondered, and sometimes audibly, asked God, “Why?”, knowing in my heart-of-hearts that there has to be a reason, known only unto God, a reason for the continued presence of that seemly-dead, miniature rose twig.
For the last week or so, as I have walked to and from my house and I have looked at that contradiction-in-appearance miniature rose twig with its miracle of life and purpose held below the ground’s surface in its deep roots, I have wondered.
I couldn’t help but wonder, “Will it, Lord, live out the message of the song, ‘Hymn of Promise?’ Is there something there, Lord, something special there, Lord, ‘something You alone can see,’ something that will offer hope, something that will affirm the potential in all of us, something that will remind me to ‘wait on the Lord…to wait for His most perfect time, His most perfect will’?”
As with Christ’s crucifixion, death, and resurrection, the miniature rose twig proved that in death there is hope, that in death there is life. The miniature rose twig proved that potential resides in all things and in all people, for in its deep and strong roots lived one bud, the bud and the eventual blooming of a single, small-though-it-was, a single-with-a-purpose, yellow rose sharing beauty with those who saw it and testifying on behalf of a God, Who in His love for us, gives us beauty for the eyes to see; hope for our hearts to be uplifted; reasons to smile and perhaps cry happy-tears; and the promise of our potential selves, living and growing within us, “something He alone can see.”
God, the Creator of all life and the Establisher of all purposes, knows the potential that lies within all that lives in His creation. The miniature rose twig and its single yellow rose is a vivid reminder of hope and the fact “that all things are possible with God.” But it is also a vivid reminder that, because potential to accomplish God’s purpose and will for our lives is the “something God alone can see” within each of us, we must, with patience, cultivate that gift in both ourselves and others, that we must never give up on ourselves and others, and that we must refrain from “killing” the potential in others with our pruning shears of hurtful and harmful words and actions.