From this week’s church newsletter:
I’ve been thinking a lot over the past few years about what our mission as a church is. What are we for? Just think about all that we’ve done the past few months: gone on a retreat, delivered Christmas presents to families with an incarcerated father, studied a catechism in Community Groups, hosted a few mental health events, provided legal assistance to people who can’t afford it, sang, prayed, preached, took the Lord’s Supper, and baptized a baby. Add to all that corporate activity everything you do in your own spheres of life and work: all the conversations, all the acts of support, all the vocational duties that did real good for other people. How does it all fit together?
Here’s how I’ve come to put it, which I’ve adapted from Christopher Wright’s book The Mission of God’s People. Our mission is to be the people God has called us to be, to do the work he’s called us to, and to speak the words he’s called us to speak. Get ready, you’ll probably be hearing me say this a lot in the future!
Our mission is to be the people he’s called us to be. We are to be holy, set apart from the world to belong to him. We’re sons and daughters adopted by our Father, and we have a family name to uphold. Our pursuit of personal holiness and the embrace of our adoptive identity, then, are essential to our mission.
Our mission is to do the works he’s called us to do. This includes both our vocational callings as well as our general Christian calling. In our vocations we serve the common good, doing good to our neighbors, through good, honest work as teachers, accountants, coders, what have you. He’s also called us to do justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8), and so we do works of justice and tangible acts of love for our neighbors.
Our mission is to speak the words he’s called us to speak. Our God is a speaking God, and so his people are a speaking people. This includes speaking the gospel to unbelievers according to our individual gifting and opportunities. It also includes speaking words of truth in a world of error and words of comfort in a world of pain.
It’s out of his grace that we joyfully fulfill God’s mission. God’s love has been poured out on us through Jesus Christ, and so with gratitude and hope we follow him in being a people, doing work, and speaking words in accordance with his gracious calling.
