30 Jul 2010
Strategic Mission: Finding your place
The church… one of the great mission fields
I’m continuing my series of posts on strategic mission.
Most people would see mission as getting people into churches..
The purpose of strategic mission is actually about releasing people out of the church and into their specific calling.
Former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli said:
“Most people die with the music still locked up inside them”
and the fact is that many of those people are actually in our churches!
One of my favourite verses is 2 Corinthians 5:17 which says:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
In the original, the work Paul uses for “new creation” is the greek word “ktisis” which most literally means a “blueprint” as opposed to a finished product.
What this means is that every person who invites Jesus into their lives literally has a unique plan for their lives.
This is reinforced by Ephesians 2:10:
For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Each and every one of us is unique, and while many people think the job of mission is done when people find a spiritual home in a local congregation, actually that should just be the start. Our job is to become us!!
Euripides said:
There is just one life for each of us: our own.
Nelson Mandela said:
“There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”
The questions of strategic mission are:
- Are you where God wants you to be, doing what God wants you to do?
- Are people genuinely being encouraged to pursue the plan God has for their lives, even if it means leaving the safety of “home”?
- Are people supported in the difficult early phases of pursuing their calling?