My Hope for You as a Community is what I have called this series, though the actual emphasis is living out a kingdom culture in the world. Consider the Lord's Prayer:
“Pray in this way:
Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”
If we are to live by these words of Christ in the prayer that He modeled for us… what would it be like if we actually lived life on earth as the church body… “on earth as it is in heaven”?
For the church, this implies a fundamental shift from the mission-minded people we have become to being a missional people. That may seem as bit confusing; but I do not intend for mission-minded to mean the same thing as missional. The mission-minded church has concern for and is supportive of God's mission (which is good), while the missional church holistically and actively participates in God's mission (which is better).
Consider 2 churches:
Trinity Church operates out of a mindset of *centripetal force. (Centripetal force is a force that makes a body follow a curved path.) I say that TC operates out of centripetal force, because their church locations/meeting times/programs/plans/agendas are looked at as the main place for conversion and life transformation. Those who are far from God must be pulled by some path into a center for change.
Cornerstone Church operates out of a mindset of *centrifugal force. (Centrifugal force (from Latin centrum "center" and fugere "to flee") represents the effects of inertia that arise in connection with rotation and which are experienced as an outward force away from the center of rotation.) I say that CC operates out of centrifugal force, because they see their church locations/meeting times/programs/plans/agendas as building-up-sending-out opportunities. While conversion and life transformation does happen in those environments, the focus is to send out from those centers, changed lives that will change lives.
At PBC, we think and speak more like CC, but as life gets busy and difficult (like it always does), our action can begin to look more like TC. Don't get your feelings hurt, western Christians especially struggle with this. We have been nutured to compartmentalize our life into categories of family, work, friends-close friends-best friends, business, money, education, spiritual matters, social action, etc. It is no easy task for us to break out of the compartments that have been prepared for us and begin to see the whole of our life as fluid and all centered around 1 thing (the mission of God). All of these categories are environments for "knowing God, and making Him known", and all should be pointed to our main purpose.
Our mission statement is to: "Make God known by making disciples who are changed by God to change their world". This is not to be only characteristic of our Home Group time, Community Group time, worship time, serve time, with our church-people, etc. This is to be the way you and I live out our life in all of our categories, so that all are threaded together by this mission. If this is the way we think, speak, and act, we will be like CC. We will be a center for change that sends changed people out to change their world (in their world).
This week, we're dealing with how you can Live as a Missional Family. *See next Post
“Pray in this way:
Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”
If we are to live by these words of Christ in the prayer that He modeled for us… what would it be like if we actually lived life on earth as the church body… “on earth as it is in heaven”?
For the church, this implies a fundamental shift from the mission-minded people we have become to being a missional people. That may seem as bit confusing; but I do not intend for mission-minded to mean the same thing as missional. The mission-minded church has concern for and is supportive of God's mission (which is good), while the missional church holistically and actively participates in God's mission (which is better).
Consider 2 churches:
Trinity Church operates out of a mindset of *centripetal force. (Centripetal force is a force that makes a body follow a curved path.) I say that TC operates out of centripetal force, because their church locations/meeting times/programs/plans/agendas are looked at as the main place for conversion and life transformation. Those who are far from God must be pulled by some path into a center for change.
Cornerstone Church operates out of a mindset of *centrifugal force. (Centrifugal force (from Latin centrum "center" and fugere "to flee") represents the effects of inertia that arise in connection with rotation and which are experienced as an outward force away from the center of rotation.) I say that CC operates out of centrifugal force, because they see their church locations/meeting times/programs/plans/agendas as building-up-sending-out opportunities. While conversion and life transformation does happen in those environments, the focus is to send out from those centers, changed lives that will change lives.
At PBC, we think and speak more like CC, but as life gets busy and difficult (like it always does), our action can begin to look more like TC. Don't get your feelings hurt, western Christians especially struggle with this. We have been nutured to compartmentalize our life into categories of family, work, friends-close friends-best friends, business, money, education, spiritual matters, social action, etc. It is no easy task for us to break out of the compartments that have been prepared for us and begin to see the whole of our life as fluid and all centered around 1 thing (the mission of God). All of these categories are environments for "knowing God, and making Him known", and all should be pointed to our main purpose.
Our mission statement is to: "Make God known by making disciples who are changed by God to change their world". This is not to be only characteristic of our Home Group time, Community Group time, worship time, serve time, with our church-people, etc. This is to be the way you and I live out our life in all of our categories, so that all are threaded together by this mission. If this is the way we think, speak, and act, we will be like CC. We will be a center for change that sends changed people out to change their world (in their world).
This week, we're dealing with how you can Live as a Missional Family. *See next Post
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*Also, for more on the missional church, click HERE.
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