I have been reflecting recently on number of questions which were posed to me as a way of thinking about vision/direction:
Who are we?
Why are we here?
How then shall we live/what then shall we do?
Thinking about this causes me to ask another question: ‘What are we?’
One way we answer this is by using our mission statement. I wonder if you can remember what it is (before you read on, close your eyes and see if you can say it from memory!). Don’t worry if you can’t and in particular you are forgiven if you are new to the church or have not heard us quote it, but here it is:
'We are the family of God on mission seeking to transform Clarendon Park and beyond with the love and power of Jesus Christ'
Why not say it out loud a few times to try to commit it to memory!
We are a family or a community of mission.
If you read the New Testament and look at how the early church spread following the day of Pentecost, you can see that new communities were ‘planted’ all over the ancient world – these were always communities with a purpose or ‘communities of mission’ – though you could be forgiven for referring to them as ‘Communities of the Spirit’ given how much the New Testament speaks about the Holy Spirit, but actually the two names would mean the same thing as the work of the Holy Spirit will always lead to mission. Communities of different shapes and sizes were the main vehicle for mission in the NT which happened through relationships – it was communities of different shapes and sizes that lived out Jesus commission to us to be ‘sent as he was sent, to do the things that he did’.
We live out this missional purpose as we become increasingly aware of the 93% of people who have no relationship with Jesus or the church, when we become filled with Godly compassion for the hurting, broken, far from God, when we act on this to pray and work as hard as we can that God’s Kingdom might come.
There are lots of examples of how we are missional in the life of our church already:
Alpha
Our Easter Mission to the school gate
Friday Sparks
Food bank collections
Collections for Christian Aid week
St John the Baptist Day
How each of us pray for friends and share the Gospel in our day to day lives
Pray with me that we continually become more missional as individuals and as a church as we seek to fulfill God's