Nurturing Mission.
I can take you to the exact place it happened. It was the computing room at school. Our school was small so everyone knew everyone. In fact there was one of everyone. There was one Bogan, one druggie, one sports jock, one nerd, one bookish girl and so on. I was the one Christian and everyone knew it. Everyone respected it.
One day I was talking with a girl in my class and she was telling me about an encounter she’d had with a rather pushy Christian who insisted that she was a sinner and was going to hell. I can still hear her words ringing in my ear, “I’m not a sinner, and I’m not a bad person!” In a split second I had to make a decision. Do I tell her that in fact she is a sinner or do I let it slide? DO I share the gospel with her and compound her guilt or do I just nod nicely? I chose the latter.
I don’t know about you but I find the whole idea of mission overwhelming. To be honest I think for the most part most churches find the whole idea of mission and evangelising overwhelming or perhaps even embarrassing.
As I look back on that day in High School that I sat there like a speechless idiot when presented a prime opportunity to give witness to the Christian faith. I realise that my reason for not responding had nothing to do with being scared. I realised I didn’t know what to say or what to do. This girl had been told she was a sinner when she should have been told about Jesus!
Over the past few weeks we have been looking at Nurturing Community – Firstly, nurturing the community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and last week we looked at Nurturing this community; the community of God’s people. This morning our attention turns to how we nurture the community within which we dwell. But we must be clear. The kind of nurturing we are talking about isn’t a kind of spiritual palliative care in which we sit alongside the world and make her comfortable as she slides into hell. If we take our cue from the book of Acts our nurturing the local community will include a gospel element in which the good news is proclaimed. The question we are really looking to ask this morning concerns how we understand mission; both God’s mission in our local community and in the global community and what it is we need to be saying to the world.
When we look closely at Acts we see that Luke constructs his narrative of the early church around the geographical command of Jesus to be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth. He details the spread of the gospel outwardly from Jerusalem.
It is a strange thing that we worry so much about mission and evangelism. If we listen to the words of Jesus we are witnesses. By nature of our belief in the things we have not seen (the resurrected Jesus) and our membership of this community we ARE witnesses to the gospel. Furthermore, not only are we witnesses but we are empowered to witness. It is in our spiritual DNA!
The biggest challenge the early church faced wasn’t in Jerusalem or Judea. It was Samaria and the ends of the earth. Taking the gospel to the gentiles was cause for great confrontation for the early church. Taking the gospel out into the world today provides the same challenge for us. However, since the events of Acts the church, the people of God, have been a missionary movement ever expanding outwards. We are to be a people defined by the great commission (remember it wasn’t the really good suggestion it is the great commission). We have been empowered to go into all the world and make disciples. We are empowered to participate in the ongoing ministry of Jesus in the world.
However, all too often we take an either or approach. We either become really passionate about Mission at the expense of our own community or we become so inward that we have a kind of spiritual agoraphobia (we are scared to go outside). The words of Jesus, “You WILL receive power, you WILL be my witnesses” are as true and as confronting for us as they were for the disciples.
I think the greatest hindrance to our participating in the ongoing mission of Christ in the world is that we have become entrenched in the gospel of sin management and not the gospel of Jesus.
What is this gospel of sin management? The gospel of sin management starts with the problem of sin and proclaims to the world that problem. Now don’t mishear me, sin is a part of the problem but it shouldn’t be our starting point. We have been so obsessed with getting the world to see themselves as sinners so that they can say the sinner’s prayer that we have stopped talking about Jesus! The reason I had nothing to say to that girl was that I knew everything about sin and very little about Jesus!
The gospel we see proclaimed by Peter on the day of Pentecost or by Paul throughout Acts is not a gospel that focus’ on sin. Their gospel is an announcement about who Jesus is. The early church didn’t try and convince the world what rotten sinners they were, they retold the story of Jesus; they told the world about the good news of Jesus and then they tried to live out that story in their local context! This is our model for mission and ministry!
The question before us is, “How do we nurture our local community?” Put another way, “How do we give faithful witness to the good news of Jesus Christ?” Simple, we retell the story of Jesus in word and deed.
One of the great frustrations I have with the church is her insistence of grabbing St Francis of Assisi’s words, “preach the Gospel at all times, if necessary use words” I know what St Francis was trying to say but one should not exclude the other. It is not either or.
As we nurture our relationship with God, both individually and as a church; as we nurture our fellowship together as the body of Christ we give witness to the world of who Jesus is and why we believe that he is Lord! Then out of this flows our participation in Jesus’ ongoing ministry in the world! But all too often we stop before we head out the door into the world.
Let me encourage you. Do not be overwhelmed or scared. God does not want us to go knocking door-to door trying to get people saved. He may ask us to go but it won’t be to a street corner in the city on a Friday night. Mission is a natural part of our relationship with God. Chances are you are already doing it. You are already giving witness!
The church may be increasingly unnecessary to the world, or what the world wants but it is not unnecessary to what God wants or the world needs. This world needs us to live faithfully as the people of God. They need us to be faithful in our devotion to God on Sunday and throughout the week. They need us to model for them what true fellowship and community look like. As we gather together we retell and remember the gospel story.
Finally do not underestimate the witness you are to your neighbour’s and family. You don’t have to remind them continually that they are sinners. We are there to preach the gospel at all times and when necessary use words!
