His Mission

I was reading "ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church" last night and was struck by one of the first points Frost and Hirsch were making.

As church leaders we spend a lot of time developing mission statements. We have taken on the business model that every organizations vision starts with a mission statement. So we pour hours of time and discussion into developing a mission statement that defines our church. We come up with catchy ways to package the mission statement so that it is easy for people to remember (then a year later we find out it was not as easy as we thought).

Frost and Hirsch began by talking about the missio dei, "the God of mission." Part of God's character is mission. We are not talking about the churches mission because the mission does not belong to the church. The mission belongs to God. The church is on mission when it becomes the image of God. This happens naturally as Jesus followers and the gathering of Jesus followers (the church)let God lead the mission.

Maybe as church leaders we should take the time spent on mission statements and use it to discover the God of mission. We should make God's mission our mission, right? When God's mission becomes our mission then several things happen:

1. We become more like the image of God
2. People far from God begin to discover God's grace
3. The church is not built on man's wisdom, it is built on God's wisdom
4. It's easier. It's easier to follow than to create.
5. We begin to understand God's will- "His good, pleasing and perfect will."

There will be unity in the Spirit if every church was on the same mission, the mission of God.