Church on mission is definitely a buzz-phrase that is anywhere you look these days. The fact that we have to label bodies of Christ, missional, has for eternity been a little different to me. please, shouldnt all places of worship be missional in their very nature? Shouldnt a church, at its very nature, desire to introduce their culture and community with the message of Jesus as a missionary would in a different country? Isnt what the places of worship is challenged to do in the last challenge from Jesus in Matthew 28:19? Our own local area requires this type of church. Austin churches is slowly moving to what Christ instructed in Scripture.
Jesus gives the charge in Acts 1:8 saying, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Acts 1:8 justifies this idea as, right before Jesus Christ goes up to Heaven, He commissions the disciples on a story that would launch right in their individual community. He begins with their area of Jerusalem, and then expands the call to the far parts of the world.
As Christians, we are not called to isolation, but to be missional followers of Jesus who are aggressively going out and connecting with others right where they are with the gospel. We have observed this throughout history: God motivated Abraham on a mission to go out of his place of origin and his people and go to the town that God would show him (Gen. 12:1), God moved Moses on a mission to rescue an enslaved people and lead them to relationship with God (Exodus 3:8-10), God urges Jesus on a mission to world to restore all things to Himself through the death of Jesus (Colossians 1:20). And now God is sending believers on a journey to engage neighborhoods, cities, peoples, and even nations with the story of Christ(Matt. 28:19 Mark 6:7 Luke 10:1 John 20:21 Acts 1:8). If we resist this urge and continue to display the bodies of Christ like a closed off country club ” requesting that people fix their performance, pay their fees, and come to our church God will continue His mission without us.
