 Mission › an important assignment given to a person or group of people.  Mission – in religious term › the vocation or calling of a religious organization, especially a Christian one, to go out and serve.

 Mission is the participation of Christians in the liberating mission of Jesus.  It is the good news of God’s love, incarnated in the witness of a community for the sake of the world. David Bosch Transforming Mission

 Is there a mission of the church?

“It’s not the church that has a mission. It’s the God of mission who has a church.” Tim Dearbourne If the church is worried about itself, it cannot be a church but a club of like-minded people trying to exist for their own pleasure and needs.

 John 3:15 – “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

 John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

 Locally  Regionally  Globally As smaller congregations what is our mission? LOCALLY

How Can we do this?

1. Caring For Individual People and Communities 2. Building Partnerships With Other Churches And Groups Who Share Some Of Our Mission 3. Sharing the Task of Education and Social and Spiritual Development 4. Struggling for a just world. 5. Being alongside the poor

6. Becoming friends with people of different cultures and faiths 7. Caring for the Earth 8. T elling the good news of Jesus 9. Calling people to faith in Jesus Christ and Christian Discipleship

 Compassion  Commitment  Cost (time – availability)

 What are the resources we need? › People who know God’s love to make God’s love known › Inspiration through preaching and teaching to do God’s mission › Prayerful discernment of what God wants us to do

 With other Churches  Apostolic faith, evangelism, discipline, preaching of the word, class meetings, personal and social holiness  Committed to the reign of God and the proclamation of the good news for all  Condemnation of world economic system that exploits the poor for the benefit of the rich

Do what you can Where you are With what you have You supply the willingness God supplies the power - Anon

 Good news to the poor  Proclaim release to the captives  Recovery of sight to the blind  Let the oppressed go free  Proclaim the year of the Lord

 You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God… 1Peter 2: 9 Therefore we must engage in God’s mission

 “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.  “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lamp stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. › Matthew 5:13 – 16

 Any mission we engage in needs to be reviewed.  One year or two or three years  Why?

 Yesterday’s missions are today’s maintenance  We must not get caught in the structure Mission Machine Monument

If you have some work to do, Start this very hour; You supply the willingness, God supplies the power. — Anon.