Another thing that I have observed through my ongoing relationship with brothers and sisters at Springhill Pres is that "mission cultivates community." I have seen this happen at their church over the years through our interaction with them. Each year a group of families from their church are mobilized to participate in our week together. They open their homes and they open their lives to us (and to youth from Chicago and next year youth from Richmond). This mission each summer has energized the congregation. In addition, it has brought the congregation closer together. They plan the week together. They pray for the week together. They serve together over the course of the week. Afterwards, they debrief and celebrate what God has done together. Mission pulls us together.
This has been the testimony of Christian Layman Church as well (the church who collaborated with us on the eye screening). One of their key leaders shared with us that prior to engaging in the eye screening ministry together there was very little genuine community at their church. Most of them simply "did church" together without "doing life" together. Then 3-4 summers ago they began doing the eye screening in collaboration with World Impact. The eye screening ministry energized and mobilized their church. Nearly the whole congregation rallied around it. This mission cultivated community amongst their church. Mission bonded them together. They had served "in the trenches" together, and in the process had become a tight knit family.
There is a danger in our churches (and small groups) today of simply becoming Biblical consumers. We come together to receive great messages and great lessons. We may even take intentional steps towards building community towards one another. However, if we do not go on mission together (and consistently do ministry together), our efforts towards community will often fall short and remain shallow. I think we see this clearly in the early church in the book of Acts. They experienced counter-cultural community in the midst of life-giving, risk taking mission. I pray that we would see this happen more and more in our churches.
I would love to have some interaction on this. Any thoughts?
2 comments:
Man this is rich Dave! You are dead on with your observation and it makes me eager to dream and mobilize our own church for mission. I am thinking about what you said many of our folks were saying during/after the eye screening. It definitely brought our church together and solidified some of he's who were still trying to figure out whether They were goin to commit to LHNC. How can we make sure we are a church that does mission continually not only to reach the lost but to unify our church?
Aaron
Yeah, let's chop on this soon. I think we need to think/pray through some intentional things we can be doing programmatically as well as just making it part of our church disciple making culture. I think the latter is the more crucial of the two. Let's white board some stuff! :)
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