What It Means To Be Missional
To put it simply, being missional means a body of believers or an individual living into the Kingdom of God. So many of our churches are worried about how the church will survive, and so the main worry in our congregation is how to grow the church. But in reality, it isn't about the church. It is about how God is working in our lives and communities and how we can join that work. The church has a very important and special place in the Kingdom of God, but in order to be faithful followers of Christ we need to focus less on how to grow the church and more on how to grow the Kingdom of God.
This means two different things. We need to change how we do church and we need to change how we live our everyday lives. Neither change needs us to add more to our already busy lives, rather they require us to have a different perspective on how we live out our faith. Our new focus needs to be taking our faith out into the world rather than waiting for the world to come looking for our faith.
In the church: In our congregation this doesn't mean add more meetings and programs. It means changing the programs we have to make sure they are focusing on taking our faith out into our community. How can the Buildings and Grounds Committee work to further the Kingdom of God in Ukiah? What does it mean for our Sunday School classes to serve the Lord in Ukiah? How can the Presbyterian Women build each other up in order to go out and live a life for Christ serving others? Let's focus less on how to get more people into our church and more on how to build up the faith and lives of the people we see every day.
In our lives: This same focus needs to carry into our personal lives. How can we live in a way that we constantly show the people around us the love of Christ? This will include serving others, offering hospitality to all, getting to know our neighbors, listening, building up our personal spiritual practices, and supporting each other in our Kingdom work. In this day in age we can't expect our neighbors, friends, family, and co-workers to come into the church building. That just doesn't happen much any more. So it is now our calling as the people of God to take the church out to them. How is God working in your neighborhood, and how are you being called to join that work?
You will be hearing more and more about missional living as our church shifts from the program focused church of yesterday to the Kingdom of God focused church of today. It is our hope to one day start missional small groups to explore these ideas and try different experiments of what this might actually look like for our congregation.
This means two different things. We need to change how we do church and we need to change how we live our everyday lives. Neither change needs us to add more to our already busy lives, rather they require us to have a different perspective on how we live out our faith. Our new focus needs to be taking our faith out into the world rather than waiting for the world to come looking for our faith.
In the church: In our congregation this doesn't mean add more meetings and programs. It means changing the programs we have to make sure they are focusing on taking our faith out into our community. How can the Buildings and Grounds Committee work to further the Kingdom of God in Ukiah? What does it mean for our Sunday School classes to serve the Lord in Ukiah? How can the Presbyterian Women build each other up in order to go out and live a life for Christ serving others? Let's focus less on how to get more people into our church and more on how to build up the faith and lives of the people we see every day.
In our lives: This same focus needs to carry into our personal lives. How can we live in a way that we constantly show the people around us the love of Christ? This will include serving others, offering hospitality to all, getting to know our neighbors, listening, building up our personal spiritual practices, and supporting each other in our Kingdom work. In this day in age we can't expect our neighbors, friends, family, and co-workers to come into the church building. That just doesn't happen much any more. So it is now our calling as the people of God to take the church out to them. How is God working in your neighborhood, and how are you being called to join that work?
You will be hearing more and more about missional living as our church shifts from the program focused church of yesterday to the Kingdom of God focused church of today. It is our hope to one day start missional small groups to explore these ideas and try different experiments of what this might actually look like for our congregation.