Mission

What is the mission of the church? Or as one pastor put the question for what purpose does your church exist? You may have noticed by now my preoccupation with mission. Every organization should know why it exists. Mission brings focus, clarity, vision, and makes teamwork possible. I was reading the Twelve keys to an Effective Church by Kennon L. Callahan and He made this statement. “Indeed, the first and most central characteristic of an effective, successful church is its specific, concrete, missional objectives.” Did you catch that, “the most central characteristic…” That would be an important thing. As we have all heard it said “keep the main thing the main thing.”



One of the things that a mission should do is to lead us beyond ourselves. Our mission should be to more than to just our members. Let me provide an example of how fixated our thinking is on members. While at annual conference a person asked me “how large is your church?” The answer she was looking for was the number of members. I could have answered that question in many ways. For example the size of the sanctuary, the number of acres for the campus, number of parking spaces, or class rooms, this would be our physical plant. The other answer would be our average attendance in worship, and Sunday school, and bible studies, or our number of members. But both of these answers focus on how large the church is not how large our mission is. I will grant you this we often talk of these things because they are easy to quantify. We know these numbers. But how large our church is can be defined in how many non-members we reach. It could be measured in our mission field.



Here is a good question and I almost never hear it asked, “How many people are you serving in mission?” The mission that I read in the Gospel is serving. When Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God he says the “first shall be last and the last shall be first.” If we want to be great then we must serve! I am so very proud of the great things that this church does. From the clinic, to share, to basket ball, to summer camp, to UM ARMY, and this past week to VBS. I personally have come to find that in serving I have found life. I know as we serve together we will continue to find life in Jesus Christ.