mission matters most -- the REAL article, not the rediculus peice of crap that ended up getting published with my name on it

MISSION MATTERS MOST
This is not an article.
I don’t want to talk [or in this case, write] at you. That’s right. YOU. Not some vast, encompassing, theoretical you...
YOU – that amazing, divinely created individual who stares back at you when you look in the mirror. Let’s have a
chat.
Do you have any idea how vital you are in God’s choreography? Have you ever thought about how your life journey
flows with, compliments, and impacts the journeys of those around you? I can almost see your eyebrows raising. This
is not such a far fetched idea. Our sphere of influence [and we all have one] goes far beyond the four walls of our corps.
”You yourselves are all the endorsement we need. YOUR VERY LIVES ARE A LETTER THAT ANYONE CAN
READ BY JUST LOOKING AT YOU. Christ himself wrote it – not with ink, but with God’s living spirit; not chisled
into stone, but carved into human lives – and we publish it.” [2 Corinthians 3: 1-3, The Message]
When i look at that passage, I am both humbled and Challenged. I am a letter from Christ?!? What a mission
statement! I also find myself wondering how to adaquately describe and live out that mission in my own life. I don’t
profess to know all the answers – or even any of the answers, but as i endeavour to discover and live my life in ways
that make sense, a few conceps/points of discussion enter my mind.
LIFE [UN-INSULATED]
When i think of the western church [and specifically, the Salvation Army], I often wonder where we fit into the
world [or if we do at all].
I live in Maine....when i flip through the tv stations, I rarely stop on the French channel because i have a hard time
understanding the language. Sure, I took a few years of French in school, but often, it’s simply too much work. I
actually did stop at one point, and as i tried to translate the programme, i had an ”A-HA” moment in relation to the
church.
We have created our own culture where we are totally insulated from the rest of the world. When is the last time we
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have even THOUGHT to touch anything outside our own little culture? We’ve become our own ”world within a world”
... we have our own rules, movies, books, schools, clothing lines, language structures, even foods...and that’s the short
list!
My heart is filled with sadness, distress, and even ANGER when i think about how little of a difference Christ-Followers
make in the ’real’ world. we are simply too busy being part of all our own activities. The Salvation Army tends to be
a number one partaker in this insulated existence. We have regressed from a sleeves-rolled-up, go for the worst group
of radical Christ Followers to a well-established ”church” that has become insulated from the very world into which
we’ve been called to be salt and light. True, it’s probably out of good intentions, but we’ve moved into a state of
self-preservation that is the opposite of being ’poured out’.
There is hope though. There is possiblity to reconcile our insulated culture with the concept of mission. The only
way that is going to happen though, is if we quit living safe and be willing to risk living un-insulated, sometimes
uncomfortable, lives.
CALLING FORTH THE GIFTS OF OTHERS
There are small groups of Christ-Followers [both within the army and outside] who are moving in this direction.
Gordon Crosby stated that the primary mission of Christ-Followers is to call forth the gifts of others, and i do see that
happening in some circles.
Again, we often act out of good intentions, but our thoughts/actions are sometimes misguided. It is not our duty as
Christ-Followers to ”make people good.”We wonder why people resist the Gospel, why they reject, even hate, ’christians.’
Rarely do we stop and think that it may be because we are constantly preaching AT them in a language they
don’t understand – imposng new burdens on them rather than helping them disvocer the identity - the God-given
essence of who they are. In our post-modern world, we can not fall back on what is percieved as ”tradition.”We also
need not re-invent the wheel – we must look to our past to reclaim our future.
How do we do this? We begin by living out our own gifts. Look at William Booth. His passion and intensity speaks
across the ages. The person who KNOWS exactly who she is, who has the time of her life employing her God given
gifts, has a way of calling out the gifts of others. Such a person IS Good News. William never needed to preach the
good news – he embodied it.
As modern Christ-followers, it is our responsibility to call out to the deeps of humanity in our time. WE ARE THE
GOOD NEWS. If we can discover our own unique gifts, than we can also be the embodiment of Christ’s freedom. The
person who is able to excersise her own gifts in freedom is then able to allow the Holy Spirit to be free to release in
others what HE wants to be released.
As we walk through this life journey, it is our duty to ask ourselves some not-so-rhetorical questions like ”IS it okay for
the Salvation Army bubble to exist? What does that bubble look like? How do I/we as a congregation contribute to
the bubble?”
Perhaps the most important questions though, are the ones that can only be ansered internally – as a Christ-follower,
what have I gotten wrong....and more importantly than even that....is it possible, am i ready, to quit ”living safe” and
change it?