“Mission From God” Part 1: Why This is Important

Jan 20, 2013 Sermon                                                      

Neh. 8:1-3, Acts 2:14,36-41, Luke 4:14-21

                                                                                                 PRAYER

 “Mission from God”

We begin a 6 week series titled “Mission of God” and over the next 5 weeks we will reflect on and have a conversation about what Cross Lutheran’s mission of God will be. But in order to have an understanding of what God’s mission for Cross is we have to ask some questions for us to think about.

 Missio Dei… Latin for “Mission of God”

The term “Mission” has been a buzz word for many years in the church as well as in all aspects of life. What is your mission?.... You need a mission… Mission is what we do… and so on. Many often ask, What is Mission?

Many understand mission work for the church means to go to another country and convert people. That’s what has often been referred to as the “Mission Field.” According to Gallup… that’s what most Christians believe when asked what it means to be a missionary. The same Gallup poll also points out that the US no longer sends out the most missionaries into the world. The poll also says that other religious traditions in other countries believe the richest mission field is the US, and they are sending missionaries here… most are Christian missionaries from Africa. Most Americans think the mission field is in Africa.

The BIG BIG question is….

What is our Mission?... and Why is this Important?

Your familiar with the Blues Brothers and their Mission from God... check out the video

 

 

For many congregations their mission has been to bring people into the church. The church was the place where you learned about God. This was an easy mission to fulfill because people were immigrating to this country and depending on your ethnic background you went to a corresponding church. If you were German or Scandinavian you went to a Lutheran Church. If you were Polish, Italian, French, Irish, Hispanic you were most likely Roman Catholic. If you were English… Anglican…. Scottish… Presbyterian.

It was easy to fill the churches mission… they came.

Today for better or worse this is not the case… in fact, it hasn’t been the case for over 40 years… since the 1960’s. People are not coming to the church, and they’re not going to come to the church in the ways they once did. Today you have to be intentional about connecting with people, and therein lays the problem for us. In the past they came… religious life was part of society… it was what you did, even if you didn’t believe… Today it isn’t the case, and because we never had to connect with others we don’t really know how.

And we still revert back to this understanding… and it happened last Thurs at the leadership meeting when we were reflecting on doing GREAT things… we want people to come here. My friends we need to begin to think differently if the church is going to thrive in this always changing ever change world we live in.

In our Bible readings today Nehemiah states the Mission of God was for the people to read from the Law of Moses.

Our Acts reading the Mission for Peter was to Preach, Baptize, and invoke the Holy Spirit.

Our gospel reading from Luke, Jesus’ Mission was to tell the Good News to the Poor, announce Freedom for the Prisoners, give sight to the Blind, and Free those who Suffer.

If you noticed, from our reading in the OT to Luke, the same scenario as ours has happened. People went to the temple because that’s how you learned about God. The mission was to read from the Torah… the Law of Moses… if you noticed that’s the church… they were in the church. In Acts… they start to go out… Peter preaches outside of the church. The mission begins to be outside of the church. And… Jesus… says nothing about being in the church or being a church.

So… Why is this Important? First… That God is a God who Moves

Warren Schulz of the Albin Institute says, “We have most often looked at God as a “Noun”. But, God is a God who moves. God is really a “Verb” God does things, God gives vision, God acts.”

In John 14:12… Jesus tells his friends if they have faith they will do even greater things than he. If you want to do great things you have to be willing to work with a God who acts. You see… our God doesn’t sit still… within this I believe there is an expectation for us to act on and do things for God… In other words, God expects us to leave the building sharing good news.

The Holy Spirit Empowers

This endeavor is not our doing, but the empowering of the Holy Spirit. You can see if it’s up to us… our agendas, our interests we do not go far, in fact, we’d probably screw it up, but with God everything is possible. The Holy Spirit empowers us to be hands and feet serving not our mission & purpose, but God’s.

In our Acts passage we see this being done. Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit preaches repentance and grace… God acts, and 3000 believed and were baptized… 3000 lives were transformed and changed that day. Without the Spirit of God among you, you will only be an entity upon yourselves.

The mission of God is important because God acted intentionally to come to us in human form to share a message of Love, Grace, and Forgiveness and we need to share that with others.

Over the next 4 weeks we will have an opportunity to share our thoughts on what God is calling Cross Lutheran to be about.

-       What is God purpose at Cross?...What are your mission priorities?...

-       The type of Pastoral Leader… and areas of ministry focus.

My hope is that we will start this discernment and you finish it with you new pastor within that first year.

Close with story… I shared this before, but it bares repeating.. there is a story of a community of people who lived on a stretch of dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occurred. Eventually, some of the townspeople decided to put some time and effort and money into a rescue operation. A small life-saving station was built and the devoted members of the rescue team kept an ongoing watch over the sea, ready to use their little boat to search for survivors in case of a shipwreck. As the result of this volunteer operation, the town became famous because of the many lives that were saved.

More and more people joined and became part of the team. Soon a new building was erected. It was much larger than the first little building and it was beautifully furnished and decorated. And as more and more amenities were added for the members' pleasure and comfort, the new building was slowly transformed into a kind of clubhouse. As a result, some of the members began to lose interest in the rescue operation.

But then a shipwreck occurred and many survivors were rescued and brought into the clubhouse for first aid. During the period of the operation which lasted for several days, the frenzied activity caused the attractive "clubhouse" to be considerably marred by such things as bloodstains on the lush carpeting. At the next meeting there was a split in the membership. Most members felt that the life-saving operation was a hindrance to the social life of the organization. Those who disagreed were told that they could build another little station further down the coast. And, as the years went by, history continued to repeat itself. Today, so the story goes, that seacoast has a number of exclusive clubhouses dotting the shore - but no one in the area seems to be concerned with rescue operations.

My friends you’re on a Mission from God!

See You Out on the Road.