Mission

I was doing some research yesterday for a lesson I am writing on "The Kingdom of God." In my resarch, I was glancing through a book by McLaren and Sweet called "A Is For Abductive." In an article about "mission," they say the following: "The question is not whether your church has a mission, the question is whether God's mission has your church"
In our pragmatic, consumer-oriented society, our thinking in the church tends to get sucked into that mindset. I think there is a fine line that we are walking in this emergent/postmodern conversation between trying to reach people as a part of/into God's mission and making our church's mission the preservation and promotion of itself to it's own end. It's quite tempting to think in marketing terms, i.e. if this is the direction that culture is going then this is the direction we need to go if we want our church to be successful. On the other hand, part of God's mission is to reach these people in whatever culture they exist in. The difference is intention and motivation...and that difference is huge.

AE