Rethink Mission: Inspiring gospel-centered missional churches

This weekend I’m blogging from Verge, the missional community conference.

Matt Carter, pastor of The Austin Stone, kicked off the conference on Thursday night with a challenge on Jesus being at the center of our mission.  Below is the short form of his sermon.
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Missional community has the potential to be the thing that this generation will be remembered by – that will define this generation historically.

I believe that missional community is the long awaited structure that the American church has desperately needed to unleash everyday believers into the mission of their everyday lives. For far too long, for too many churches – their story has been “come to us and we will feed you spiritually – we will provide you programs – we will make you comfortable with the idea of church.”

Too often, that is where it ends.

The church has placed the onus of missional living on paid clergy and missionaries.

A growing tension: as the everyday believer reads the book of Acts, they wonder out loud, “When do I get to get in the fight? When does the Holy Spirit of God get to use me?”

Missional community could awaken the sleeping giant of the American church. It is long past time for the American church to awaken from its materialistic, narcissistic slumber.

Now – I’m also very concerned about missional community.

If missional community is the only defining marker for our generation, then we have failed.

The temptation – the danger for us – is that we will love our mission more than our Savior. If we love our mission more than we love our Savior, then our Savior will have no part of our mission.

In Revelation 2:1 Jesus commends the church at Ephesus. They were persevering with the Gospel, they had raised the standard of holiness in the church, they were elevating (not dismissing) sound doctrine, they were a community on mission, they stood against syncretism.

But, Jesus says, there is this one thing. “This I have against you, that you have left your first love” (Rev 2:4).
Jesus says – “I will remove your lampstand from its place.” In a sense he is saying, “If I am not your first love – if I’m not the goal – then I will remove my presence and blessing from your church.”

If you love your mission more than you love your Savior, your Savior will have no part of your missi0n.
Who cares if we figure out missional community but Jesus isn’t apart of what we do?

Here’s how you know if you love your Savior more than you love your mission: If Jesus took everything away, if you never had one shred of success in ministry again, if none of your dreams came true and all you were left with was Jesus – would that be enough?
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Stay tuned for more updates from Verge 2010, or follow the trend on Twitter.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Verge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.