Church or Mission? Apply or Die?

What do you think would have happened if the Early Christians had been more focused on Church than on Mission? They would probably, for the first generation have made a reasonable job at it: Jesus would still have been their inspiration and role model and they would have tried to be a very loving community and in that sense would have been quite attractive. But as the generations passed they would have marginalised the Holy Spirit more and more and become more and more locked into tradition and ritual. In the end they would become a kind of Christianised version of the Pharisees intent on keeping themselves pure and locking others out by ever increasing rules.

The truth is that the Early Christians were more focused on Mission than Church; in fact we would think they were zealots for Mission in comparison today. Focused on Mission they won more and more, day after day, to Christ and their numbers grow exponentially, and then whoops we need to organise this lot: oh yes Jesus said about building His Church, so that’s what we will call it and in case folk haven’t got the point another name will be the Body of Christ. That’s thank God how it all started and if it hadn’t then I am not sure we would be sitting here today. Sadly over the years the Christian pendulum has swung between Mission and Church. Up to AD 300 it was Mission that predominated and from 300 AD to the Reformation it was Church and the name History ascribes to that period is the Dark Ages. Thankfully Mission began to reassert itself from the Reformation but it took till Wesley & Whitfield to swung the pendulum back to Mission. Since then Pendulum has largely been more towards Church with a few wonderful individual and corporate exceptions. Focus on Church creates a religious elite or dependency and squeezes out the Missionary zeal and endeavour, which is the life flow of the Holy Spirit, formed Missionary Church.

In Northern Synod, within the URC, and over much of the Body of Christ in the UK we have stark choice to make. We can continue to allow the pendulum to dictate our preoccupation with Church and not with Mission or we can begin to turn the Titanic and decide as congregations what our core business really is and start through some small steps to turn our hearts towards Mission once again.

I believe that when congregations do this the Lord lets out a loud hallelujah and sends His Holy Spirit of Mission to assist as well as an army of angels to protect us as we go out.

Here in Northern Synod we want to encourage churches in this decision: that’s why the Mission 4 Life Fund was established: not so we could feel go we had paid lip service to Mission but so we could engage in Mission once more and become missionary congregations within a Missionary Synod!! And so to our challenge to every congregation.

Before the end of June decide on at least one new initiative in Mission and to go for it. And if you need help financially to fund such a Mission project then please apply for help. We want to hear from every congregation what your initiative is and whether you need help from the fund. If we get more than we have resources to fund we will find the resources from somewhere (perhaps our bigger congregations) but what we are asking of you all is a seed change in thinking, a new step of faith, a leadership decision to become Missionary congregations once again.

The alternative you know as well as I do: this is God’s time and God’s Call to the Synod and its congregations: we ignore it at our peril. Apply or die?

David Bedford