The Mission

What does it really mean for the church to be on mission? This sermon challenges us to rethink a word we use all the time but may not fully understand. Mission is not a program the church runs once a year, nor is it the exclusive responsibility of a select few who travel to distant places. It is the very heartbeat of what makes the church the church. Drawing on the story of Jesus calling Levi the tax collector in Mark chapter 2, we are invited to see that Jesus did not simply call Matthew to follow him and then tuck him away into a private classroom. He followed Matthew into his world, sat at his table, and ate with the people that the religious society had written off entirely. This is the model. Not a church that occasionally reaches outward, but a people whose entire identity is shaped by the mission of Jesus to seek and save the lost. The sermon introduces the idea of missiological ecclesiology, the understanding that the study and practice of mission and the study and practice of being the church cannot be separated. When we hold these two things together, we begin to see that every role we fill, every conversation we have, every act of service we offer, is an expression of that mission. This is a call not to guilt but to clarity, and it leaves us asking a simple and searching question: are we living in a way that makes mission the function of our lives together, not just one item on a long list?