Asking unbelievers to become missionaries!

1 Corinthians 1:2 (NLT)  I am writing to God’s church in Corinth, to you who have been called by God to be his own holy people. He made you holy by means of Christ Jesus, just as he did for all people everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.

Is your local church a missionary community? The famous theologians Calvin and Luther said little about mission because they wrote at a time during the Christendom era when the church was at the centre of their society. Now the church particularly in the ‘western’ world is on the margins and yet we continue to think of church as we have for hundreds of years. We relegate mission to one element of what the church should be doing instead of seeing the church as the means by which we accomplish God’s mission. The local church needs to be a flexible and adaptable to local cultures, a movement of missionaries whose life, vitality and dynamism is touching every corner of society.  If our churches continue to organise life around pleasing the insiders we will become increasingly alien to those we wish to reach. Church culture is often inaccessible to the unchurched and yet we ask them to become missionaries and go cross cultural when we invite them to church. This attractional model of church- “come to us” is in fact extractional as we effectively demand unbelievers to become like us and fit in to our way of doing things. Instead it is we who should reengage with unbelievers and recognise that God is already at work in their lives.

Lord change our hearts that we might fervently seek opportunities to reengage with your world.