Their mission, our mission.

In May we had the opportunity to meet together and explore ways of “sharing good news”. A couple of weeks ago we had the Canals Festival. In this next week we are visiting homes in Etruria, surveying people’s thoughts about the community that they live in, about God, and about the church. Tomorrow night we have a church council meeting where we will be talking about the progress we are making with our Mission Action Plan. It seems to me that there is a lot of mission activity going on around St Mark’s at the moment, which is really encouraging. And so I think that it is really appropriate that this reading from Luke’s account of Jesus’ life has come up for this morning, as I believe that it holds some important insights for us as we think about what mission God has for us, and as we get on with it.

Before we dive into having a detailed look at it, though, I would just like to take a step back a bit and do some groundwork. You see, it is quite clear that Jesus was sending out this group of people, to do this task, in a certain way. The temptation for me then, is to say that it doesn’t have to apply to me. What Jesus says is for them, at that time, not for me at this time. So I don’t have to take notice, particularly of the difficult bits that might mean that I have to do something that I find uncomfortable or challenging.

But, there are two reasons that I believe that this teaching does apply to us, and that Jesus is calling us to live like this now.

Continued here...