Stacks

Admittedly, I've never spent much time in the library. High school and college assignments that drove me to the library were usually more interesting than I first thought but I just didn't put that much effort into research. The card catalogue is very confusing.

Then I started seminary. I built up my own library as each class had required textbooks and other reading. Shelves line the office at church. We have a couple of shelves in the house. My Logos and Kindle apps are heavily loaded. And as I sit at the dining room table typing this post, I can see about thirty books stacked on the table and in the chairs.

These stacks contain books I'm actively using. (Add another thirty or so e-books to the "actively using" list.) A couple are Bible commentaries I'm using for sermon preparation. One is a book on physical health. Most deal with the topic of my recently-abandoned doctoral project: missional living.

I've abandoned the project but not the concept. Mission living is a broad and deep idea that comes from the Bible. It is the true sense of what the church should be based on the missionary nature of God. Jesus said, "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you" (John 20:21). The Father sent the Son on a mission to redeem people from their sins. While Christians cannot die to atone for the sins of others like Jesus did, we still are to be actively pursuing the redemption of the lost by showing them, telling them about, and pointing them to Jesus.

When Jesus was born - an infant to a virgin - God took on human flesh. This is called the Incarnation. What Jesus did to redeem people is missional; how he did it was incarnational - he came to us, he became one of us. So the church is to be people who are engaged in the mission of God through the relationships we have with others.

I'm an introvert so I have few deep relationships and almost all of those are with people who are a lot like me. In order to be missional I have to be intentionally incarnational, too. I have to engage people who are different from me, who I may not naturally be drawn to, but who need a Christian to care enough for them to tell them the Good News. Relationships are the best avenue by which the gospel arrives.

That doesn't me Christians shouldn't express the gospel to total strangers. That doesn't put an end to global mission trips or mission ministry in another part of town. We are to be on mission everywhere to everybody. Where possible, we should leverage relationships and personal encounters for the sake of the mission.

I want to encourage you, if you are a Christian, to accept the call to God's missionary call just as Jesus did and to engage people in personal relationships just as Jesus did for the sake of the mission.