Mission…what?

Are we doing missions or are we being missional?  Yeah, yeah, I know…semantics right.  It’s just playing with endings, but it’s all the same.  Well, whatever you want to call them, I think the two concepts are different. Surely the thoughts I’m pondering are not new or original, but they have been rattling in my head and heart a lot lately.  So here’s what I’m thinking.

If we are simply doing missions, then we are by definition relegating the mission to a task, action or program.  So, we simply go on mission trips.  We have a missions department or ministry.  We organize people to sign up and get equipped to do something.

If on the other hand, we are living missions, i.e. being missional, then by definition our mission begins to define who we are.  We are equipping people to be something.  Missions is not something we do, but instead runs through the fabric of how we think, what we love, and how we relate to others.  We see the church as a community of called out people living out the gospel in every aspect of their lives.

Jesus came to live the redemption mission.  God didn’t send us a revamped program of how to engage Him.   He came, He lived, He died, and He rose again.  This is what the mission looks like.  It is an “all in” affair.  We can’t just do “missiony” things and declare ourselves faithful.

Like the description on the Kingdom of God, living missionally, living “for the sake of the gospel” is like yeast it permeates everything.  In other words you can’t be a little missional, slightly gospel centered or a tad Kingdom minded.  The gospel captures everything about us and therefore our response should be to live it out in every aspect of our daily lives.