The Mission Mezuzah

Over the last 5 weeks our church has been studying what it means to be a missional church.

Missional? Is that a word? According to spellcheck on Word it is not. But the word comes from South African missiologists who don't like to put h's in Jo-n, so I'm not too worried that Microsoft does not yet know the term. My favorite definition comes from Rick Bennett who says that it is being the presence of Christ on purpose. Another Baptist friend added the being a missional church is being the presnce of Christ on purpose for the sake of others whether anybody joins your church or not. That last phrase scared my Sunday school class a little.

One thing I have said for a long time is that we preachers need to preach "to the benediction". By that I mean that even our worship services are commissional and that each week we come to a point of sending our churches out to meet and pastor their own individual churches. This makes the benediction a time to bless (ordain?) the shepherds of a number of flocks.Our preaching should always imply and at times overstate that we are the ones Jesus was talking to saying, "Go therefore . . ." And he probably did it holding up at least one hand.

One of this week's devotional lessons asked the question, how do you go about proclaiming Christ's love? The answer? "Any way imaginable is possible when your heart is wiling to have your life transformed from self-centeredness and given to God's power and plan."

This devotion prompted 4 questions that I think we should ask ourselves daily.
Where will you go today?
What will you do today?
Who is waiting for you help today?
How will you go about proclaiming Christ's love?

Maybe we should ask them before we get out of bed. Maybe we should post them by the door and read them before we walk out to our days. Perhaps they should be encased in a Missional Mezuzah to remind us we are, as the Blues Brothers so richly proclaimed, "on a mission from God".