January 12, 2024

During the month of January, we have been giving extra focus to our efforts as a church to join God in his global mission.

Biblical scholar, Christopher Wright, has written extensively on the mission God gives to his people. Here is how he defines it:

Our mission is our committed participation as God’s people, at God’s invitation and command, in God’s own mission within the history of God’s world for the redemption of creation.

The mission is not something we do because God tells us to, it is something God is already doing (and always has been doing) that he invites us to join him in. Another way to think of it is that God is the great storyteller of history, he is the one writing the plot and narrative. As New Testament Scholar’s Tom Wright and Michael Bird describe it:

The New Testament is an invitation: this story can be and should by your story, my story, the story which makes sense of us, which restores us to sense after the nonsense of our lives, the story which breathes hope into a world of chaos, and love into cold hearts and lives.

This Sunday, Jon Hardin is going to be preaching and he will challenge us to consider whether and how we will join God in his mission, make his story the story of our lives. As many of you know, Jon serves with Frontiers, an international ministry focused on bringing the gospel to the Muslim world.  This Sunday he’ll be looking at one of the Bible’s most interesting missionary stories: the story of Jonah.  There’s more to this tale than we may have learned as children. Join us, as we consider how God has designed his plan to reach the world.