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Are you leading your congregation to become pilgrims in
God s Mission? Or are you allowing them to simply be
wanderers in life without direction?
Abraham was a pilgrim, going forth from Ur to the land to
which God was leading him and the ancient Hebraic
community. While the end goal was not always known,
they came together as a community seeking God s mission,
rather than their own ideas of life. ("By faith Abraham
obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he
was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not
knowing where he was going." Hebrews 11:8)
Moses, and the early Israelite community, while also
following what was originally God's leading, were just
wanderers in the wilderness for forty years, because they
chose individualism and self-gratification. Thus they did
not reach any goal or accomplishment until they organized
their lives around God's understandings of who they were
and what their mission was about.
These represent the differences between being pilgrims in
God's Mission, and in being wanderers without a plan for
the future, a journey without purpose.
We are called as God's missional people to be pilgrims in
our mission plans. Many churches and church communities
spring forth with what seem to be great and inspired ideas
for missional involvement, but lack grounding in the basic
Biblical missional principles that we have written about
here in the past year. This results in simple wandering
about in mission, thinking that if we do "good" work with
sincere devotion that is all that is required. Yet God's
missional calling is much greater. We are not called to be
good and compassionate people, we are called to be in
God's Mission, always going forth by faith yet with some
clear guiding principles for action and planning.
A summary of this calling might be, to become
Connected
Communities of Intentional Dreaming.
What does this
mean in practical missional planning terms?
First, we must
be connected
. A large financial institution in
New York City advertises itself with the phrase, "Life's
Better When We're Connected". While I'm not sure about
that bank, I couldn't agree more fully. Life is just plain
better when we're connected, rather than going it alone.
This is true for individual persons as well as for local
churches and larger communities of the Church. It is
equally important for whole denominations.
God has created us to not only be together, but to work
together, plan together, and act together. It is the so called
'lone wolf' individual who is the most dangerous in our
Mission Journal
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From The Rev. Dr. John Edward Nuessle
MISSION &
THEOLOGY
Pilgrims, Not Wanderers:
Intentional Mission Planni g