Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Vol 2:16 Missional Church: Communities of the Spirit

As I continue reading Eugene Peterson’s memoir, The Pastor, I keep running into thoughts that ignite my pastoral and missional imagination, especially as it correlates with a post-Easter sermon series on 1 Peter in which I am focusing on what it means for us to be communities of the Resurrection, communities of the Spirit – filled with hope, sojourners in the land, being a royal priesthood, etc.

Peterson reiterates for me an understanding of church that is deeply missional. He writes about his discovery of the Lucan accounts of the birth of Jesus and the birth of the church as being parallel – “Luke 1-2, the story of the birth of Jesus, our Savior; Acts 1-2, the story of the birth of church, our salvation community” (p. 124).

He then raises the question about how we think about salvation and how we think about church. He expresses that often we think of salvation of God’s work and the church as our work, i.e., as “what we do to continue the work of Jesus in his absence” (p. 125).

But what Luke expresses in Acts that the birth of the church is a work of the Holy Spirit as much as the birth of Jesus was the work of the Holy Spirit. Peterson expresses that as he and the congregation, he was planting in Bel Air, Maryland, were studying the book of Acts they “were learning that the Acts text set the entire church operation as the work of the Holy Spirit. We were learning that folding chairs, the urn of coffee, and financial reports were included in the operation” (p. 125).

He concludes by saying:

"God gave us the miracle of congregation with the same sign he gave us the miracle of Jesus, by the descent of the dive. The Holy Spirit descended into the womb of Mary in the Galilean village of Nazareth. Thirty or so years later the same Holy Spirit descended into the collective womb of men and women, which included Mary, who had been followers of Jesus. The first conception gave us Jesus, the second conception gave us church." (p. 127)

This is a great reminder for us as we live as missional communities of the resurrection and of the Spirit in this post-Easter and pre-Pentecost season. In being missional communities, no matter how much we do, how much effort our ministry takes, how much we think this is our work – none of this is our work. Yes, we are involved, but all we are engaged in is all the continuing work of the Spirit working in and through the life of communities of resurrection to accomplish the redemptive purpose of God in the world. In fact, the more we make it “our” work, the less it is about what God is accomplishing and to that extent we cease being missional.

In fact, to participate with God in what God is doing in the world, requires us to open our lives more and more to the blowing of the Spirit, for the Spirit of God to move us, to shape us, to engage us – even our discipleship and missional engagement is a working of the Spirit in us, rather than our work.

As Paul urges us to “work out our salvation” (cf. Php. 2:12), rather than it being a “to do list” of our own efforts, we read in 2:13 “for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” Being missional, being missional communities, being communities of resurrection is all about our being open to be taken hold by the Spirit because it is the Spirit who continues the ministry of Jesus in the world.

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