A City Should Be Shining On A Hill

Its my turn to lead devotions at our deacons' meeting tonight - which basically means I have to spend sometime thinking and praying about the meeting, and about where the church is at the moment, and above all listening to God, so that when it comes to setting the direction and tone of the time of prayer before the meeting starts, I should be leading us in the way that He wants - to make sure that, from the very outset of the meeting, its about God's business, not ours.

So in this process, I've been thinking about mission, about missional living, and about the church (globally and here in Coventy) and its place in mission. And in particular, I've been thinking about this passage from Matthew 5:-

13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Reading this got me thinking, about the different ways we as individuals and churches think about mission. And in that thinking I identified at least three different things we do, all of them not exactly ideal...

Commonly, we find churches who turn "mission" into "social action" - dealing with poverty issues, with equality issues, with health and social care issues, with any number of issues... any issues except for the lack of God in the lives of the people they are dealing with. Churches doing good deeds certainly, but how does this glorify the Heavenly Father if the "clients" never hear or see anything to do with Him, if their actions are no different from those of any secular (or other religious) aid agency?

Then you get the churches who believe that mission is about proclaiming the word, (usually in a loud confrontational manner, most often quoted from a old-fashioned translation, and very often using words like sin, hell, death, damnation, fire) - don't get me wrong, usually every word they yell is true, and it certainly attempts to address the spiritual needs of the listener (if anyone sticks around long enough to hear it) - but considering most of the people who hear probably think that "God" is just another swear word, how is this style of preaching going to connect with them, why should they even realise they need to engage with their Heavenly Father, let alone worship and adore him?

And of course, you get churches, and individuals, for whom mission is something of a dirty word - a messy, difficult job that someone's got to do, but its not going to be us. And to make sure we don't actually have to do it, we'll enable someone else - with prayer, with money, with resources -- but anything to avoid actually getting our own hands dirty in mission.

At our church over its life we've no doubt tried all of these (lets face it, when the church has been going for something close to 400 years then there's plenty of time for us to have got most things wrong at some point). But equally there have been times when we've got it right - when we've rolled up our sleeves, and got out there to deal with people where they are, and deal with the whole person, their spiritual, physical and emotional needs. Thats the model of mission that our Lord and Saviour used, the pattern we have to follow, the way to shine as a City on Hill, giving glory to our Heavenly Father.

So at our deacons meeting tonight, I'll be leading devotions in which we give thanks for our faithful witness and mission in the past, in which we confess the times we haven't got it right, and in which we look forward, with excitement, anticipation and longing, for the opportunities ahead to go about our Father's business.

Unless of course, I've got things wrong, and He leads me a different way by then.... !