Day 6 (Friday) – “Sent to be in Community”
*Acts 2:42-47
The 2011 Mission Team was sent to West Virginia to share the gospel through words and actions and to receive the good gifts that our neighbors in West Virginia have for us. And now, the 2011 Mission Team is being sent home. For better for worse, returning home can often feel anticlimactic, as if we’ve been on a mountaintop and experienced a terrific view, and now have to go to a valley where things are not as extraordinarily beautiful. So much is learned and cherished and celebrated while we serve our neighbors in West Virginia, and it sometimes seems that so much of that missional fervor is lost when we return home. So, the question for the day is, where do we go from here?
The early church certainly knew the difference between a “mountain-top experience” and a “valley experience.” They were the ones who witnessed the resurrection of Jesus, who saw him ascend into heaven, and who received the powerful gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The early church knew a thing or two about spiritual mountaintops. And we have much to learn from the early church because they refused to lose their mountaintop fervor when they were plunged into spiritual valleys. And ultimately, they preserved their fervor by understanding that they were sent to be in community. They remained committed to their mountaintop commitments because they maintained their community through spiritual disciplines and fellowship.
Acts 2 offers us a glimpse into the fervor-keeping practices of the early church: they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayers. In other words, they became a unified community that took seriously the challenge to follow Jesus. They unified themselves through their spiritual disciplines of bible study and prayer, and they unified themselves by sharing life together – the good and the bad, the joys and the sorrows, despair and hope.
As the 2011 Mission Team returns home, we return home to a community that finds its identity and mission in Jesus. We return home to a church that takes seriously the call of discipleship. Let us, the people of Union Grove, refuse to let the mountaintop fervor of our mission experiences fizzle away and disappear. For the truth is, the church continues to be sent as the Mission Team was sent. The mission to West Virginia will be completed today, but our mission as Christians will never be complete until God transforms the world into something perfectly beautiful and holy.
Where do we go from here? My challenge to Union Grove is this: let us be a community that continues to be sent with a passionate fervor. Let us be a community that follows the example of the early church by devoting ourselves to learning the doctrines of the church, studying the Bible and praying together. Let us be a community that is so unified in our practices of study, worship, and fellowship that we continue to take seriously our mission of being sent into the world to carry on the ministry of Jesus.
No comments:
Post a Comment