{"id":37512,"date":"2020-11-02T14:45:57","date_gmt":"2020-11-02T06:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/?p=37512"},"modified":"2020-11-02T14:45:57","modified_gmt":"2020-11-02T06:45:57","slug":"embrace-the-mission-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/?p=37512","title":{"rendered":"Embrace the Mission of God"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHURCHgrowth<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The Wake-Up Call<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the second consecutive year we see a decline in our church worship attendance. All pastors and delegates were impressed with this undesirable trend during the 2019 Annual Conference. Those who are sceptical of statistics tend to give all sorts of explanation merely to tell themselves that we are still doing fine. Yet there are others in a jitter with the worrying figures, frantically thinking of new methods to increase the numbers without looking at the root cause of such decline. Neither way is helpful.<\/p>\n

The dipping graph should not be a surprise if we had examined the statistics for the past decade in more depth. Over the years, many pastors and leaders have barely been able to cope with the suffocation from the so many program-driven activities to attract new people and keep old members. If we still slumber on with the present status quo, we will face an inevitable impending crisis. Is this not a wake-up call?<\/p>\n

In Partnership with God\u2019s Mission<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Have we ever wondered why advocating \u2018The Church after God\u2019s Own Heart\u2019 for the past few years has not translated into church growth? How many of us have since shifted our mindset to God\u2019s mission? Many sermons have been preached on the Great Commission. However, from our annual reports, the evidence of \u2018after God\u2019s own heart\u2019 and disciple making according to Matt. 28:18-20 is not convincing enough.<\/p>\n

The pressing question now is not \u201cHow do we grow our church?\u201d Our primary quest should rather be how we embrace God\u2019s mission as our mission. God is on a mission and our church is called to join Him. In other words, the mission is not ours; it is Missio Dei, the \u2018Mission of God\u2019 or the \u2018sending of God,\u2019 and we are called to be in partnership with Him. The Missio Dei is redemptive for the world. Have we been missing God\u2019s mandate?<\/p>\n

The church is the community of God\u2019s people called out from the world and sent into the world as the disciples of Christ. The missional church is an expression of God\u2019s heart. In the missional church, the people of God, partnering with God, is on a redemptive mission in the world.<\/p>\n

We are Jesus\u2019 disciples when we respond to His calling \u2018Come, follow me.\u2019 It is the responsibility of the church to develop followers of Christ, not members of an institution. We should also be transformed into missionaries, not merely encouraged to be faithful church goers. As Christ\u2019s followers, we should be missional disciples. Philip Meadow stated during the recent Wesleyan Seminar that \u201cMissional Discipleship means following Jesus, in the power of His Spirit, as whole-life disciples and everyday missionaries. We become more like Jesus by abiding deeply in God and living missionally in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Becoming A Whole-Life Disciple<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

A disciple is one who aspires to become and live like Christ. Discipleship is a lifestyle and a process of spiritual growth. It should be a life transforming journey aiming at being \u2018fully mature in Christ\u2019 (Col.1:28).<\/p>\n

As Christ\u2019s disciples, maturity in Christ means Christlikeness. It does not equate to church attendance or church activities, bible knowledge, spiritual zeal or giftedness. It is rooted in obedience to the word of God. Paul further emphasized the evidences of spiritual maturity in Col. 2:6-8 in terms of our walk with God, our gratitude towards Him and our spiritual stability. We must guard against the appealing ideologies of this era which has infiltrated our church and lured many towards spiritual compromise and complacency.<\/p>\n

We must live as whole-life disciples. It means every day, in every aspect, in every circumstance, in every calling, in all our ways with all our heart. The sacred-secular dichotomy should not exist. Therefore, spiritual formation and discipleship are to be woven into the fabric of everyday living with an emphasis on the Great Commandment.<\/p>\n

There is no short cut in whole-life discipleship. The Board of Laity has been encouraging everyone to cultivate the spiritual discipline of daily devotion. We recommend Daily Living Water because of its effective inductive approach. Besides, everyone needs a spiritual community. The best way in building discipleship is through small groups where disciples come together regularly to explore their faith and encourage one another in their discipleship journey. It must be relational. Is it not Jesus\u2019 model? It is Wesleyan too. It is time to re-examine the frequently asked question: With all our efforts in running various courses and programs, why aren\u2019t we producing the expected disciples?<\/p>\n

\u2018Whole-life disciple\u2019 and disciple maker as an \u2018everyday missionary\u2019 are one and the same identity. The former is the being and the latter, the doing, and it must be in that order.<\/p>\n

Witnessing as Everyday Missionary<\/span><\/strong>
\nAs Christ\u2019s disciple, one cannot dislocate evangelism or disciple making from discipleship. A disciple also witnesses and serves through his character and life. We know only too well our shortcomings in committing \u201cThe Great Omission\u201d as opposed to our obligations under The Great Commission.<\/p>\n

Our overemphasis on the institutional expressions of the church in terms of buildings, attendance, activities and offerings have obscured our focus on God\u2019s mission. It is not that these are irrelevant. We must understand that a church is not a building or a vendor of religious goods and services. A church is a faith community to belong to, a family to be part of, bringing the kingdom of God into a lost world. It is time for us to reverse the entrenched mind-set that the church exists primarily for church members rather than for the community. As Christ\u2019s disciples, we are sent into the world on His mission. We are called to be everyday missionaries!<\/p>\n

Church is not a \u2018what\u2019 but a \u2018who.\u2019 As we describe the church in terms of people, a missional church is characterized by its organic expressions. This means wherever missional disciples are, the church is. There our mission field is, be it at home, at school, at workplace, in the neighbourhood, at the park, at the hospital or at the airport. Taking family as a context for evangelism, parents are the first missionaries and the living Gospel examples our children observe every day.<\/p>\n

A missional activist points out that, \u201cEvery disciple is to be an agent of God, and every disciple is to carry the mission of God unto every sphere of life. We are all missionaries sent into a non-Christian culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Needed Missional Shift<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

How shall we reboot our ministry after God\u2019s own heart? Reggie McNeal, in his book Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church, stated the three shifts, both in our thinking and in our behaviour: From internal to external in terms of ministry focus, from program development to people development in terms of core activity and from church-based to kingdom-based in terms of leadership agenda.<\/p>\n

As a church, we need to recapture the Mission of God as the mission of our church. We hope to exhibit the missional experience in our transition as we reset our compass. How shall we move on from here after the wake-up call?<\/p>\n

In fact, our President in his address during the 2019 Annual Conference has provided the answer. Fundamentally, we must hold on to the Sufficiency and Jurisdiction of Scripture. We need to revamp our Church Discipleship and initiate the neglected Family Discipleship. Church and family are the two contexts which God created for the expansion of His kingdom. We must connect the two effectively.<\/p>\n

We shall not just be advocating \u201cThe Church After God\u2019s Own Heart\u201d and \u201cThe Family After God\u2019s Own Heart.\u201d We must be practitioners in partnership with Him. God is on mission and we are called as His agents and instruments. Are you willing to be a part of it?<\/p>\n

\nBy Dr Wong Sung Ging<\/span><\/strong>
\nSCAC Lay Leader<\/span><\/strong><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHURCHgrowth The Wake-Up Call This is the second consecutive year we see a decline in our church worship attendance. All pastors and delegates were impressed with this undesirable trend during the 2019 Annual Conference. Those who are sceptical of statistics tend to give all sorts of explanation merely to tell themselves that we are still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48980,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,10,272],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37512"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}