A call to mission – based loosely on Luke 4:17-18
I have a problem. Here I am stood in front of the joint congregations of Canford Heath and Longfleet. I have a sermon that I could have preached at either Church on a morning with only slight changes to the introduction. And before anybody says anything, yes, it is true, I do use my sermons more than once, but only if they are good ones. My problem is that I cannot preach it before a joint congregation with just one introduction. So tonight you are lucky, you get two introductions for the price of one.
For the members of Canford Heath, tonight I am going to be preaching about Mission. This should be something close to the hearts of each of you, it will not be long before we reach 2004, and Canford Heath Church stands or falls on its own. If you don’t start thinking about and moving out in mission now, it may well be too late. And if you think that those words are to dramatic, what would happen if I went up to Canford Heath on a Sunday morning and asked people in the shops where I could find Canford Heath Baptist Church? How many people would I have to stop before I found one who knows that you meet at St. Pauls? I would suggest that the answer I receive from many of the people I ask would be, “we do not know about them, but St. Paul’s Anglican is just over there.”
For the people of Longfleet, I want to mention something that happened when Captain Alan and his group were here. I got Thomas to invite some of his friends from school. They were all fairly local to this area, so I did not bother to write the address of the Church on the invitation, I just wrote at Longfleet Baptist Church. Do you know what five of the parents asked me (and that was out of ten invitations that were sent out)? “Where is Longfleet Baptist Church?” If we don’t start thinking about, and moving out in mission now, it may well be too late for this Church as well. Now I am sure that some of you will be thinking “But we are a mission church, we planted the Church at Canford Heath”. And you are right, Longfleet did do this some time ago, and God has allowed the church to have a rest since doing that. Even Jesus used to have times away from the mission field. But I believe that God is saying that this time is over now, it is time to get moving again, and sharing the good news with the people of this area who don’t even know that there are Christians meeting in this building.
God is a God of mission. We don’t see this any clearer than right at the start of Jesus’ ministry in the reading we had from Luke’s gospel. “He has anointed me to preach, he has sent me to proclaim, to release and once again, to proclaim.” It is with this fact that we have to start with in our thinking about mission. God is a missionary God, and it is His mission that is the only one we should be involved in. This means that any successful mission that we can accomplish must start with us seeking God and asking Him ‘What do you want us to do?’ As many of you know, I grew up in the Methodist church and they are great ones for holding meetings. In last week’s Methodist Recorder there was a large article giving advice on holding meetings. Many years ago, any mission event would start not with a prayer meeting, but with a committee meeting. Fortunately, many Methodist churches are now discovering that the time for starting mission like this has passed. If a mission is to be successful, it must be started by a group of people coming together and asking God ‘what is your mission plan for this Church today?’ A Church can do everything necessary to hold a wonderful mission, think of a good theme, invite the best speakers, train up all the counsellors and everything, but if that mission does not fit in with God’s plan, it will have little permanent effect.
The same Church could be meeting in prayer, and hear God say something as simple as ‘I want you to open your church one day a week. And the effect from this can be far greater than this wonderful mission plan they had. I discovered the other weekend at open College that there is a phrase for this now – Missio Dei, the mission of God. It means that mission begins with God for He is the God of mission.
The next thing we see from Jesus’ call to mission, and from his ministry, is that mission must be holistic. In Luke 4:18-19 alone, we find Jesus called to bring good news, freedom, healing and release. Throughout his life, we see him doing exactly this. The miracles of the loaves and fishes show how concerned he was about people’s stomachs as well as their spirits. All of the healing miracles show how concerned he was about people’s physical health. His dealings with prostitutes show how he brought freedom to those caught up in this. Exorcisms like that of the demon possessed men in the region of the Gaderenes show how he brought release to the oppressed.
In the last hundred years or so, the Church in this country has concentrated mainly on changing people’s spiritual lives, and letting them sort the rest out on their own. We have set up and supported special Christian organisations to deal with the worst cases of those needing freedom, healing and release, groups such as Dr. Barnardo’s and NCH. However, we have tended not to get involved with these things in our own neighbourhoods. One of the main reasons for this is that we have always believed that our country is a Christian country. Even up to the late 1980’s, this was true. Most churches involved in mission or evangelism in this country concentrated solely on preaching the good news. At various times, Churches would get together and invite people like Billy Graham or Lois Palau to mass evangelism meetings where many people were converted, and that was about it.
We need to recognise that we are no longer living in a ‘Christian’ country. It is no longer enough to think that we only have to be concerned with the spiritual lives of those outside the Church. Our mission today must be holistic just as Jesus’ was 2000 years ago. What does this mean for us today? It means that if there are not enough children’s play areas in the locality of the church, it should be the church that is leading the fight to get more. It means that if there is a lot of litter around the neighbourhood of the Church, it should be the Church that is pressing the council to do more. It may even be possible to have a ‘Litter Day’ where we go around the area picking litter up. Such an event is also a wonderful chance for a prayer walk in the neighbourhood. These are samples of holistic mission.
It also means that we as Churches need to get more involved in the healing of peoples bodies. If you look at the programme for almost any Spiritualist Church in the country, you will find that at least once a month, most of them hold healing services; you will also find that people are healed at these services. Now the reason for this will be the subject of another sermon. But just think what it looks like to someone who has never been to a Church before. They have a spiritualist church near them that holds healing services, and they know that people are healed at them. They have a Church like Longfleet or Canford Heath near them and find out that at these Churches, they can go along, sing a few songs, say a few prayers, and hear somebody speak to them for 20 or 30 minutes. Which of these Churches do you think they would prefer to go to?
As well as being involved in revealing the word of God to people, we must become involved in revealing the power of God as well. This is a part of holistic mission.
“He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, release for the oppressed.” How can our Churches be involved in doing this today? There are more professional groups already involved in this work aren’t there and many of these groups have Christians in them. But tell me, have our churches written to the prime Minister or have we as individuals written to newspapers protesting about the way Afghani prisoners are being kept in Cuba? Have we written saying that it is against God’s justice to say that we are involved in a ‘war against terrorism’ and then say that those captured are not prisoners of war? Getting involved in things like this is also a part of holistic mission.
This morning when I was preaching about joy – and I mean the bible version of joy, not our own human version – I mentioned how many people think they can get more joy in their lives by going and buying something, or accomplishing something for themselves. I went on to say that Christians become more joyful by accepting what Christ has done for us rather than by getting or accomplishing something for ourselves.
We have to recognise that this is how people are today. People are not interested in simply hearing words about God. Therefore, we have to show them in other ways, how Christ makes a difference today, and we do this by preaching the whole gospel – involving good news, freedom for prisoners, healing and release.
Have you ever tried counting how many different places Jesus went to in the three years covered by the gospels. How many different homes he went to, synagogues, town centres and so on. I have never tried, but it may be interesting to do so one day. What does this tell us about mission? It shows us that mission begins where the people are. I mentioned the mass evangelism meetings earlier held by people like Billy Graham and Louis Palau. I read in the Methodist Recorder recently that the majority of Church Ministers or at least Methodist Ministers do not support such meetings any longer. They believe that those who are outside the Church at present would not attend these meetings today. People are not interested in coming to church or to church meetings any longer, and if we are to reach them with the gospel, we must go to them.
This involves things like Bible studies down the local pub. If we asked the manager of the Shah or even the Tatnam if we can do this on a quite night, I don’t think they would object. Think what interest this would arouse in the other people in the pub. They see ten or 12 people sat in the corner with a pint in front of them, and Bibles open on the table. Don’t you think they might be just a little bit interested in what is happening and come over to see, listen, and maybe even take part?
It involves opening our homes for mission, and going to others homes. If you know a neighbour is sick, just knock on the door and ask if they mind you praying with them and asking God to heal them. The worst thing that can happen is that they will say no.
Poole is fortunate to have a group of people willing to lead mission to our teenagers like this. Last week, the Reverend Bob Mason wrote the ‘Pause for Thought’ in the Echo. He was writing about ‘The Area’ youth group and included this:
“Here lies the key to the success of this commendable project. The organisers have got a grasp of today’s youth culture and relate to it well. It is still very much a Christian run enterprise and the ethos is evident, but it bridges the culture gap between Church and teenagers. And that’s a big challenge to the wider Church isn’t it? Is our message relevant?
Jesus’ mission involved going out to people in the places they worked, shopped and lived, and speaking to them of the things they knew, but speaking in a way that revealed God at work. We have to be doing the same as this. It is no good expecting people to come here and expecting them to listen to our stories about a man who lived and died 2,000 years ago. This is not relevant to people outside of the Church. We need to go out and speak of and reveal a man who lived and died 2,000 years ago, but who lives again today, and who can change our lives today, in ways that affect us today.
A long time ago, I went to a days meeting at Cliff College. I can’t remember who the speaker at the time was, but one thing she told us stuck with me, she said that when a Church has more to say about finance and building matters in its Church meeting, than it does about mission and evangelism, that Church is having serious problems in living up to its calling. After going to the last few Church meetings of our two churches, I think that Longfleet and Canford Heath are getting extremely close to the point where those words describe these Churches. Thankfully, largely due to the efforts of people like Geoff and Orfund, the Parent/Toddler group with the Alpha Course they are holding, all is not lost. But it soon could be if we do not take a fresh look at one of the reasons why Jesus came.
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour." Those were the words spoken at the start of our Lord’s mission on earth. “"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." He spoke those words at the end of his three-year mission. He passed the job of mission on to each of us. God is a God of Mission, He has a plan of mission ready for us to follow, a plan that involves revealing Him in His wholeness, revealing Him where people are now. Are we willing to find and follow His plan?
