Pastor's Blog: So Send I You
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You’ll remember that back during our Vision 2020 conversations, our church felt led to consider Missions as one of our six core priorities. As we committed “to serve others,” we set as forth as a strategic objective “to emphasize the importance of every member’s involvement in some area of ministry beyond MBBC.” In the coming weeks, we will see signs of that objective being fulfilled as we send teams from our church to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Fort Collins, Colorado, and Cape Town, South Africa. In fact, throughout the month of June, some team from MBBC will be on mission in one of these locations. While our numbers will be down here at home, our level of enthusiasm will be high as we pray for our fellow members and the people with whom they’ll be working.
Prayer is, of course, the most important way for us to support these outreach efforts. The groups going from our church will need more than anything else a strong sense of the Spirit’s presence and power to accomplish all that God has in store for them to do. To that end, we will commission these groups together this Sunday at both morning services. As the various team members stand for the commissioning, my hope is that we’ll see even more clearly how serving others is an essential part of who we are as a community of faith.
I also hope that it will stir some from among our number who will not be able to go on any of these trips to give consideration to what they can do to promote Kingdom causes right here at home. While it’s good to have groups leave our church for other fields of service, at the end of the day, what we pray for is for everyone to ponder the possibilities of serving others in the places where God has called us on an everyday basis – our homes, our businesses, our places of leisure. After all, every place is a potential field of service when we open our eyes and hearts to the needs all around.
So, let’s all see ourselves as full-time missionaries. Let’s take more seriously the opportunities we have each day to advance Christ’s cause wherever we may be. Only then, will our church’s vision become reality and our fellowship strengthened by knowing we will be found faithful by how we follow the Spirit’s leading in serving others in Jesus’ name.
“As the Father has sent me, I am sending you" (John 20:21).