Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve taught from Acts 2:42-47 at Harmony Church on the three driving values of our community: Gospel | Community | Mission. I’ve done something that I usually don’t do: make lists. But I think that they help with something as vitally important as this. Combining the books of Colossians, Ephesians, and Corinthians with Acts 2:42-47, here are two lists from the Mission sermon. The first is a list of lessons that we see from the Mission working out of the early church. The second list is a list of practical ways that we can integrate Mission into our own lives.
5 Points
- The Gospel Community known as the Early Church realized that it wasn’t just about them. God was up to something greater in their midst. (Acts 2:46-47)
- The mission only exists because worship doesn’t. Our dream is for the Mission to longer be needed.
- God, over all eternity and through the Cross, is bringing all things back to a state of relationship with Him. (Colossians 1:19-20)
- The Local Church is the instrument through which the Gospel is breaking into this world and reconciling creation to God. (Ephesians 3:10)
- A Gospel-Community is on the Mission of God. It is bold and confident in the power of the Gospel. If it is not on His Mission, perhaps it is not a Community in which His Gospel is moving. (Ephesians 3:11-12)
5 Practices
- Live on Mission: You are immersed in a culture on a daily basis. Do you speak their language? Do you translate grace and the Gospel in their language?
- Give to the Mission: All things are Mission. We give our time, finances, and efforts because of the Gospel working in us. Do we worry over and serve under the master of Money, or do we use it to rest in and work out the Gospel?
- Pray for the Mission. Do we spend as much time on our knees in private as we do on our feet in public? Appeal to God for resources, revelation, and “random” encounters.
- Serve the Mission: The Mission doesn’t happen by itself. It takes working hands and feet and minds and hearts to be accomplished. Are you giving it your all?
- Center Your Life on Christ: Two things happen here. 1) You rely less on others for your own Gospel-ing (freeing others to be on Mission elsewhere) and 2) You become burdened for someone else’s Gospel-ing.