If you have worshipped with us on Sunday and glanced over the back page of our order of worship, you may have spotted these words: “Christ Covenant seeks to worship God in Hernando as a missional community that is committed to love, train, and serve others in Jesus Christ.” My aim in this brief blog post is to shed some light on exactly what we mean by ‘missional community’ and clear up any mental fogginess that may be lingering in your mind.

 
I’m a fan of clarity, so hopefully our definition of ‘missional community’ will not muddy the waters any further. By ‘missional’ we simply mean that every second of our lives, every fiber of our being, is to be on mission for Jesus. The Christian faith recognizes no time card. At no point can we essentially “clock out” from following Jesus. The implication is that we are Christians whether we are at home, work or school. In other words, there is no stretch of time or patch of real estate where we are not to follow our Savior.

 
When we follow Jesus in the many areas of our lives, we are actually being used by God in his great plan of redemption. Jesus is calling us to be on mission with Him, which means that we are to follow Christ with our sleeves rolled up and ready to work. But what is this work? The Scriptures teach us that God is reconciling the world to Himself through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. All of the twisted and broken effects of the Fall are being straightened and restored by the mighty and gracious hand of God, and the remarkable thing is that God causes us to be part of this great work by nailing our sins to the Cross and uniting us to Christ by faith. As we follow our Redeemer, showing the gospel in our lives and words, God actually uses us to exalt His name and advance His Kingdom.

 
To truly be instruments in God's hands, however, we must avoid two extremes. As we follow Christ on mission each and every day, it will be easy to succumb to one of two temptations: (1) hide in the church or (2) hide in the world. The first option occurs when we only emphasize gathering together, e.g. corporate worship, and not on being salt and light in the world. When this happens, we can become a community that is too inwardly-focused. The second option occurs when we focus so much on being in the world that we start to become like the world. When this happens, we can become an isolated group of individuals that are too outwardly-focused. We begin to see gathering together for corporate worship and fellowship as optional. To be sure, Jesus most definitely calls us to be in and for the world, and this means that we must leave our pews and follow Christ into the world, but to truly show Christ to our neighbors, we must gather together often to commune with our Savior and with each other. Both of the extremes mentioned hamper true Christian growth and take us away from the mission of God. The solution is found in the middle of those two extremes, not forsaking mission or community, not being too inwardly or outwardly focused, but focused ultimately on Christ. To find that middle ground and truly follow the Lamb who was slain, we must be a community on mission. We must be a missional community.