As part of yesterday's readings in Common Prayer (A Liturgy For Ordinary Radicals), I read this:
Twentieth-century Russion Georges Florovsky wrote "Christianity entered history as a new social order, or rather, a new social dimension. From the very beginning Christianity was not primarily a 'doctrine,' but exactly a 'community.' There was not only a 'Message' to be proclaimed and delivered, and 'Good News' to be declared. There was precisely a New Community, distinct and peculiar, in the process of growth and formation, to which members were called and recruited. Indeed, 'fellowship' (koinonia) was the basic category of Christian existence."
coupled with this scriptural passage:
16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
The message I take from the synthesis of these is that to be 'missional' is to somehow seek ways to bring that koinonia fellowship and that message of multi-faceted Good News to those
- who have not yet experienced its power
- who have not had the chance to be rooted and established in it
- have no personal grasp on the width and length and depth of the love of God...
A good word on the eve of our church's Mission/Vision weekend.