Missional Priests Each Day

Martin Luther and the reformers recovered the Bible's teaching concerning the priesthood of every believer. Thus, each Christ-apprentice in each and every aspect of life, whatever their vocation wherever lived, can be said to be a minister of the Gospel. Further biblical reflection reveals that while each believer indeed is to be 'a minister’ each one is also to be ‘a missioner’ for every disciple has been called into the Missio Dei (God’s Mission).

God calls out a People, a universal and also a local congregated body. To this (the universal Church and each local church) every Jesus-follower is called. Individually and together believers join in the Mission to announce and to show forth the already-present Rule of God. Believers are to erect signposts that reveal and point to both the presence and the future of God’s Rule (the Kingdom of God). We look for a coming full manifestation of God’s Rule on planet Earth when Heaven and Earth are completely in synch, in God’s Rule and Purposes.

God so loved the world, 'the cosmos,' that he sent his Son. God is on mission and is calling persons to join as God’s People in the task of the Reclamation of this planet. That is what He is about and what He made possible in the Victory of Christ who in His Person and Work accomplished what no other could, whether Israel or the Church. But as we join in unfeigned faith and honesty we join in what God is doing in bringing back to God's self and purpose, this planet, comprised of people, places and things.

Missional priests, bridges of God - of God to our neighbour and of our neighbour to God, respond to God’s call to join in this awesome task and responsibility. God’s Spirit enables us to do what we could only stand by, perplexed and unable. Through God Himself, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the missional priests who comprise His People, the Church, we enter fully and fruitfully into the tasks before us, in all our spheres of responsibility and activity, day by day, daring as we take up our vocations, each one and together, to say: TGIM! Thank God it’s Monday!'

Gospel Living - Integral Mission

We may call it ‘word/deed' or 'integral mission.’  We may stress the call of the Gospel and the inherent need for many many mission shapes in its introduction and expression in our world. We may witness to the need of all persons for a balance of the demands of the inner life of soul and spirit with those of the outer person. But the fact that we have to talk clearly about balancing humanity's social needs and spiritual needs arises out of the church's failure to think and act holistically integrally in all of life.

We have had to recover (or rediscover) the biblical mandate and many balances including paradoxes inherent in the gospel. The split that developed into the fundamentalism of both liberal and conservative make it into either/or rather than a biblical both/and, at least in its most recent historical manifestations began to take shape after the US Civil War towards the end of the 19th century. Prior to that, any separation between the social and the spiritual was not as much evidenced in the West.

A kind of eschatalogical escapism beginning to be popularized at that time held that it was more important to feed the soul than to feed the body for even if the person receiving such ministry died of starvation at least they get to heaven. One popular evangelist put it: 'I do not have time to polish the lamps in a sinking ship. God has give me a lifeboat and I will save all of the souls I can before the End comes. That same evangelist, wonderfully inconsistent, visited wounded soldiers in Civil War camps and hospitals caring for their whole persons as well as sharing the way of love and salvation of Christ.

We have indeed had to rediscover biblical balance, what John Stott called the two wings of the airplane - i.e the necessity of the social and the spiritual being shared in word and deed if the message of the gospel is to survive in each generation. I prefer terms that do not allow for either/or distinctions but that rather explore and enter into the ways in which each area of life take shape and be lived out under biblical guidance and gospel influence. This includes each and all of the 360° of the fully human existence and potential that surrounds us, all of which are vital aspects and spheres of creaturely life.

Raising the Spiritual Temperature

People, Place & Things

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'For God so loved the  cosmos . . .' surely means that the whole creation, damaged as it is, will be restored and brought to new creation fulness. Not only people, important as we are in God's purposes, but also every part and place of creation, are loved, are to be restored and are to be released to the New that God is preparing.

A Faith from Frightening Areas

"The faith of artists and individuals who grew up and live in inner-city environments and deal with the same kind of tempations and demons (i.e. drugs, sex and violence) is very authentic. That type of faith cannot be comprehended by middle-class or upper-middle-class Christians because the type of saving that needs to take place is not one exclusively spiritual. In fact, it cannot even be comprehended by most Christians because it is not draped in false piety. 

The type of faith exhibited by these individuals is very rugged and, according to Dr. Daniel White Hodge, their theology engages, ‘The profane, the secular, and the sacred - an area frightening to those still etched and stooped in the hallways of simplistic and ‘milk’ theological paradigms.’"

   — Ryan Herring, online article in ‘Red Letter Christians'