Our Goal: "A Missional Gospel Community"

After our 2008 Vision Meeting (1/28) and our Missions Conference last weekend, I hope we are communicating clearly with our church that we are, by God's grace, attempting to grow to a new place in the life of our congregation. There are many ways of possibly describing this vision, but for now let me use the 3 key ideas from our core values and call it "a missional gospel community".

Remember our 3 core values from our Vision meeting? 1. The Gospel has power to change lives (hence, gospel). 2. A Commitment to Christ is a commitment to the local church (hence, gospel community). 3. We are called to be Jesus' witnesses in our particular place here in Plano (hence, missional gospel community). Our goal as a church is to grow substantially into more of a "missional gospel community".

The word missional is just the adjectival form of the word mission. Covenantal is to covenant what missional is to mission. Providential is to providence what missional is to mission. It is an adjective used to describe what kind of people we are called to be.

Think about this biblically-theologically for a moment: the gospel saves us from bondage and condemnation and brings us into a new community of God's redeemed people called the church. The purpose of the gospel is to make us into a new community. Now, what is the call of this new community? It is to participate in God's mission to reach the world. (Jesus said, "Just as the Father sent me, so send I you.") So we are a missional community. We are a people gathered by the gospel of Jesus whose calling it is to extend the Kingdom of God. We are a gospel-forged community that has a mission. Hence, our goal as our church in the months and years to come is to substantially grow as a "missional gospel community".

There are numerous implications of this. I hope to share more of these implications in the near future. For example, does being missional mean simply that we share the good news of salvation with more people more often? Does it mean we start new evangelistic programs in our church? Does it mean we have more attractional outreach events? Or does it somehow also connect more broadly to my job as a software engineer, a manager, a mother, a lawyer or an educator? Or another question: does mercy ministry play a pivotal role in being missional? And if so, what exactly is that role? There are a whole host of other questions related to what it means for us to grow as a community together. I appreciate the ideas that were shared at our Vision Meeting about how to do this. The elders are examining these ideas and will be presenting a pathway forward after Easter.

By God' grace, good changes are on the way for our church family. We'll all need grace and humility to accept and adapt to these changes. I covet your prayers for Trinity as we grow to our next level in maturity and mission!

What thoughts do you have about these things I've shared?