Revisiting Mission Statement: Start at the Beginning

Our Mission: HELPING PEOPLE FIND THEIR WAY BACK TO GOD!

This is the mission statement that Bill, Matt, and BJ have been trying to work out. At the moment, the mission statement includes some practical steps of what that means and how we think it might look...practically.

Practically we are working out these (click to see) missional actions.

But why are we saying we want to "HELP PEOPLE FIND THEIR WAY BACK TO GOD!"?

Well, I want to answer that by asking: Where does the Gospel, the good news start? What do you say to people first?

Do we start by saying, "You are a sinner?"

I would say no.

Not that it's not true, but what good is it to start with people who have no concept that they were anything other than what they are?

That is, in today's culture, people do not have a pre-culturized context of believing there is a God, that He created us, had a purpose for us, or that He cares at all what we do.

Starting by saying, "You are a sinner" is the same as coming up to you and saying, "You are a ladifald." You don't know what a "ladifald" is do you? Of course not. So, what good does it do to call you a "ladifald" and tell you there is a way to correct it?

By saying we want to "Help you find your way back to God" it implies several things:

1. There is a God
2. You were with Him once
3. You are not with Him now
4. There is a way to get back with Him

All those are part of that statement, "Helping people find their way back to God."

Some of the most attractive things in the story of what God is doing in the Bible is

1. I am (that is God saying "I am")
2. I wanted you, so I created you very special and uniquely fit to be with me and like me and like me with all the others around you
3. I wanted to be with you but you left me
4. I still want to be with you, I still want you to be especially like me
5. I have provided a way for you to be with me and be like me again

What we want to communicate first to people are these things. Primarily this thought:

God created you uniquely special for a purpose and he is still wanting that for you.

Who doesn't want to hear about that?

Ironically, people really do reject the idea they are special more often than rejecting "you are a sinner." We have an innate given knowledge that we are not what we are supposed to be and everything in our lives is striving to be something. And it's not that we reject we are sinners, but it's more often we reject how special we were originally created to be because it means we have to accept our need for God to do something to make us special again. We know sin and how to act that out don't we? We know how to destroy, work to get what we want if we have to, even if it hurts people or makes things worse in the long run. We don't know God or how to act like Him by ourselves, though we try (Genesis 3:4,5). We don't know how to create the good deep things we truly long for.

Of course, the truth of the story is that we sinned and destroyed the "specialness" that God created us with (taking on His image in His presence) and went our own way to be our own God. And we don't want to give that up for fear that God really won't fulfill His end of the bargain.

But He has in my life. I'm changing and destroying less of the good things in my life because of what He has done to get me back to Himself. And I want to tell you that there is a way to get back to God. God has made a way for you to get back to Him. But you have to accept that:

1. You are specially made by God, like God, to be with God
2. You have rejected the image of God in yourself, rejected the presence of God, and denied he made you for any purpose, much less that he made you to be with Him
3. God has made a way for you to get back to that wonderfully joyful created purpose of being with Him to be like Him

And Jesus is the way! His death was the equivalent of destroying all your bad directions away from God. You should have taken on the direction of death and permanent separation from God, but Jesus died and took the separation so we didn't have to die and be permanently separated.

Jesus is the truth! He and His church (the gathering of all who choose to believe and follow Him as the way) embody all we need to know - not just knowledge - who we need to know, who we need to talk to, who we need to be with, who we need to listen to, and who we need to be.

Jesus is the life! He is alive! And we share in that life, that walking with God, by walking with Him through Jesus new life after death given to us - we walk with God, in His Kingdom, through Jesus resurrection.

Instead of seeing humans first and foremost as sinners, we need to see them as Eikons of God [(images of God)], created to relate to God, to relate to others, and to govern the world as Eikons. The Fall effects each of the previous: our relation to God, our relation to others, and our relation to the world. Humans, then, are cracked Eikons. There is all the difference in the world in depicting humans as simply sinners and seeing sinfulness as the condition and behavior of a cracked Eikon. Humans sin, but their sin is the sin of an Eikon [(image of God)]. They can't be defined by their sin until they are seen as Eikons. - Scott McKnight, "What is the Gospel?"