My previous entry mentioned the missional movement in the evangelical church. In some ways this movement is best understood by its two main questions: (1) What is the mission of God? (2) What is our part in His mission? Or put more bluntly as Gary Haugen did at a recent AACC conference (talking about God’s response to injustice), “Are Jesus and I interested in the same things?”
Well, what is our part? Unbelievably, we are plan A in fulfilling his purposes in the world. Here’s my 3 core statements that describe our part of the mission:
a. to glorify God and enjoy him forever in the kingdom of heaven, first here on earth and then fully in heaven.
b. to extend the kingdom boundaries (a la Ezekiel 47) in order to participate in the healing of the nations through reconciling, binding up, loosing, feeding, clothing, and preaching the new good news.
c. to live righteously in exile (Jeremiah 29) for the benefit of all peoples (for their peace and comfort) and as lights shining on a hill giving glory to God (Matthew 5:14)
What else would you want to include in your top 5?
What do we have in our actual, lived-out top 5 that ought NOT be there?
Musings on Faith and Psychology 
Phil –
Those are a great top 3!The last one is challenging, especially in American culture where we don’t understand ourselves to be in exile. We identify our nation as ‘under God’ and ‘blessed by God’, but we lack in the understanding of a separation of this kingdom and the next. The ‘exile’ for the church in America is not so much exile at all, at least in the sense Israel would’ve experienced. We identify more with this culture than remain distinct from it. We struggle with the same type of thing Israel did in that we look to be delivered from the evil of our nation rather than accepting and living as light in our state of exile.
Perhaps what would be in the top 5 that shouldn’t be (and is hard to define concisely) is the church’s ‘right’ to establish itself in ways that make the church more a part of this kingdom than a representation of the eternal Kingdom.