…A deeply missional impulse calls us to inhabit eternity. We want to avoid forever gazing at a historical golden age of gospel advancement (“oh man, to be a Christian in Hawaii back then”). We also want to avoid an idolatrous futuristic outlook (“once this happens [insert blank] then we’ll truly be [insert blank] and missionally effective”). We want, thirdly, to avoid a social-clubbishness that comes from focusing only on the immediate contexts in which we live (“these are the golden days” or “we’ve arrived”)…
Read moreTwo weeks of my not being at All Saints services
p/c Sincerely Media via Unsplash
I was away from our Sunday services at All Saints this past Sunday preaching and celebrating at our Network mission on Maui, and I will be away next Sunday also preaching at our daughter church-plant in Puna. For a pastor who loves his parish, stretches of weeks like this are incredibly difficult for me, even though I am here during the week between my Sunday absences. The weight of it is heavy.
That heaviness notwithstanding, I am convicted that the work I do on these Network trips and the work you all do in the worship and liturgy (liturgy, after all, means “the work of the people”) and mission, are not dislocated or oppositional. They are one corporate response that our whole parish offers to the God who called us and loves us…
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