If we're going to make disciples and move out in mission, we need to go from managing boundaries to integrating family and mission into one life, a cohesive framework and fabric that empowers a culture of discipleship and mission, not just occasional events and periodic programs.

the purpose of a family on mission is to multiply the life of Jesus by reproducing ourselves into the lives of others, so they become disciples of Jesus who can then reproduce themselves into the lives of others.

resurrection doesn't mean escaping from the world; it means mission to the world based on Jesus's lordship over the world.

The gospels are, and were written to be, fresh tellings of the story of Jesus designed to be the charter of the community of Jesus's first followers and those who, through their witness, then and subsequently, have joined in and have learned to hear, see, and know Jesus in word and sacrament.

Jesus is raised, so he is the Messiah, and therefore he is the world's true Lord; Jesus is raised, so God's new creation has begun—and we, his followers, have a job to do! Jesus is raised, so we must act as his heralds, announcing his lordship to the entire world, making his kingdom come on earth as in heaven! To

The story of Acts, even after Jesus's ascension, is about what Jesus continued to do and teach. And the way he did it and taught it was—through his followers.

The four gospels, again in their very different ways, are all written to tell the story of Jesus as the story of Israel, and the story of Israel's God, reaching their proper climax, so as thereby to tell the story of how Israel's God becomes king of the whole world.

Right through Israel's history there had been a sense that, strange though it might seem, the one true God would use this small and apparently insignificant nation as his means of transforming the entire world. This great transforming event would be, finally, the coming of the Kingdom of God.

Here, again and again, the evangelists are telling the story of Jesus with an eye, rightly and properly, toward the communities they know will be reading these books as the foundational documents of their corporate life. The needs of the developing church were many and varied, and we can see the four gospels meeting those needs in different ways.

In particular, it may explain how the mission of the church is organically and intimately related to the great events at the heart of the faith.

As I have written elsewhere, the larger biblical narrative offers us a framework for developing and taking forward a holistic mission which refuses to split apart full-on evangelism, telling people about Jesus with a view to bringing them to faith, and full-on kingdom-of-God work, labouring alongside anyone and everyone with a heart for [154] the common good so that God's sovereign and saving rule may be glimpsed on earth as in heaven.

to see evangelism in terms of the announcement of God's kingdom, of Jesus's lordship and of the consequent new creation, avoids from the start any suggestion that the main or central thing that has happened is that the new Christian has entered into a private relationship with God or with Jesus and that this relationship is the main or only thing that matters.