Quotes about Mission

A fully Christian view of the Bible includes the idea of God's self-revelation but, by setting it in a larger context, transforms it. Precisely because the God who reveals himself is the world's lover and judge, rather than its absentee landlord, that self-revelation is always to be understood within the category of God's mission to the world, God's saving

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.

If today's, and tomorrow's, church is to engage in this kind of mission, seeking both to implement the achievement of Jesus and his resurrection and thereby to anticipate the final renewal of all things, it must itself be renewed, resourced, and reshaped for this mission.

the church doesn't exist in order to provide a place where people can pursue their private spiritual agendas and develop their own spiritual potential. Nor does it exist in order to provide a safe haven in which people can hide from the wicked world and ensure that they themselves arrive safely at an otherworldly destination.

Theology, after all, was made for the sake of the church, not the church for theology. I

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.

They ask three simple questions: Who is going to be at special risk when this happens? What can we do to help? And who shall we send?

All this talk of "victory" means what it means because, as we have seen, on the cross Jesus died for our sins; the blood of the new covenant was shed for the forgiveness of sins. Sins, to say it once more, were the chains by which the dark powers had enslaved the humans who had worshipped them. Once sins were forgiven on the cross, the chains were snapped; victory was won. This opens up several vistas on the church's mission.

A fully Christian view of the Bible includes the idea of God's self-revelation but, by setting it in a larger context, transforms it. Precisely because the God who reveals himself is the world's lover and judge, rather than its absentee landlord, that self-revelation is always to be understood within the category of God's mission to the world, God's saving sovereignty let loose through Jesus and the Spirit and aimed at the healing and renewal of all creation.

When art comes to terms with both the wounds of the world and the promise of resurrection and learns how to express and respond to both at once, we will be on the way to a fresh vision, a fresh mission.

Our task in the present is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.

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.