Living out our calling

Can I share a thought? Something I’m kind of mulling over…a work in process.

Leslie Newbiggin – a retired missionary and Anglican priest - wrote that the church is called to be a “sign, taste and fore-herald of the Kingdom of God.”

Sounds a mouthful, but let’s just break it down a moment…

A sign…the church, by the way it lives, is to point people to what it is to live under God’s reign. We are to point people to an alternative way of living…God’s way of living.

A taste…as people encounter a Jesus community of people, they should experience something of the rightness of living under God’s rule…they should get a taste of restored lives and restored relationships…of what it is like when God transforms brokenness.

A fore-herald…we are to announce God’s Kingdom…we are to announce things made right through Jesus…we are to announce the goodness and rightness of a relationship with the Creator.

This is a quote that has been with me for some years…and I keep coming back to it.

It’s a quote, which, personally, I find exciting. For it takes church from being a building or a Sunday service, to a living, breathing dynamic community of people who are alive by the power of the Holy Spirit, caught up in God’s cosmic purposes, with a significance and a purpose far greater than anything the world can ever offer.

So here’s what I’m pondering at the moment (and in sharing, would love you to ponder with me and to input into my thinking)….

…What might it look like if Neighbourhood believed this quote?

-          What might it look like for us to be a sign?

-          What might it look like for us to be a taste?

-          What might it look like for us to be a fore-herald?

And I should say, that I think it will look like many different things.

But go on and prayerfully dream. Go on and ask God to lay on your heart what it might look like for Neighbourhood to grow in such a way that we represent and live out God’s brilliant kingdom even more.

I’d love to hear what God lays on your heart.