Vineyard Church of Knox County
It’s Time To Change the Way We Think About Missions
Sermon Audio from Sunday, May 2, 2004 — We want to participate fully in the Mission of God, what we call the Great Commission given by Jesus as his last words on earth (Matt 28:18-20).
Churches all over the world have as their goal the completion of the Great Commission; that much is true. But it is my contention and the contention of scores of others in ministry that the N. American church has gotten it wrong when it comes to our strategy. It is time for a change of thinking about the identity of the church and our strategy for completing the Great Commission. "This is a time for a radically new vision," writes Dr. Darrell Guder in the much acclaimed book Missional Church. "The current predicament of churches in N. America requires more than a mere tinkering with long-assumed notions about the identity and mission of the church. Instead, as many knowledgeable observers have noted, there is a need for reinventing or rediscovering the church in this new kind of world." What is needed is not simply putting together a new missions board or finding a new missionary to support. What is needed is a reinventing or rediscovering of the identity of the church and its mission to fully participate in the Great Commission. In other words, we need to ask the questions, Who are we and why are we here?
