Vision Mission Values…Continued
St. Andrew’s Mission is to create and sustain an environment where followers of Jesus Christ are nurtured and challenged to grow in faith in order to carry out God’s reconciling work in the world.
Each of the bolded words and phrases are explained in some detail in our Vision Mission and Values booklet. It was important that we be clear about what we mean by these words and how we intend to carry them out. In the October 18th and 25th editions of the St Andrew’s Update, I wrote about the first bolded phrase: “create and sustain an environment.” Now, I’d like to address the next bolded phrase:
Followers of Jesus Christ
In our booklet, we break it down this way: “We believe in Jesus Christ as witnessed through the Old and New Testaments and seek to follow the example that he demonstrated by loving God and loving neighbor.” This was part of my motivation to lead a three part adult education class on Jesus, which started last Sunday. It was probably one of the most fun discussions I have had about Jesus. One participant summed it up by saying “well, you could certainly say there was a diversity of opinions.”
One of the conclusions we came to as a group was that the question “who is Jesus” is very broad. In our mission statement we narrow our focus of Jesus to what is witnessed to in the Bible—but that still leaves the question wide open. In the Bible Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of Man, the Son of God, the wandering rabbi, and the rabble rouser. He is the healer, the teacher, the radical who turned over the tables in the Temple. He is without sin and yet he eats with sinners. He is wise and authoritative and yet he is schooled by a lowly Canaanite woman. He is confrontational and comforting. He is humble. He is a storyteller. He is salvation.
So, with all of this, we narrowed our focus even further to highlight that Jesus loved God and loved neighbor. This focus gives us direction. We follow Jesus by doing what Jesus did in the name of love. One cannot underestimate the challenge that this poses to us. It requires that we not only call ourselves Christians, but that we act as Christians. We seek to care for friends and neighbors, we seek to bear witness to the truth, we seek to forgive (even our enemies). I don’t know about anyone else, but I find that a tall order.
Because being a follower of Jesus is so challenging, we must do it together. A Christian community is a group of people who encourage and enable each other in this work. This leads us to our next two bolded phrases in our mission statement: “nurtured and challenged to grow,” which I will write about next week.
Blessings,
Pastor Jen
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