The Mission of the Church

The mission of the church is not merely to do good things, not merely to evangelize and proselytize, not merely to worship. The mission of the church includes these but who can imagine how to really do them without the greater vision of the Kingdom of God? Therefore all the workings of the church, all it's movements, are defined by the greater mission which guides, prioritizes, and organizes those movements. The mission of the church is to envision and embody the Kingdom of God. It is to continuously and specifically ask the question, what does God's kingdom look like? What might the world look like if God's dream for it was realized? And once we have asked these questions and others like them our mission is to live in the reality that the Kingdom of God is indeed among us. The mission of the church is to uncompromisingly live out the reality that God has dominion and God has victoriously reclaimed this world. The church is the foretaste of God's reign, we are the heralds of that reality, and we are the embodiment of the good news that God has won the victory through resurrection. The church is the glimpse of what it might look like to live in a world without division, sin, and injustice. This guides our understanding and leads us to do good things, to evangelize compassionatly and lovingly, and to worship relentlessly the only God in whom we trust. That's the mission. That's the chosen path of the followers of Christ.