Four strategies for leading a church into mission cont.
In this series of blogs I humbly offer four strategies for mobilising a local church into mission:
- Preach for it
- Pray for it
- Worship for it
- Model it
In my previous blog I discussed two of these strategies; here I discuss a third.
- Worship for mission
By ‘worship’ I am referring to corporate worship. Given that mission is central to what it means to be ‘in Christ’ (see John 20:21), I take it that a part of the goal of worship is to mobilize God’s people for into mission. I am ashamed to say that I cottoned on to the importance of worship practice that intentionally equips and mobilises the church for mission relatively recently—I have learned from my wife, who is gifted in designing meaningful and reformed worship. Here are two ideas for worshipping for mission:
First, a ‘work liturgy’, where for eight weeks someone from the congregation is interviewed, prayed over and ‘sent’ into their place of work, to be Christ’s ambassador.
Second, Easter Sunday worship. Easter Sunday is the highlight of the church calendar—this is when we really celebrate! Our catch phrase is:
Leader: Christ is risen! Cong.: New creation has begun!
On Easter Sunday we celebrate that: what God has done for Christ is raising him from the dead, he will soon do for the whole world. New creation has begun! We begin the day as a church family with a huge breakfast. This last Easter, during breakfast, someone acting as the apostle Peter rushed into the eating hall and with all the excitement of a man who has just discovered an empty tomb he urges us to come and see what he has seen! We eagerly follow him into the sanctuary, as if to see the empty tomb. As we enter the sanctuary there is a picture of an empty tomb on the screen and the band is singing: ‘Christ the Lord is Risen Today’. The whole service is full of energy and celebration-new creation has begun!