Helping You Do Different
Last week I began to unpack what I think is one of the most fundamental and important changes we have made to Christ Church in 2022—it involves mission and Share Life—in essence, we have made mission the backbone of our church calendar this year.
We’re prioritising our plans around mission and ensuring that encouragement, equipping and opportunities for mission are front and centre. Now for many people, just hearing those words creates an ominous heaviness in your heart. I have felt it and I know it. It’s the ominous heaviness of feeling like your life is already back to back busy, of knowing that you barely have a moment to breathe, let alone catch up with family and friends; and then hearing that your church wants to encourage and equip you to make mission a priority. For some, it might be enough to make you consider leaving a church that has such weighty expectations.
But before you do, hear this. Our plans for Share Life 2022 do not centre around asking you to do more: they centre around helping you do different.
We don’t want to overload or overburden anyone. Rather, we want to help you make mission a normal part of your life and lifestyle that does not add a burden but transforms your current interactions with people into eternal interactions. We are not looking to send everyone out door to door and nor are we asking everyone to go and make 20 new friends. We just want you to think about mission as a normal part of your life.
Let me unpack this in three ways.
Prayer. We all pray—some from time to time, others all the time. We’d just love you to bring mission into your prayers as a regular feature. Elliot has written some suggested pathways for prayer on our Term 1 LISTEN Card which I have found really helpful so far. Just grab your card and pray those prayers. But be careful: I usually find that when I start praying mission prayers, God answers them. And that leads me to point 2.
Listen. When God does give you a chance to engage with someone who is not a believer - at work, on the sports field, at a social event - our focus this term is just on encouraging us to listen well. On the website there are some questions to help you find effective pathways in to good conversations. Why not use those questions in your next interaction with someone you usually see in the week. We are not asking you to head out and do mission; we’re encouraging you to do mission when you head out.
If you have a good conversation, and the person you chat to is interested to hear more about what you think about life and God and the future, invite them to something you already do. Invite them to church, your Growth Group, a meal with Christian friends or something else. There will be some specific invite events coming up but we will be encouraging people to consider not going to GG that week so as not to impose extra time burdens on busy lives.
So what we’re working at is avoiding the ominous burden and just encouraging you to use the moments in life you are already in to Share Life. Now I realise that itself might already feel ominous because you’re not in the habit of talking about Jesus at all. What do you do then? More about that next week.
