New year, new opportunities - Share Life

I doubt my comments on Sunday about mission surprised you. We do talk a lot about mission. And I do find it hard. Being so vulnerable as to share what really matters to me with people who I know don’t share that same perspective is a risk. But it is a risk worth taking. 

As we embark on Share Life for 2024 I want to remind you that we are not asking you to do more - the key idea of Share Life is that we learn to share Jesus naturally in the context of our normal lives.

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; we’re not adding tasks, we’re rethinking our current interactions with people and turning them 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 doing mission in the midst of your life. 

Let me unpack this in three ways.

First, 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. Choose one or two people to pray for. Pray for yourself. Pray with your growth group. But be careful: I usually find that when I start praying mission prayers, God answers them. You will have a chance to do all this with your growth group each week in the Share Life spot. And all this leads me to point 2. 

Second, listen. When God does give you a chance to chat with someone who is not a believer - at work, on the side of the sports field, at a social event - listen well to how they think and to what matters to them. Explore their thoughts on life. Ask them where their ideas came from. Ask if you can share your thoughts with them. We are not asking you to head out and do mission; we’re encouraging you to do mission when you head out.

Finally, 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 throughout the year but we try to plan things so as not to impose extra time burdens on busy lives. 

So what we’re working at is avoiding the ominous burden that mission can become and just encouraging you to use the moments in life you are already in to ShareLife. 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? Well, more about that next week.