Chapter 5 – The Making
of a Mission Culture
1. The church’s mission is a huge piece to digest…easier
said than done! Steinke initiates this
discussion with the need to know what direction one is headed…to have a
destination…an orientation. He then
moves into a discussion of “mission drift,” limping along without a focus…an
apparent affliction of many congregations today. Look again at Steinke’s list of drifting
symptoms…
Can
you recall examples where you felt the church was in the midst of such “drifting?”
2. “Mission
is the nature and purpose of the church, not some list of qualifiers. Because God has a mission, a church
arises. Apart from mission, the church
is meaningless. The mission has
churches.”
How
do these statements compare with the perception of the average church member
today? Where might there be agreement or
disagreement?
3. Steinke
notes how issues of survival challenge us to examine our self-understanding as
people of God, asking: Who are we? What is God calling us to be?
How
has St. Mark changed over the past two decades, and how do we understand our
mission today?
4. “If the
gospel isn’t transforming you,” N.T. Wright asks, “how do you know that it will
transform anything else?” “People who
work for a clear mission in the church and for the wider world need to be
experiencing transformation in their own lives.”
How
do we learn to tend to this focus in fresh ways, especially when we’ve been a
part of the church for so long?
5. “Again and
again, we have to explore why we come together.
Congregations need to continue to review who they are and how they will
respond.” Let’s try on Steinke’s
follow-up questions for size:
What
are we trying to be? What is our calling
at this time and in this place? Can we
make a difference? Is there a purpose
for our presence?
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