14 Oct Embracing the “Both-And” of Church Life

I hope you have felt God’s nearness to you this week, no matter what you have been through or what is going on in your life. I am comforted—and challenged—by Jesus’ word to us, where He says in John 16:33, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world”.

I also hope you were encouraged by the team from South Africa, and their ministry with Thembalitsha. In case you missed it, we had some of our Every Nation Church family from Somerset West (just outside Cape Town), South Africa. Every Nation exists, by the way, to plant Christ-centered, spirit-filled, socially-responsible churches and campus ministries in every nation. And there’s perhaps no part of our ministry that does the “socially responsible” part better than our churches in South Africa. Thembalitsha is a world-class ministry, birthed out of those South African churches, that cares for the poorest of the poor in that nation. It does this primarily through healthcare for those suffering from HIV, AIDS and Tuberculosis (spreading at epidemic rates there), and through education, for those who have lost parents to disease or who may not otherwise have access to education at all.

If you would like to know more about Thembalitsha and how to get involved (they repeatedly insisted that perhaps the best way to help them would just be to visit and see what they are doing, and we are looking at somehow creating a group trip over there in the days to come), you can check out more info about them here.

I do want to say that one of tensions we fully embrace here at Mosaic, and one that I hope you will embrace as well, is the tension between the local and the extra-local, or between our city and the world. It would be easy to fall into the trap of looking beyond needs and problems right in front of us, and just having our eyes on problems around the world (and let’s be honest, it’s sometimes easier and less messy as well). On the other hand, it would also be easy to fall into the trap of only looking at and focusing on meeting the needs that exist all around us, and ignore the cries of those around the world (and let’s be honest, to just focus on our own local needs can sometimes be done in the name of self-interest as well).

Fortunately for the Bible-minded Christian, Jesus himself makes no such distinction. His commission to us in Matthew 28 tells us to start locally and think and move globally. New Testament-shaped churches, then, can never not seek to serve their cities and be salt and light in the communities to which God has sent them, and merely serve as a kind of unintentional parasite! And, at the same time, New Testament churches can never not seek to be a blessing around the world, as God gives them the grace and opens doors!

I hope that, whenever you see something on a Sunday being presented, or you hear of an opportunity, that your instinct would be to take a moment to cheer on those involved. I hope that we never think, “Why is this for something outside our city and church’s needs?” And I hope that we also never think, “When are we going to move on beyond meeting our local needs and focus on stuff that is happening around the world?” The truth is, our church does both and is known for both, and sometimes what we offer leans one way and sometimes it leans the other. One of our goals as an elder team is to shape people theologically and practically in ways that are fully formed, and the fastest way to not do that would be to move away from this kind of tension.

In short, I hope we embrace the “both-and” kind of ministry tension Jesus himself gives us, and that we acknowledge both kinds of needs, and all the kinds of ways we all contribute, big and small, to the world-wide reclamation project of the King of Kings, in whose service we are all blessed beyond measure to find ourselves.

I love being here with you and walking in the “both-and” of ministry—meeting needs in our city, and around the world!

I’ll see you Sunday as we move into one of the most famous passages in the Bible, Hebrews 11, as we continue on “The Journey” together.

Morgan