This is the second post in a series exploring the broad vision for our church plant in Seattle. If you want to know more about that project, check out my Church Plant category 🙂 For the rest of this specific series, go here.

Missional

The bible in its essence is a missional book that describes a missional God. From creation to new creation, God is at work within the cosmos to move his project forward towards its ultimate redemption. To be a “missional” church is simply to commit one’s community to partnering with the God who is redeeming all of creation. Three words that help communicate the broad scope of missional Christianity are grace, justice, and hope.

• Grace is for the individual person who is seeking a relationship with Jesus. We are invited to know God through Christ, not merely to become “saved,” but for the life of discipleship. God invites people to know the transforming love of Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit. The gospel invitation is not to becoming a convert, but a disciple. Converts know something, but disciples know Someone.
• Justice is a word that we use to describe God’s heart for the “least of these.” Justice means that we partner with God and each other in a missional movement that is led by the Spirit to right the wrongs of the world. We are to be deeply committed to causes of justice, even when they may require radical changes in how we live.
• Hope is a word that we use to describe what we believe God will accomplish for the faithful in the future: the renewal of all creation. God’s mission will be fully accomplished when this world is free from all “death or mourning or crying or pain” which will be consummated by a final act of grace when Christ returns. We want to show this broken world the hope we have in Jesus, by living like tomorrow’s world has already begun. This means we stand up for the oppressed, elderly, marginalized, poor, disabled, widow, orphan, creation itself, and all the broken places and people of the world, with the desire to join in God’s holistic mission to “gather up all things in heaven and on earth.”