6 July 2007

WISELink back copies

If you are looking for back copies of WISELink please click the tab (circled) at the top of this page

or click here to take you to the site.

You then need only click on the month that you require and it will allow you to download that month.

Thx
Web Chick

5 July 2007

Mission— A Calling for you and me!

The theme for this month is Mission and what it means for us. This year we have seen the renaming of our Overseas Mission Board from Churches of Christ renamed to Global Mission Partners. This is a real step forward into integrating their role and place in the way we do mission.
What is mission? The encyclopaedia defines mission as being “groups and organizations arising within a particular religious tradition whose concern is to witness by word and deed, at home and abroad, to the beliefs of their religion, so that others may come to know and live the truth as they understand it.”


Ask your friend or neighbour what mission is and I am sure that the first thing they say is working overseas to tell the third world countries about the Gospel.

While I am a firm believer in spreading the Good News across the seas, I am a very firm believer that mission is where ever we are at any given time when we are with other people. Mission is people.

As I have said before when sharing with you, most businesses and churches have their Mission and Vision Statement which is often displayed for all to see. It is paramount as they search for meaning and a purpose for how and why they exist.

This is what mission is also for us. We have a mission and vision to be! In the Discipleship Development Program that is organised by GMP (Global Mission Partners) for young adults to participate in, the emphasis is on Being not doing mission. In others words being the Mission of life and not doing the mission of life. I find the “being” quite confronting, but it is only as we live mission that we will be the church in the world today.


One of our suburban churches has on the inside of its front door a poster displaying the words “You are now entering the mission field”.

Our neighbourhood and also our homes can be the mission field that we are involved in more than the going overseas. Yes we can serve also by supporting GMP and ACCIM which are very active parts of the mission work of Churches of Christ, but so should the local church, which is in fact not the church that we might attend, but each one of us who claim to be Christians. On Sundays, or when ever we meet, we are the church gathered, but when we leave the building we are the church scattered for service.

Each one of us is a missionary called to serve where we live and work.

A few years ago, my husband and I felt the call of God to overseas mission service, but so far we have not gone there. However the call to serve has not diminished. We serve Him right where we are in our life and work. Actually we have now contact with 3 distinct but separate groups in our community and church which enable us to serve Him. Our overseas mission field came to us!

Our communities are our mission field! “How will they hear without a preacher?” My friend we mustn’t leave the telling of the message to chance for our neighbourhood. We must listen to the call of Christ on our lives to “Be” His witness in our homes, communities and the world. We need to be willing to be home missionaries wherever we live and work. Going into to all the world means sharing the message starting at our back door. For some it starts before the back door as they witness and live at home.

Mission.

What do you immediately think of? Until the last few years I usually thought of ‘mission’ as overseas in a culture different to ours. I still do think of mission as overseas – as well as here in Australia and in our own city, suburb, street.

Global Mission Partners continue to participate in amazing work throughout the world and Urban Neighbours of Hope (UNOH) are working in Thailand and in Australia. My ears and heart have been opened more and more to the circumstances in which these missionaries are working – it can only be in God’s strength that these people do what they do.

Yet, do we always have to be working in poor and/or dangerous situations to be a missionary? Over the years I have come to an understanding of ‘mission’ as being any one of a number of things. How about the person who, without fail, always checks in on someone who doesn’t have family close by?

They are not related and don’t necessarily have a lot in common, but they care with a passion and are willing to take on the responsibility – and they bring some sunshine and security into someone’s life.

What about the volunteers in the hospitals, nursing homes, meals on wheels, Red Cross, GMP, UNOH – the list goes on and on. Let’s not forget those who are constantly caring for a family member. Surely, that caring must be heart-wrenching sometimes and yet day after day after day, those carers keep doing what they do. They will fight for their loved one’s care, often dealing with bureaucracy and seemingly uncaring people in power.

And what about those who support asylum seekers and refugees? They also go into battle for those who are powerless in our land. They fight for a ‘fair go’ for those who have already endured the most horrific of circumstances and then find that life can seem very unfair in their new land.


So when I think of ‘Mission’, I think of all sorts of things. We can all be missionaries. It’s not hard to be pleasant to the checkout person – you might be the only person all day who’s treated them like a human being. It doesn’t take that long to pop in next door to check on the elderly lady or man who lives by themselves or contact that young person who seems to be struggling with life issues.

Make that phone call, write that letter, send that card – you never know when your action will be the one bright spot in someone’s day or week. Be on a mission to brighten someone’s life in whatever way you can. You are a representative for Jesus or as someone once said to me ‘Jesus in skin’. Matthew 25: 31-40 is a passage that we can all afford to read again and again, just to remind us that we are all on the mission field, every day, where-ever we are.


4 July 2007

Wise Link July 2007

The July Edition of WISELink is now available online.

This month's WISELink we are looking at ...

I will again be publishing the feature article, please feel free to discuss the article in the comments area of the post.