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Our vision statement at Saint James begins, "we envision ourselves as missionaries..." Some people have asked me why we began our vision statement with a word so open to misconception and so alien in everyday conversation. Aren't missionaries those people we send overseas (somewhere else, anyway) to reach out to people there? Or is there something different or more to that word? Our vision statement opens, "We envision ourselves as missionaries...," with a clear sense of purpose. The root of the word missionary is the word 'mission.' We are saying that we envision ourselves becoming people with a clear sense of purpose, of mission in our everyday living. We believe everyone of us has the potential to realize and live out the purpose God has given us. We believe that part of the journey of faith is to discover how God has "wired" us and where we fit into the bigger picture. At Saint James, you may find us speaking with regularity about a question each of us is invited to answer: What is it about your (personal) experience of Jesus that the world cannot live without? As each of us struggles to understand what it is that Jesus has done in our lives that has changed us so deeply, we often discover that we are called to live out the answer as part of our mission in life. Let me use an example from my own life. I experienced and continue to experience Jesus through "absolute acceptance and unconditional love." My mission is to "embrace everyone I meet with absolute acceptance and unconditional love." In a world where conditional acceptance seems too often to be the rule and there is always a "I'll love you if...," Jesus has shown a love and acceptance beyond these. I know the world cannot live without knowing in a personal way this acceptance and love. As missionaries, each one of us is invited to live with a purpose and to live out of our mission. We grow into understanding that purpose and we do not avoid making it our "life's blood." That is why we crafted and listened to God for the best way to express who we see ourselves becoming. "Missionaries," people with a sense of God's mission, is what we see ourselves becoming. One last word about living as missionaries. Being a missionary does not necessarily mean doing "big" things. It is the everyday ways that we make our faith real, making that effort to speak to someone at the bus stop, in the office, or at Target. John Wesley, the 'father' of our denomination, said that we should do all the good we can, everywhere we can... Let us all strive for that in everyday living. |
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Saint James United Methodist Church
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