Mission Marker #4 - Embodying The Good News

This is the fourth week of Mission Edge Church content in the Overflow as I add to the exploration of the six "mission markers" Faith Baptist has been studying on Sundays. If you missed last week's message about Embodying The Good News you can watch here or listen here!

This will be a shorter entry because there isn't a huge amount of additional Mission Edge content to add to this topic or any major sections of Sunday's message that were better saved for the blog. The main thing I wanted to draw some attention toward is the importance of applying Mission Markers #3 and #4 within the Church, rather than thinking of them as things only directed to those outside of the Church.

A text that helps illustrate this comes from the short New Testament letter of Titus - here is a selection from chapter 2, verses 1-8:

You, however, must teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine. Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance. Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled. In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.

These words come from the Apostle Paul to a church leader named Titus who had been commissioned to work on the island of Crete and help some newly founded churches become better established there. Titus was dealing with a lot of new believers - people without much grounding in their Christian faith or any sense of how to work together as church communities. Paul advised to Titus to carefully select worthy church leaders and to rebuke anybody he came across if they "claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good." (Titus 1:16)

Instead, the kind of community Paul wanted to see built there is described above. It's a place of good teaching. This teaching includes "sound doctrine" (the established truths of the faith, particularly related to Jesus) but it connects directly to encouraging behaviour that will set Christians apart and create a favourable reputation. Older men were to be guided toward self-control and being sound in faith, love, and endurance so that they would be worthy of respect. Older women were to be taught to live in faithfulness, not be gossips or over-indulge in wine, and to have a role in teaching what is good, particularly to younger women who could learn from them about having good marriages and healthy, stable families.

Younger men just get the command to be self-controlled, but the requirements given to the other groups are already similar enough that I think all these other qualities are involved when Titus is told to set them an example by doing what is good.

(If you're wondering about the "subject to their husbands" instruction given to young women, the rest of that sentence suggests to me that this is related to maintaining a positive reputation, not a requirement for hierarchy in marriage. Paul was pragmatic in his desire to spread the Gospel and didn't want Christians - who were liberating and empowering women to a scandalous degree compared to the Jewish or Roman cultures around them - to get a reputation for encouraging women to disrespect their husbands or shirk their responsibilities as wives and mothers.)

In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.

In what I've presented about being fluent and embodying the Good News of Jesus I've focused on sharing "faith stories" and on showing our love practically to those outside of the Church. Those are important, but here I want to emphasize the value of making our church a place where we are teaching each other well.

How can we be fluent in the Good News if we aren't taught it? Teaching has always been an important part of Church community, and something that happens in gathered worship, in smaller groups and classes, and on an individual level as people study the scriptures. Those who are mature - having sound doctrine and lives worthy of respect - should be teaching those who can benefit from their experience and example.

And how can we embody the Good News if we lack relationships with other Christians who are good examples to us? You can learn things about self control, faith, love, endurance, or reverence from a sermon or Bible study group or personal devotions, but I think we learn a lot more by seeing those things lived out by people we respect.

One of the things this points me toward is the importance of fostering intergenerational relationships within church communities. I don't think this is something you can simply program. It happens when people are intentional about walking with other believers, including those who aren't their peers. It requires people who are willing to be encouragers and mentors, and those who are willing to receive from those who want to walk with them.

When these kinds of relationships and an eagerness to teach and learn are present in a church I think it gains a much greater ability to speak about the Good News and embody the Good News to those outside the church.

This post isn't leading to me proposing a specific model for how we can teach and be examples to each other. This kind of community-building tends to defy a five-point plan. But I do encourage anyone who is trying to engage with this Mission Edge process to exercise their imagination. What do you imagine as the kind of church community where these things happen - where you are able to learn from good teachers, perhaps teach those who might benefit from your experience, and have opportunities to develop deep and life-giving relationships with a diverse group of fellow believers? What does that look like for you? What does Faith Baptist do that helps you have some of this? What could our church do to encourage more of this?

It's my sense that there isn't a yearning among many people for more formal programming where a leader simply tells people things about the Bible. I suspect that being able to engage in useful service together, honestly discuss and consider the big questions of life and faith together, and benefit from sharing the ups and downs of life with people invested in our well-being and future is a more compelling thing to offer. As we get closer to our visioning day and setting some goals and plans for the future let's imagine how we can teach and learn together as a church so that we truly can be fluent in the Good News and embody it to others.