Mission Is All We Do

Brian McLaren stresses the importance of reaching out and that we should have the capacity to do so. He offers this definition of church: "A self-sustaining organization that does ministry and produces a surplus of energy and money over time. In other words, it attends to its own needs and, in so doing, miraculously generates more than it needs, so it can give to needs beyond its own borders" (Bruan D. McLaren, "The Church on the Other Side", Zondervan, 1998, 2000, p. 140). I fully support that concept, but fear that, too often, we get stuck concentrating on our own needs. However, McLaren rightly presses the point, quoting Mike Regele - "We must be the church for others. If we embrace the notion that the local congregation is the front line of mission in the twenty-first century, then we must see mission as all that we do" (Mike Regele, "Death of the Church", Zondervan, 1995, p. 220, quoted in McLaren, p. 142). We certainly should be seeing mission in all we do.