Our Need for Mission

This is kind of a rePost of a Post of sorts. My friend Michael Stewart from the Austin Stone Community Church posted this from what Alan Hirsch wrote, in his book The Forgotten Ways. It's a good reminder. And in it, he tells this story about missional community:

"In a remark ascribed to Gordon Cosby, the pioneering leader of that remarkable community Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C., he noted that in over sixty years of significant ministry, he had observed that no groups that came together around a non-missional purpose (e.g., prayer, worship, study, etc.) ever ended up becoming missional. It was only those groups that set out to be missional (while embracing prayer, worship, study, etc., in the process) that actually got to doing it." (p. 235)

Hirsch goes on to say that experience tells us that a group that aims at community seldom gets to mission even if it sincerely intends to do so. But the group that aims at mission will have to do community, because community "is the means to do mission... By planting the flag outside the walls and boundaries of the church, so to speak, the church discovers itself by rallying to it - this is mission." (p. 236)