Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20
“When rebuilding a house, there is always a certain amount of demolition and removal that needs to take place. Structures that no longer give life or serve the purpose of the building need to be removed. So it is in the Church. In the House of God, the things that need to be cleared out can literally be structures that no longer serve the mission or that prevent the mission from being fulfilled. They can also be attitudes, ideas, or theological perspectives that hinder our ability to fulfill the missionary mandate given to us by Jesus.”
James Mallon in Divine Renovation: Bringing Your Parish from Maintenance to Mission (New London: Twenty-Third, 2014) 59.
As I pause during the divine hours, my mind has turned to all the books on my shelf with the word “divine” in the title. It’s an odd rabbit trail, but then again, I am odd or at least not a mainstream bloke by any means, so let’s see where it leads.
Today, Mallon calls us to consider the junk we need to jettison in our lives and in the local church if we, collectively speaking, are going to give life and serve the missionary mandate. What’s the mandate? Go and make disciples and teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded.
Notice the word “everything” in that mandate. The most popular topic of Jesus was money. It may well be one of the only topics people do not want to discuss. Interestingly, if we get money right, we take hold of life 100x better than anything money can buy.
So why don’t people want to talk about money? Lots of reason. But the one that comes to mind related to Mallon’s post leads me to ask a question. How does your generosity create (or fail to create) structures that give life and that serve the missionary mandate?
The local church is changing. It can’t meet like it used to. But it is not a building anyway, the church is a body. If you are renovating your church activities at this time, make sure you challenge your peers to build structures that give life and serve the missionary mandate.